A quote from Martin Wolf in The Financial Times, 28 February 2006

For many mothers the welfare state is a substitute for a committed father. For fathers it is an excuse for abandoning their responsibilities. For both, it is a reason not to produce the children who might help look after them in old age. The result is lower overall investment – quantitatively and, in some respects, even qualitatively – in the posterity on which the sustainability of the welfare state itself depends.