Universities are not places for children
What looks odd about this picture?
My grandma had her first child at 17 and raised four. I asked her recently how she thinks about family differently to our generation - she told me she didn’t think about it - it just happened. It was expected.
What struck me is how different our life is at university campus. Thousands of people at peak health, peak energy, peak fertility - and almost no children anywhere.
We treat that as natural. It isn’t.
Universities evolved from cathedral schools and monastic schools - institutions built by and for celibate men.
The architecture, the housing, the rhythm of academic life all assumed students without families.
When higher education went mass-market and opened to women, we scaled the model without ever asking whether the celibate-monk template still made sense.
So today, a student who wants a family faces a system designed to make it impossible. Dorms built for singles. No campus childcare. Timetables and funding that assume zero dependents.
The message is: family comes after.
But after keeps moving.
After the degree.
After the master’s.
After the PhD - which finishes at 31 or 32.
After the job is stable,
After the house is bought,
After the career is established.
Governments are now spending billions trying to reverse the demographic crisis this perpetual “after” helped create - a crisis that is, ironically, now hitting university enrollment and finances directly.
But students can’t afford children?
But when exactly does a family become affordable?
The economics of having children at university could be arguably better than at 30 - abundant flexible time, communal living, shared resources, and daycare that an institution could provide at marginal cost.
What students lack isn’t capacity.
It’s permission and infrastructure.
I’m not arguing everyone at university should have kids.
I’m arguing that we should question childless universities being the norm.
And for some people it might be the perfect time.
And the reason is not that it’s not possible - it’s that the culture is not set up for it to exist.
It should be a real option rather than a structural impossibility - family housing, campus nurseries, leave for students, funding that doesn’t penalize dependents.
We’re training our most capable people to see children as a trade-off - while universities sit on an answer to their own enrollment crisis.