Madrid’s fertility billboard: gaming, cats, and phantom children

A Madrid billboard asks: are you letting the rice burn off?

How many children would this generation have if housing cost half as much? The question hangs over a billboard circulating in Madrid: a couple on a sofa, her taking a selfie, he with a game controller, two cats, and, drawn in blue, the children who never arrived. The slogan “are you letting the rice burn off?” turned an ad into an uncomfortable portrait of a country failing to replace its population, sparking a debate ranging from rent prices to ideology.

What the billboard shows and why it stings

The scene is familiar: a wide sofa, a TV on, a phone in hand, and two companion cats. Behind them, in blue, the silhouette of children who aren’t there. No one disputes the message’s intent to stir consciences; the debate is about its target. Some see it as a mockery by childless people; others see it as a warning about what is lost.

The most repeated objection is not sarracena, but domestic: the sofa in the drawing is too big for current salaries. Another group demands a different sketch, with parents holding a baby, arguing that four teenagers flying around the house discourages any couple. The illustration acts as a mirror: everyone sees their own bill in it.

Why do richer countries have fewer children?

Because housing costs and labor precarity enter the equation before anything else. This is the axis of the controversy: without a stable contract and affordable housing, family plans are postponed or abandoned. The thesis takes many forms—lack of decent salaries, housing access as a filter, no one can afford children if they can’t make ends meet—all pointing to the same place.

However, the argument clashes with an uncomfortable fact repeated in the conversation: it is precisely the richest countries in the world that record the lowest birth rates. If money were the decisive variable, the map should be reversed. This mismatch prevents the economic explanation from closing the matter, forcing a search for factors not found in the payslip.

The counterargument: it’s neither Somalia nor just money

Against the economic diagnosis stands an uncomfortable objection. If precarity explained the birth rate drop, poorer countries would have fewer children, but the opposite occurs. The extreme example used is Somalia: there is greater scarcity and no forums on the subject. The comparison, however, is received with nuances, as raising a child in a subsistence economy is different from doing so in a country with healthcare, schools, and expectations.

The counterreplica comes quickly. Asking someone raised in a decent country to have children without access to housing is, it is argued, simply irrational: no one who has lived in a normal flat will move into a slum to meet a demographic quota. Between these positions lies a third view: the problem is not money or housing, but eternal adolescence: a maturity that used to arrive in the mid-twenties and is now delayed until forty.

The second fracture: family, culture, and politics

As the conversation advances, the axis shifts. It is no longer just about the cost of a child, but about which social model is rewarded. One view holds that the problem is cultural: the family loses weight as an institution, consumption takes its place, and life priorities are reordered. Another responds that the framework matters little when the salary cannot stretch further, and demanding a change in values without solving material conditions is starting the house from the roof.

In between appear public subsidies, the role of the State, and the fit of migration policy, terrains where positions harden. Some defend that no subsidy moves the decision if there is no stable employment and housing first; others reply that the key was never subsidies, but the family understood as a pillar and community. The disagreement, fundamentally, is about what can be legislated and what cannot.

What those who have already had children say

At the other end are testimonies from those who have raised children. “I have two children and I am not rich. And I live without straits,” summarizes one of the most repeated arguments, ending in a plea for honesty: better someone who admits they do not want children than someone who blames their salary for a decision made for other reasons. Others point to the real wear and tear, not shown in statistics: the teenage stage is what ages parents the most.

Then there is the attempt to close the matter arithmetically. A calculation circulating in the conversation holds that ten couples sum twenty-one children, and with that figure, no sociological theory is needed. The count is discussed, corrected, and discussed again. No one agrees on the numerator.

What the billboard does not resolve

In the end, an ad does not change any reproductive decision. It is cheaper than a nursery, certainly, and has achieved something no report has: that the subject is discussed for days. Whether the result is a housing policy or fifty more messages of indignation depends not on the billboard. Nor, probably, on those who look at it.