In Britain, most people fear children will be worse off than their parents

Britain sits near the top of this worry, well above the global middle. If you are a parent here who fears your children will inherit a harder life, you are firmly in the majority, not being gloomy on your own.

When Pew Research Center compared 36 countries in 2024, Britain did not sit in the middle of the mood. It sat near the top of the worry. About three-quarters or more of UK adults said children will grow up to be worse off financially than their parents, grouping the country with France, Greece, Italy and Spain among the most pessimistic surveyed. The global median was 57%. Britain was well above it.

There are reasons this worry has settled so deeply here: the cost of a first home, the price of the everyday, and a decade in which many people felt the ground move under long-held assumptions. Whatever the causes, the effect on parents is the same. A great many mothers and fathers now quietly expect their children to have a harder time of it than they did, and carry that expectation as a low, steady background worry.

It helps to know how common the feeling is, because worry of this kind tends to isolate. A parent who fears for a child's future often keeps it to themselves, not wanting to sound gloomy or to burden anyone, and so a feeling shared by three in four people ends up being carried as if it were rare. Naming it out loud, among people who feel the same, takes some of the weight off without pretending the problem away.

The Tribe cannot change the housing market or the economy, and says so plainly. What it is being built to change is the loneliness wrapped around this worry: the sense that you are the only one lying awake about your children's future. Among people who understand it, that fear is easier to hold, and easier to turn into small, practical steps rather than dread. It is early days, and being one of the first to help build a place like that is exactly the point.