Double trouble

Anthony Browne on the marked increase in the number of twins and its social and economic consequences

When I told my friend the New York comedian Ophira Eisenberg that my wife was pregnant with twins, she didn’t boom ‘double trouble’, ‘twice the fun’, or ‘two for the price of one’. Instead, she leant over and whispered conspiratorially: ‘Twins are taking over the world.’

Laugh, I did. But I am not laughing now. Twins have not only taken over my home, but, following the traditional path to world domination, they are about to take over Poland. After last Sunday’s elections, Jaroslaw Kaczynski is in line to become the next prime minister, while his identical twin Lech is the front-runner in next fortnight’s presidential polls. The prospect of having genetic clones holding simultaneously the two greatest offices of state has proved too much even for the Kaczynski twins, who shot to fame as child stars in the film The Two That Stole The Moon. Jaroslaw has promised to stand down as PM if his twin gets the presidency.

Ophira, I realise, is as much a prophet as a comedian. While we fret variously about Islamofascists or Martians, it is twins who are sneaking up on the inside track. Their numbers are growing exponentially. They often speak in a secret language which is impenetrable to outsiders, but blend invisibly into a crowd. They have an allegiance beyond normal social, national and familial bonds. When they become a majority — and it may not be that far away — they will transform society from top to bottom, right down to the front door of every home in the land.

Even before the Polish conquest, they had the run of the White House and control of the heights of the British media. The truth is these once extraordinary, almost mythical, rarities are becoming common. Multiple births are multiplying out of control.

Once upon a time, it was just Romulus and Remus, Castor and Pollux, Jacob and Esau. Then Reggie and Ronnie Kray scandalised us, and Ross and Norris McWhirter amazed us. More recently, Luke and Matt Goss embarrassed us, the Cheeky Girls tormented us, and the Olsen twins conquered America.

Twins came close to power when Mark and Carol Thatcher found their mother in Downing Street. Now Barbara and Jenna Bush, George’s daughters, are the First Twins of America. The Barclay twins now own the Telegraph and The Spectator. Isabelle and Theodore have taken command of my house. Until recently other twins occupied the homes of the Brussels correspondents of the BBC and the Economist.

In the US, the leader of most trends, twin births have risen by 62 per cent since 1980. There were 118,916 twin babies born in 2000, and there are now 500,000 of them five years old and under. In the UK twins have jumped from one in 98 births in 1983 to one in 68 in 2003 — that is, one in 34 babies born — and the pace is accelerating. If this continues, my calculator tells me that twin babies will outnumber mere singletons by the year 2179.

Some of the increase is caused by the new science of reproduction, including fertility drugs and in-vitro fertilisation. IVF — which accounts for about one in a hundred births in the UK, and the numbers are rising fast — is also behind the extraordinary growth in triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets, which were almost unheard of until test tubes started begetting babies.

Doctors in Britain are trying to curb the excesses, but twins are popular: in the US, efficiency-conscious IVF mothers are demanding designer twins — one girl, one boy, thank you — so they can produce a family in one push, causing less damage to their career and figure. It’s known as doing a Thatcher.

But the increase is also because women are having babies later, and older women are more likely to have twins. In the UK, only one in 150 teenage births is twins, by the late twenties it’s one in 78, by the late thirties it’s one in 46. Combine this with fertility treatment and you find that one in six women over 45 who are pregnant for the first time are having twins. Better nutrition means we are getting taller and healthier, and tall and healthy women have more twins.

Twins start off fragile, often extremely premature. They are high risk in many ways both before and after birth. Whereas it used to be that often only the stronger survived (as with Elvis and Liberace), modern medicine now ensures that almost always both survive.

Twins are, if non-identical, more likely to be parents of twins themselves. So not only are more twins surviving, but they are then producing more twins, spreading their twinny ways. But it won’t be a world of doppelgangers, nature’s clones running rings around law enforcement agencies and school exam systems. All these trends apply only to non-identical twins — the rate of identical twins, a die throw of nature, is remaining steady.

And the pace of conquest will vary from land to land. Nigeria is currently the twin capital of the world, its Yoruba women pump them out at four times the European average. In Japan, twins are still rare.

As the United Kingdom becomes the United Twindom, an anti-twin discrimination act will ensure that every shop in the country has doors and aisles wide enough for double-width buggies. When they become a majority, every house in the country will have to have its front door knocked down and rebuilt — wider.

But the social and economic impact could be the greatest. The pay gap between men and women will shrink as women take half the number of maternity leaves. Two-for-one deals will become the norm, and everyone will realise that sending one present for a joint birthday is a serious faux pas.

Twins usually have a soulmate and ally for life unavailable to the rest of us, making them more confident, less depressive, less prone to suicide and, with this greater social support, less prone to crime (the Krays may have been criminals, but they were criminals with a social conscience). Families, with closer bonds between siblings, will become a more robust part of the social fabric. With stronger ties, society as a whole will become stronger.

Twins are still so rare that their very rarity arouses fascination. Try shopping with twin babies (if you don’t happen to have your own, borrow some from some exhausted parents) and you’ll spend all your time being proud to curious well-wishers. But when people start seeing double wherever they look, twins will enter the mainstream. Society will be divided down the middle between twins and singletons. When you first meet someone socially, one of the first questions will be which group they belong to. Singletons, claiming unfair disadvantages, will campaign for special affirmative action programmes.

Of course, it is conceivable that things may turn out differently. The number of twins is growing rapidly but, as my financial adviser keeps insisting he told me, past performance is no guarantee of future performance. Geneticists and perfectionist parents may have another future in store for us — domination by blond or blonde, blue-eyed Olympic-winning Einsteins. For mere mortals, that really would be something to worry about.

Anthony Browne is Europe correspondent for the Times.