Most parents spend a couple of decades raising their kids and, if they are lucky, their kids will spend a couple of years caring for them in their dotage. Not exactly a fair deal: but it is a basic premise of capitalist society that children need not be slaves to their elderly parents. They are supposed to be out making money.

But now that basic bargain is threatened by the sheer size and longevity of the baby boom generation: somebody must take care of them in their old age; and if it is not the state, it will have to be the children.