Governance by Gaslight: The Reproductive Politics of the Two-Child Limit

In 2017, the UK government limited the number of children for whom low-income families could claim the child element of ‘Universal Credit’ (worth up to £3250 pa) to two. This policy, they claimed, was necessary to address the national deficit, and to ensure “those on benefits face the same financial choices around the number of children they can afford as those supporting themselves through work”. In the seven years since its introduction, this ‘two-child limit’ has impacted 422,000 families; including 1.5 million children (1.1 million of whom are living in poverty). It enjoys broad public and cross-party support. In this paper I explore the reproductive politics of the ‘two-child limit’. Specifically, I cast the limit as a form of reproductive governance resulting in specifically reproductive injustices; as a legislative control, economic inducement, and moral injunction which stratifies reproductive outcomes along gendered, raced, and classed lines, and profoundly undermines the well-being of (primarily) women and their children. Thereafter, I explore the functionality and character of this governance. Drawing on existing empirical literature, and a corpus of state documents published between 2015-2023, I demonstrate a ‘disconnect’ between the two-child limit’s ‘programmatic rationale’ and the actualised subject positions it induces. I demonstrate that this disconnect stems from a systemised inattentiveness to, and ignorance of, ontological and political realities on the part of the state, which results in the production of a demonstrably irrational idealised reproductive subject. I do not, however, diagnose a failure in governance – but rather argue that inattentiveness and irrationality can be a form of reproductive governance unto itself. Specifically, I argue that the irrational reproductive subject of the UK state’s imaginary functions to ‘dodge’ legal accountability; justify a managed decline in public provision and child poverty; and naturalise the stratification of reproductive opportunities and outcomes. This, I suggest, amounts to what Elena Ruiz has termed ‘cultural gaslighting’ – a socio-historically grounded epistemic form of violence that differentially impacts marginalised groups and justifies their oppression. My findings have broad significance, providing theoretical insight into how reproduction can be ‘governed’ and to what effect.