As Carrie Johnson Gives Birth, People Are Wondering How Many Children Boris Johnson Has Now?

Carrie Johnson has given birth to her third child with Boris Johnson, with the couple announcing the child is called Frank Alfred Odysseus Johnson. It comes just two months after Carrie announced her pregnancy, having kept it private for the first seven months.

‘New team member arriving in just a few weeks,’ she wrote on Instagram. ‘I've felt pretty exhausted for much of the last eight months but we can't wait to meet this little one. Wilf is [very] excited about being a big brother again, and has been chattering about it non-stop. Don't think Romy has a clue what's coming... She soon will!’

It was only in 2021 that Boris and Carrie Johnson announced that they’re were expecting a second child together after suffering a miscarriage at the beginning of the year. Carrie opened up about her rainbow baby at the time – a term is used when a child is born after loss – telling her followers ‘I feel incredibly blessed to be pregnant again but I've also felt like a bag of nerves.’

The couple have received many congratulations from colleagues and peers about their latest news - but hasn't gone without some questions too. In fact, Carrie's pregnancy announcement has caused a rise in searches for Boris Johnson’s other children – of which there are many. According to Google Trends, ‘How many children does Boris Johnson have?’ is a breakout search term right now.

So, how many children does Boris Johnson have?

Confusion stems because just like the public, reporters are unclear on exactly how many kids Boris has fathered. You will see ‘at least’ repeated in many articles on the topic, because while there is public record of Boris having multiple children with different women – Boris has refused to explicitly state how many kids he has, increasing speculation that there are more than the public know of.

From what we do know, Boris has at least eight children – four with his second wife Marina Wheeler named Lara Lettice, Milo Arthur, Cassia Peaches, and Theodore Apollo. He then had another child with arts consultant Helen MacIntyre, a daughter named Stephanie. He denied being her father until a court battle in 2013 revealed he had sought an injunction to prevent the public knowing of her existence.

In 2020, he had his first child with his third wife Carrie, named Wilfred, and then a second in 2021, a daughter called Romy, bringing his total brood to seven. Now then, with Alfred, he has fathered eight children.

The number of children he has often comes up for debate on social media, and not just because he refuses to state exactly how many children he’s brought into this world. It goes without saying that a woman who had experienced his career trajectory would be treated very differently if she had multiple children by different partners. Boris, of course, faces a certain level of mockery for his choices, but nowhere near the extent a woman would as a politician – and are every day, you need only view the amount of trolling someone like Katie Price receives to understand.

But more than that, he has represented a party - and government - at the highest level that have so often demonised working class families that have many children. Former foreign secretary and current conservative MP, Jeremy Hunt, has quite literally told the public ‘If you haven’t got the money, you shouldn’t have children’. In the last few years, Boris’ finances have been scrutinised deeply, once accused of using Tory donor funding to redecorate his home when he was prime minister, and associates of his telling The Times he was ‘miserable’ because of money woes and that after his first child with Carrie, he was ‘worried about being able to afford a nanny’.

Johnson refuses to answer questions about his private life, and his supporters would argue that his personal life has no bearing on how he conducted himself in office, and shouldn't be for public consumption. But when former Government ministers see fit to advise the public on how many children they should have, then it appears that the number of children anyone has is fair game as a political football. Far from being political tittle tattle, transparency over the number of children the Prime Minister has, and how he pays for them is crucial. Increasingly unaffordable childcare, the rising cost of living, a looming climate emergency and soaring child povertyin the UK means the number of children any one of us has is increasingly political (remember Harry's supposed dig at William and Kate for having three children?). Why then, one could ask, should Boris Johnson be any different?

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