For many years now we have all been agonising over the fertility crisis. Why aren’t the kids having kids? It’s become a sort of parlour game, the swapping of the various theories. Is it the cost of living? Micro-plastics? Eco-anxiety? Tight underwear, I heard the other day, and snorted with scorn even as I tipped my son’s stretch-cotton pants into the bin.

But now another, rather more fundamental explanation for the baby shortage has emerged. It’s not just that younger generations aren’t having babies – it turns out they aren’t really having sex at all. The Atlantic was first to properly examine this trend among young Americans, in a terrific piece which gave a name to the phenomenon: The Great Sex Recession. Just before Christmas, the Telegraph conducted its own survey of young Brits, which revealed that the proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds having sex has declined dramatically. In October 2019, it was 67 per cent, but as of November last year, it apparently stands at just 43 per cent.

A 24-point drop in six years? Even allowing for the curse of Covid, that’s astonishing. At this rate, by 2030, only a tiny fraction of the young fertile humans sex was designed for will actually be doing it. By 2050, maybe sex will be a niche hobby, like playing the euphonium. Aldous Huxley anticipated babies born in hatcheries, but even he didn’t see the sex drought coming.

This summer, the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal) will reveal its findings. Natsal........

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