Baby bust

"Women who can most afford motherhood are the least likely to have babies. They know how much they would be giving up in a society that pays lip service to maternity but which in fact treats mothers very badly," said Dr Anne Summers, writer and commentator.

In the current edition of The Medical Journal of Australia, which focuses on women's health issues, Dr Summers provides insight into the complicated factors that contribute to Australia's declining birthrate.

"Australian women today are the first generation to effectively have total control of their fertility," Dr Summers said.

"Exercising that choice to have a baby or not gives women a great sense of power and a freedom previous generations of women could not even have dreamed of.

"One hundred and fifty years ago nearly half of all Australian women could expect to have around nine confinements.

"In 1961 women were having on average 3.6 children each and today, around 28 percent of women will not have children at all.

"Rural women still have more babies - an average of 2.27 in 2001, and the rate for Indigenous women was 2.21. The national average birth rate for 2001 was 1.7.

"A birth rate of 2.1 is required for a country to reproduce itself, so Australia now has to rely on immigration just to maintain its population.

" As a society, we ask women to give up too much when they have children and we give them far too little in return," Dr Summers said.

"Women can expect to suffer a significant loss of earnings from which, over a lifetime they will never recover - up to $160,000 for the first child and about $12,000 to $15,000 for each additional child.

"Because it is often unfeasible for new mothers to retain an attachment to the full-time workforce, it is difficult for mothers to hang on to their skills, let alone upgrade them to keep pace with their former colleagues.

"The more educated the woman and the higher her income, the fewer children she will have. Women aged 30 and over with a university degree have the lowest birth rate. Professional women are almost twice as likely to be childless as women in clerical and sales occupations, and women who live in an area with a high socioeconomic status have less than half the number of children than women in the poorest areas.

"As a society we do almost nothing to make it easier for women to combine a satisfying and productive life with having a family. Instead, women are forced to make decisions that are unfair and discriminatory.

"Women are no longer prepared to sacrifice themselves on the altar of maternity, or to be doormats for their families. Finally women - younger women especially - are starting to put themselves first," Dr Summers said.

The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.

CONTACT: Anne Summers AO PhD, 0438 344 048

Judith Tokley, AMA, 0408 824 306