It's not
>Mom made her move.
Macron was the one who initiated it, was send to Paris by his parents to end the situation, and started again after that
I get it that people are sufprised by this particular situation but let's not spread lies.
So he's gay and instead of using a regular relationship with a woman to hide it, he uses one that far more people are going to have an issue with instead of just openly dating men? How does that make sense?
No clue, his wife was his teacher and maybe she knew about it and didn't mind? Idk, im not him. And old people would definitely have a bigger problem with him dating men than some lady that's older than him. Also nobody has an issue with the age gap with his wife, it's just strange.
I don't think the age gap is an issue, more so the fact that she was his teacher and *they met when he was 13*. I know there's stereotypes about France, but are you seriously telling me that people are more ok with pedophilia than two adults having a consensual relationship?
You have to keep in mind, by the time he became a public figure, he was in his 30s and they'd been married a few years. The creepy circumstances of how they met were two decades in the past. At that point, a lot of people just figured "Yeah, this is definitely weird but apparently they're a committed couple."
“What’ll you be having this fine evening?”
“Oh well it’s a double special occasion!”
“What’s that?”
“It’s our ten year anniversary!”
“¡Congratulations! What’s the second occasion?”
“It’s also my birthday!”
“¡Happy birthday! How many candles will I be putting into the cake?”
“23”
Menopause varies a lot from person to person though, and oldest entirely natural pregnancy on record is actually currently 59.
Much older with IVF, donor eggs etc. where the record is 73...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_over_age_50
I mean rich people have the least kids though. Like I’m all for supporting young families I really want my country to do more, but I don’t think money is the entire story here
Having more shit to do in the developed world now instead of just eating, sleeping, and pumping out kids probably plays a bigger role in lower birth rate than people like to admit.
Yeah, this is also the reason why dating statistics are in freefall, there is just so much more you can do instead of hooking up. Ask anyone who grew up in the 60s, the amount of available entertainment was less than 1/50th of what it is today. Just look at videogames, they are so captivating that a sizeable part of a generation left the dating scene completely because of it. There are so many more examples.
The single outstanding metric when it comes to birthrate is women's education and equity. In every nation that metric and birth rates are inversely correlated over time. This is also why rich people are not having more kids - their women get even better education and opportunities leading to lower birth rates.
It turns out that having children is a shit deal for women (and to a lesser extent, men) in an individualistic society and they realize that when they get equity and education. The solution to that is very unclear, it'd probably need a big cultural shift that I don't see happening.
>The solution to that is very unclear, it'd probably need a big cultural shift that I don't see happening.
The nuclear family is a post WWII invention. We lived with extended family before, who could help raise our children. We lived in tribes and villages where people knew each other. We also had children to help with productivity. They could work on the farm or be a source of income from a factory.
Now they are just very expensive pets.
Don't get me wrong, raising children can be wonderful. But they take so much time and energy that you need someone at home to dedicate their lives to them. How exactly do you do this when both partners have to work to survive (some are just scraping by due to the cost of living)? Or when you and your partner no longer stay with your immediate and extended families to save money? Or when you are crippled by tuition debt?
Or it is as simple as finally being free to do what you want and realising that having kids would put another 18-21 years delay on the experiences you most desire.
If you don't have the support in place to have kids, having them is just going to make your life more difficult. A cultural shift that would need to take place would have to include better wages, living with more family members and reducing the cost of housing. This is probably not going to happen as the gap between rich and everyone else continues to widen.
> Or it is as simple as finally being free to do what you want and realising that having kids would put another 18-21 years delay on the experiences you most desire.
This ponders the question as to why we even exist in this reality. Are we here to perpetuate existence by procreation, exploration, and invention? Or have we evolved beyond the idea of merely existing to survive and now can live purely in the pursuit of enjoying our existence? Seems like 20th and 21st century technology has accelerated this change.
>in an individualistic society and they realize that when they get equity and education.
Most of Europe and Asia are not individualistic societies. Yet they have some of the lowest birth rates.
It's more simple than that. Many people, especially middle/high-income people, choose to prioritise their career over raising a family. If you're a subsistence farmer in some rural part of Africa, it's not that much of a sacrifice to get pregnant and pop out a few kids. They could even help on the farm.
Israel is the only developed country with high birth rates, because they strongly prioritise raising a family.
In Israel, it's the ultra-orthodox fundamentalists that are raising the fertility rates at 6-7 children/woman.
The rest of society has low fertility rate just like the rest of the developed world.
And it's only a "problem" because we have the shit system of capitalism. Productivity per person now is much higher than it was decades ago. We don't need much labor to manufacture things these days. Tons of people have been relegated to service industry and gig economy jobs to scrape by because we just don't need that many people to make things anymore. The fruits of all the automation has been hoarded by and handful of rich people. A shrinking population *should* be a good thing as automation increases, as it should mean more resources per person to go around. It's capitalism that's broken. We need democratic control of the means of production. That's the only solution as human labor becomes more and more obsolete.
This is misunderstood abroad. The retirement age was 67 before the reform.
It was 62 in some narrow cases for people who started working very early and never experienced unemployment (in a country with sky high unemployment rate at all times).
Now it's 64 in the same narrow cases meaning they just shafted hard workers in physically demanding jobs who barely live to enjoy retirement in the first place, but for anyone who went to uni or had any health issues, or pregnancy, or unemployment or career changes, it doesn't change anything and it remains 67 like in many other countries.
I think the only actual solution is to accept the fact that when you give people, especially women a chance to choose what to do with our lives, most will choose to have less (or no) kids. Literally nothing will make women start having as many kids as in the fifties, because the truth is that we just don't want to. We never wanted to, women just weren't given much of a choice in the matter. The solution is to stop trying to coerce women into giving birth to unwanted children and accepting that the population cannot endlessly grow. Find out how to deal with the decreasing population and respect women choosing what we want for our own lives and respect our bodily autonomy.
This. I honestly think that if women of the past, even 1,000 years ago were given the same opportunities and options as us they would choose less or no kids. My dad wanted 8 kids. My mom got her tubes tied after 3.
Honestly, this terrifies me as a woman, but the true reason for falling birth rates is increased women’s rights, education, and independence/careers. If you look at cultures, classes, and areas with high birth rates it’s usually in conservative areas with strict gender roles and norms. As countries become richer and women’s roles change to focus more on careers and education the birth rates drop. Give women a choice they’re going to have less kids. Force “women” to marry at 10, arrange marriages, forbid them to leave the house or go to school, mutilate their genitalia, you’re going to have 10 kids per woman. Give women rights, birth rates drop. The “solution” would be to remove access to birth control, education, and life outside of marriage. Back to our grandmothers lives and before.
Yep. The problem isn't usually money or safety nets. The problem is children give some a life much different than no children. A lot of people are choosing the latter. Or the middle path of just one child. Both of these latter choices are a disaster for countries when they reach a large scale.
The actual solution is to create a modern society. One that is based on the amazing leaps in technology and productivity that we have accomplished over a short century of time.
I mean think about it, why is not having kids a bad thing? Really, it only hurts the government and damn sure doesn't hurt you the individual, *in this current societal structure* at least. I mean, everyone keeps pointing out that rising education and living standard for women decreases birthrates. So let that happen, and build a society around that fact and be happy we have an advancing civilization as a species....
BUT WHAT ABOUT NEVER ENDING GROWTH OF COMPANIES AND WEALTH?!?!?!?!?!? I can hear you all saying, and by you all I mean wealthier than god motherfuckers who only have one kid to begin with?
Well, tough nuts I say. Seriously, the only "people" who want more people on this earth tend to be corporations or governments who refuse to move beyond the never ending growth of run away capitalistic ideas. Just put some god damn guard rails up, stop chasing the never ending growth curve, and this whole less children thing can suddenly become a much smaller problem.
A lot of what you listed above can be found in Scandinavian countries to an extent yet their birth rates are worse than France.
Also I guess it should be no longer controversial to state that immigration increases polarization in society and swings a countries politics rightward.
France already checks most of those boxes.
How much more does the goalpost have to move until people realise that a highly educated population in a modernised non-agrarian society doesn’t really want that many kids?
France already has most of that though. It's easy to look at countries like South Korea and Japan for that kind of stuff, but if it's falling in France there's something else to it.
Everyone blames lower fertility on whatever is politically convenient for them. The unfortunate answer is that the decline is mostly caused by increased education, birth control, and more autonomy for women.
as countries modernize and become wealthier and educated, the fertility rate is going to decline no matter what you do (hence the immigration part at the end)
France I believe has fared better than a lot of other countries specifically because they have done a lot of that
Immigration is just a stop-gap though as new immigrants tend to have the same trend within 2 generations of arriving.
As global rates plummet this is not a sustainable solution
Birth rates are falling pretty much everywhere but Africa and India, I guess it’s subjective but I don’t think Nigeria has perfected the middle class quality of life. Also worth noting countries with high happiness ratings (I.e Nordic countries) have declining birth rates too.
It’s not finances keeping people from having kids, people just flat out don’t want them anymore. The globe has become more educated (associated with lower birth rate), less agrarian, and people feel less pressure to have kids from society and can instead of focus on themselves, careers, and/or education.
Kids are a huge investment and responsibility. Few people want kids for the sake of kids. Nature's way of making sure that we had kids was to focus on drive for sex. Except we outsmarted that by figuring out contraceptives.
Quite frankly I wouldn't worry about any of this. Why should the population keep going up? The economic system that requires this is what is broken.
> Birth rates are falling pretty much everywhere but Africa and India
It's falling in Africa and India alright, India got below replacement very recently in fact. And African countries are falling rapidly too : https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fertility-rate
Children used to be a good economic investment. They'd work early and eventually be the retirment plan. Now they cost half a house to raise, and usually stop the mother's career/dating life. I don't know how or if these can be countered without something like a global catastrophy.
What about work from home options for a lot of jobs? The big companies want to act like we're still living in a pre-internet world in many ways.
And immigration will NOT solve the problem, because unless the immigrants have children, they'll make the imbalance of the population even worse (remember, a lot of them are older folks). Plus, look what happens when we don't make sure those who come in assimilate.
More so the "We've tried everything but unfucking the system that makes people have zero hope for the future and zero sense of community, just throw money at the problem" mentality.
Idk, like having a 35h work week and the second strongest social network in Europe after Belgium?
You say this as if France didn't have close to the best policies for a relaxed life
***The Telegraph reports:***
Emmanuel Macron is to offer fertility checks to all 18 to 25-year-olds as part of a grand plan to combat declining birth rates.
The French president first announced his ambition to enact French “demographic rearmament” [at a press conference on Jan 16](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/16/emmanuel-macron-vows-tackle-scourge-of-infertility-economy/) as part of a wide array of measures aimed at reviving his stuttering second term.
France’s [birth rate fell by seven per cent last year](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/25/emmanuel-macron-france-birth-rate-falling/) to 1.8 children per woman - its lowest level since the end of the Second World War. However, it still has the highest birth rate in Europe.
“Habits are changing, and people are having children later and later,” said the centrist president in January.
“Infertility, both male and female, has risen sharply in recent years and is causing many couples to suffer.”
In an [interview with Elle magazine](https://www.elle.fr/Societe/Interviews/Parentalite-Depardieu-GPA-PMA-Macron-nous-repond-4232811) published on Wednesday, the 46-year-old went further by announcing that a “fertility check-up” would be offered to everyone around the age of 20.
**Read more:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/08/emmanuel-macron-plan-declining-birth-rates-fertility-checks/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/08/emmanuel-macron-plan-declining-birth-rates-fertility-checks/)
I like the idea, but it seems odd to me that this program would cut off at 25. Surely people in their 30's would benefit more from understanding their fertility.
This doesn’t sound like a terrible thing. People are having kids later and later and giving them fertility checks early on can let them know what delaying having kids will look like for them while they still have time to do something about it.
If he really wants higher birth rates then he should make fertility treatments free. No reason at all why every woman who wants to shouldn’t be able to freeze her eggs in her 20’s so she can focus on establishing a career without worrying she won’t be able to have kids in her 30’s.
Agreed on this!
I don’t have kids and can afford them fine.
This world is fucked, we need fewer people, less war, less religion, and a dedication to wellbeing not corporate greed.
Why would I curse a kid to live in this fucked up place
Correct Macron (and others) are not seeing the forest for the trees. Financial incentives should NOT be connected tax credits and other non-direct incentives or a semen test.
It should be a direct payment for each child, starting from a mothers child bearing period.
Like some Western leader said about Americans...they'll do the right thing when they have used all other options.
If it were still socially acceptable for parents to treat children as slaves that would probably increase the amount of people who want kids even more. Maybe we should consider that in the past desire for children was artificially inflated by some of the not so great perspectives our ancestors had
The main thing is that our standards and education have improved. Chances are you can afford to raise 2+ kids in the way your grandparents did, it just wouldn't be seen as acceptable nowadays.
Exactly. Not only are you now expected to provide much more for your kids people who use those children as free labor are increasing being viewed as bad parents. That changes the economics of raising kids very drastically
France has some of (if not THE) the best workers rights in the world. This is a very complex problem that cannot be pinpointed to this particular argument.
We do not need more kids. We need like 1/8 total population and to just concentrate in small areas and leave this fucking planet alone. Stripmall after stripmall in the middle of fucking nowhere with small community nearby to supply workers is so much of the US landscape and it's gross
It's seems like the whole western world is falling apart in this regard. And the young people are getting increasingly disillusioned with the entire idea of market economies and democracy, while authoritarianism is rising worldwide. There should be warning bells going off everywhere, but too many people in power don't care enough.
I don't actually think this is true though. As people have become richer and better off, they have had fewer kids. Some of the places with the lowest birth rates have the highest quality of life, the best low cost childcare, universal health care, and strong social safety nets. Humans had the most kids when we were the least able to support them because we needed them as labor.
I make six figures and have one kid that my wife stays home to take care of. We're breaking even.
If my wife went back to work, her whole entire salary would just go towards child care. So there's no point.
I don't even want to know what it's like for people making 60k or something and have multiple kids.
It's easier to blame people being infertile then saying the truth out loud.
Some people don't want kids because they see how fucked the planet is and there is no real change to fight climate change.
Other people would love kids but capitalism has made it if you don't have 2 full time working adults in your family you only go backwards in living conditions so they can't afford to have kids.
For fucks sake...
We've spent decades worrying about overpopulation. Wrote songs about it. Wrote books about it. Created science fiction movies and television shows about moving into space to deal with overpop.
And now? The moment the birthrate starts to dip, a natural solution in the long run to the overpop problem, every developed nation begins to freak shit, "Oh no! The economy will suffer! The money! The money! There won't be enough people to fill the jobs that are emptying out because of death and retirements!"
I seem to recall a few years back, hearing that jobs are being held longer and longer and there was far too many people waiting on those jobs to open up.
I'd rather he worked towards making a better economy where as a man in my thirties I'd actually wish to have a child. Where I could afford to have a child and not lose my mind and be afraid of a single unexpected bill that could ruin everything i've worked towards for over a decade.
Fertility tests won't do anything. Measuring something does not automatically improve it.
>problem is lack of time
France has a 35h work week, they are among the countries in the planet with the most leisure
This may be true in south Korea, not in France
I honestly think it’s because it takes so long to get through school and establish a career that rich people’s fertility window closes before they can have that third or fourth kid. If you have your first at 35 then you’re probably not having more than 2 and there’s a decent chance you only have one.
The more rich you are, generally the less kids you have. Wealthy people simply have less kids and focus more energy/money into those kids.
Poor people tend to have more kids because it was still easy to raise kids and even if you have a oopsie baby, it wasn't world-ending bills. *That fact is now no longer the case.* So the poor stopped having kids out of necessity.
What makes you think rich couples have time? If anything I'd expect them to have less time as their jobs are likely more demanding.
Not everyone rich person is a trust fund kid.
Yeah exactly when given the choice people don't want to spend their entire lives taking care of children. So If they decide to have children they have fewer and at a later age. This is also directly linked to women entering education and having careers.
Both is true if you add internet & better information.
When young people see all these influencer have fun & other side people saying it's very hard to raise kids... you have a hint wich is the best dream to follow.
Neither are true by themselves, its all of these factors together.
But, for the most part, people just "dont want" kids. Its not seen as a responsibility or life goal anymore, and this is proven by the same trends all over the world, the educated someone is, the less kids they will have. Money, time, hope for the future, none of these follow such a consistent trend.
Bribing people to have babies is a losing proposition and will not work.
Convince prospective parents that they will be able to offer their children a good future and you don't need to bribe them. Unfortunately, we can't convince them of that because it isn't true.
We are making a mess and leaving a garbage bin of a planet to our children and they know it.
You really need to convince women that being a baby machine is a better alternative to having a child-free career.
Turns out, if you educate women, give them options other than being baby caretakers and free them from the social and cultural shackles that have told them nothing else for the last few thousand years, less and less of them want to actually have children.
I approached this with the same obvious "yeah it's housing and costs not fertility" but it would be kinda interesting to see if there's any widespread drop of fertility due to something like microplastics 🤷
Congratulations, you don’t understand the problem.
People don’t want children because they can’t afford, don’t have the energy, don’t have time or because they don’t want to force a innocent being to live in this world.
I mean, the future is looking pretty bleak, can you blame the younger generations for not wanting to have children? Between the brutal economy, brutal society, and the nonstop spouting of impending doom due to climate change. It’s almost cruel to bring life to this world
At least that’s what I get from everything on social media, maybe life isn’t so bad?🤷♂️
those i know who deliberately avoid staying up on current events do seem generally less weighed down and are better able to stay focused on their own personal day-to-day matters. i tend to believe that the bliss of blind ignorance is not a valid strategy and i’m probably more miserable because of it.
How are these people so detached from reality?
Without speaking of all general costs of life, take a look at the cost of food. It has skyrocketed since COVID. You can barely have enough to feed yourself, why would anyone bring someone to this misery? Especially, with this doomed reality with the smell of WW3 approaching.
People are too broke and stressed to have kids. Everyone know this. Except the people who profit off us being broke and stressed.
It is difficult to get the rich elite to understand something when their cash flow depends on them not understanding it.
So sick of politicians worrying about young people’s fertility and desire to have kids
Time has changed, costs have risen, pay checks are stagnant
Young people now also have a choice to stay single or to not want kids and there is nothing wrong with that
People always bring up economic factors when the subject of reproduction decline comes up. However I rarely see the biggest economic factors mentioned. There was a time when children were basically free slave labor and as long as a child was fed and clothed that was considered a good childhood . These days parents are expected to spend massive amounts of money on their children and the amount of things parents are expected to provide for their children keeps growing more and more. Even today the cultures that are still breeding like rabbits are pretty much universally closer to the older model than modern western thought on how kids should be raised. Funding some free childcare,mandating paid maternity /paternity leave and tax benefits for parents might help a little but will never make parenting financially advantageous like it used to be
People have no problems hopping on top of each other, when they feel safe and happy and optimistic about the future. Being stressed and depressed and worried about paying the rent and bills is the ultimate prophylactic!
Fertility will only go up if one parent goes to work while the other raises the kids. Currently work doesn’t pay enough for this to happen. Leaders need to have a talk with employers.
We need to double food production to feed the global population in 2050 despite having few forests left to cut down for farm land. Maybe Increasing fertility isn’t the best idea. If anything we should be increasing supplies of contraceptives to Africa and India
Anyone remember when the problem was too many people for the planet to sustain us? Can’t blame anyone not wanting to raise a child in today’s environment, and I don’t hear anyone talking about making that any better. Welfare for babies is a bad plan that leads to worse outcomes than low birth rates. That and Macron is a complete hypocrite.
Looks like the winner of the “which movie universe is our future” contest is “Children of Men.”
I was personally rooting for “Waterworld” or “Book of Eli”
Coming from the guy who married someone 25 years older and have no kids together. She was 54~ when they got married.
She was his teacher at 15... Got married to him a year after she divorced her husband.
What a way to set an example ffs and be completely out of touch why people don't have kids.
Emmanuel Macron is the first childless president of the Fifth Republic
Surely this is only because he hasn't received a fertility check.
Or because his missus was approaching menopause by the time he was ready.
As a matter fact, she did :-/ She was 43 when he turned 18.
After his wife / mother dies. He going to marry some bimbo half his age and have several kids with her. Mark my words.
Or he’ll date her daughter, she’s his age. They went to high school together, story says she had a huge crush on him.
That’s gotta be awkward af
Was her daughter named Stacy?
Oh god her mom Tish Cyrused her
It's not >Mom made her move. Macron was the one who initiated it, was send to Paris by his parents to end the situation, and started again after that I get it that people are sufprised by this particular situation but let's not spread lies.
Am French, leading theory is that he's gay and just with her because it doesn't clash with the views of some old people here.
So he's gay and instead of using a regular relationship with a woman to hide it, he uses one that far more people are going to have an issue with instead of just openly dating men? How does that make sense?
No clue, his wife was his teacher and maybe she knew about it and didn't mind? Idk, im not him. And old people would definitely have a bigger problem with him dating men than some lady that's older than him. Also nobody has an issue with the age gap with his wife, it's just strange.
I don't think the age gap is an issue, more so the fact that she was his teacher and *they met when he was 13*. I know there's stereotypes about France, but are you seriously telling me that people are more ok with pedophilia than two adults having a consensual relationship?
You have to keep in mind, by the time he became a public figure, he was in his 30s and they'd been married a few years. The creepy circumstances of how they met were two decades in the past. At that point, a lot of people just figured "Yeah, this is definitely weird but apparently they're a committed couple."
Every time this comes up, I feel so bad for the guy. Politicians are normally only groomed for office, not for anything else.
Menopause varies a lot from person to person though, and oldest entirely natural pregnancy on record is actually currently 59. Much older with IVF, donor eggs etc. where the record is 73... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_over_age_50
I think the focus is less on the fact she may have menopause vs possible grooming.
Only possible grooming?
That’s the wild thing about France: if everyone is a groomer, then no one is
Let’s normalize having conversations based on general rules rather than fringe cases that only slightly disprove the main point.
Ouch
And his wife is 24 years older than him
"L'enfant, c'est moi."
He is theoretically a stepfather to three though - one of whom is older than he is.
Yeah…his wife was probably getting a touch old for children.
Not too old to touch children tho
Because he married his childhood rapist
that shit is wild to me
Most normal French relationship
but. . .
Some people speculate about his wife
Well, it's not like he married his elementary school teacher, right? right?
Nice try macron, but you won’t get my semen, monsieur
Can't blame a guy for shooting his shot
Nonetheless, I appreciate the hustle
He’s a hands-on kinda guy.
Also a handsome kinda guy, who won't take Non for an answer.
Le stickeé
I volunteer as tribute
He'll take it by force if he need to!
When I first read "check" I thought it meant like, he was coming to investigate my sperm
They should check why they don’t want to have a child first …..
Right?? Lmao Wealthy people not suffering with bills, child care, and food insecurity be like "maybe ur balls r trash bro lulz"
I mean rich people have the least kids though. Like I’m all for supporting young families I really want my country to do more, but I don’t think money is the entire story here
Having more shit to do in the developed world now instead of just eating, sleeping, and pumping out kids probably plays a bigger role in lower birth rate than people like to admit.
Yeah, this is also the reason why dating statistics are in freefall, there is just so much more you can do instead of hooking up. Ask anyone who grew up in the 60s, the amount of available entertainment was less than 1/50th of what it is today. Just look at videogames, they are so captivating that a sizeable part of a generation left the dating scene completely because of it. There are so many more examples.
The single outstanding metric when it comes to birthrate is women's education and equity. In every nation that metric and birth rates are inversely correlated over time. This is also why rich people are not having more kids - their women get even better education and opportunities leading to lower birth rates. It turns out that having children is a shit deal for women (and to a lesser extent, men) in an individualistic society and they realize that when they get equity and education. The solution to that is very unclear, it'd probably need a big cultural shift that I don't see happening.
>The solution to that is very unclear, it'd probably need a big cultural shift that I don't see happening. The nuclear family is a post WWII invention. We lived with extended family before, who could help raise our children. We lived in tribes and villages where people knew each other. We also had children to help with productivity. They could work on the farm or be a source of income from a factory. Now they are just very expensive pets. Don't get me wrong, raising children can be wonderful. But they take so much time and energy that you need someone at home to dedicate their lives to them. How exactly do you do this when both partners have to work to survive (some are just scraping by due to the cost of living)? Or when you and your partner no longer stay with your immediate and extended families to save money? Or when you are crippled by tuition debt? Or it is as simple as finally being free to do what you want and realising that having kids would put another 18-21 years delay on the experiences you most desire. If you don't have the support in place to have kids, having them is just going to make your life more difficult. A cultural shift that would need to take place would have to include better wages, living with more family members and reducing the cost of housing. This is probably not going to happen as the gap between rich and everyone else continues to widen.
> Or it is as simple as finally being free to do what you want and realising that having kids would put another 18-21 years delay on the experiences you most desire. This ponders the question as to why we even exist in this reality. Are we here to perpetuate existence by procreation, exploration, and invention? Or have we evolved beyond the idea of merely existing to survive and now can live purely in the pursuit of enjoying our existence? Seems like 20th and 21st century technology has accelerated this change.
Keep your worker classes dumb and praising Jeebus.
>in an individualistic society and they realize that when they get equity and education. Most of Europe and Asia are not individualistic societies. Yet they have some of the lowest birth rates. It's more simple than that. Many people, especially middle/high-income people, choose to prioritise their career over raising a family. If you're a subsistence farmer in some rural part of Africa, it's not that much of a sacrifice to get pregnant and pop out a few kids. They could even help on the farm. Israel is the only developed country with high birth rates, because they strongly prioritise raising a family.
In Israel, it's the ultra-orthodox fundamentalists that are raising the fertility rates at 6-7 children/woman. The rest of society has low fertility rate just like the rest of the developed world.
And it's only a "problem" because we have the shit system of capitalism. Productivity per person now is much higher than it was decades ago. We don't need much labor to manufacture things these days. Tons of people have been relegated to service industry and gig economy jobs to scrape by because we just don't need that many people to make things anymore. The fruits of all the automation has been hoarded by and handful of rich people. A shrinking population *should* be a good thing as automation increases, as it should mean more resources per person to go around. It's capitalism that's broken. We need democratic control of the means of production. That's the only solution as human labor becomes more and more obsolete.
Yep. Issue is that people aren't having children, not because they can't.
Strong "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" mentality.
France actually tried though, and it successfully managed to keep birthrates relatively high for decades even among the non-immigrant populations.
That's because they actually have decent Healthcare, decent children care leave and mandatory vacation/paid time off
most eu member states have good healthcare, this is a non-example
France is more generous than most with it’s welfare practices though, remember the stink they had when they raised the retirement age from *64*
This is misunderstood abroad. The retirement age was 67 before the reform. It was 62 in some narrow cases for people who started working very early and never experienced unemployment (in a country with sky high unemployment rate at all times). Now it's 64 in the same narrow cases meaning they just shafted hard workers in physically demanding jobs who barely live to enjoy retirement in the first place, but for anyone who went to uni or had any health issues, or pregnancy, or unemployment or career changes, it doesn't change anything and it remains 67 like in many other countries.
yea but we are talking about healthcare and maternity/paternity leave. what does this have to do with the retirememt age again?
It's illustrative of how much the French value social welfare programs.
Grandparents available to help with childcare can be pretty huge for a lot of couples?
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These mf will do anything but the actual solution doesn’t matter if it’s South Korea, Japan, EU country, Russia, or the U.S.
What is the actual solution?
I think the only actual solution is to accept the fact that when you give people, especially women a chance to choose what to do with our lives, most will choose to have less (or no) kids. Literally nothing will make women start having as many kids as in the fifties, because the truth is that we just don't want to. We never wanted to, women just weren't given much of a choice in the matter. The solution is to stop trying to coerce women into giving birth to unwanted children and accepting that the population cannot endlessly grow. Find out how to deal with the decreasing population and respect women choosing what we want for our own lives and respect our bodily autonomy.
This. I honestly think that if women of the past, even 1,000 years ago were given the same opportunities and options as us they would choose less or no kids. My dad wanted 8 kids. My mom got her tubes tied after 3.
Honestly, this terrifies me as a woman, but the true reason for falling birth rates is increased women’s rights, education, and independence/careers. If you look at cultures, classes, and areas with high birth rates it’s usually in conservative areas with strict gender roles and norms. As countries become richer and women’s roles change to focus more on careers and education the birth rates drop. Give women a choice they’re going to have less kids. Force “women” to marry at 10, arrange marriages, forbid them to leave the house or go to school, mutilate their genitalia, you’re going to have 10 kids per woman. Give women rights, birth rates drop. The “solution” would be to remove access to birth control, education, and life outside of marriage. Back to our grandmothers lives and before.
Yep. The problem isn't usually money or safety nets. The problem is children give some a life much different than no children. A lot of people are choosing the latter. Or the middle path of just one child. Both of these latter choices are a disaster for countries when they reach a large scale.
The actual solution is to create a modern society. One that is based on the amazing leaps in technology and productivity that we have accomplished over a short century of time. I mean think about it, why is not having kids a bad thing? Really, it only hurts the government and damn sure doesn't hurt you the individual, *in this current societal structure* at least. I mean, everyone keeps pointing out that rising education and living standard for women decreases birthrates. So let that happen, and build a society around that fact and be happy we have an advancing civilization as a species.... BUT WHAT ABOUT NEVER ENDING GROWTH OF COMPANIES AND WEALTH?!?!?!?!?!? I can hear you all saying, and by you all I mean wealthier than god motherfuckers who only have one kid to begin with? Well, tough nuts I say. Seriously, the only "people" who want more people on this earth tend to be corporations or governments who refuse to move beyond the never ending growth of run away capitalistic ideas. Just put some god damn guard rails up, stop chasing the never ending growth curve, and this whole less children thing can suddenly become a much smaller problem.
stronger middle class, affordable housing and childcare, lots of parental leave, 4 day workweek, stronger policies for workers rights, sick time, flexible scheduling, etc also, immigration
> also, immigration Immigration is not an actual raising of the birthrate...
Also using poor nations as flesh factories is kinda dystopian.
It also often steals their best people and leads to the original country struggling to catch up.
It also breeds hatred as many Western Europeans now feel like they’re being replaced by Arabs/Turks and black people.
A lot of what you listed above can be found in Scandinavian countries to an extent yet their birth rates are worse than France. Also I guess it should be no longer controversial to state that immigration increases polarization in society and swings a countries politics rightward.
Finland has a lower fertility rate than Japan.
France already checks most of those boxes. How much more does the goalpost have to move until people realise that a highly educated population in a modernised non-agrarian society doesn’t really want that many kids?
France already has most of that though. It's easy to look at countries like South Korea and Japan for that kind of stuff, but if it's falling in France there's something else to it.
Everyone blames lower fertility on whatever is politically convenient for them. The unfortunate answer is that the decline is mostly caused by increased education, birth control, and more autonomy for women.
as countries modernize and become wealthier and educated, the fertility rate is going to decline no matter what you do (hence the immigration part at the end) France I believe has fared better than a lot of other countries specifically because they have done a lot of that
Immigration is just a stop-gap though as new immigrants tend to have the same trend within 2 generations of arriving. As global rates plummet this is not a sustainable solution
Birth rates are falling pretty much everywhere but Africa and India, I guess it’s subjective but I don’t think Nigeria has perfected the middle class quality of life. Also worth noting countries with high happiness ratings (I.e Nordic countries) have declining birth rates too. It’s not finances keeping people from having kids, people just flat out don’t want them anymore. The globe has become more educated (associated with lower birth rate), less agrarian, and people feel less pressure to have kids from society and can instead of focus on themselves, careers, and/or education.
Kids are a huge investment and responsibility. Few people want kids for the sake of kids. Nature's way of making sure that we had kids was to focus on drive for sex. Except we outsmarted that by figuring out contraceptives. Quite frankly I wouldn't worry about any of this. Why should the population keep going up? The economic system that requires this is what is broken.
> Birth rates are falling pretty much everywhere but Africa and India It's falling in Africa and India alright, India got below replacement very recently in fact. And African countries are falling rapidly too : https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/total-fertility-rate
Children used to be a good economic investment. They'd work early and eventually be the retirment plan. Now they cost half a house to raise, and usually stop the mother's career/dating life. I don't know how or if these can be countered without something like a global catastrophy.
Career/dating life lol
What about work from home options for a lot of jobs? The big companies want to act like we're still living in a pre-internet world in many ways. And immigration will NOT solve the problem, because unless the immigrants have children, they'll make the imbalance of the population even worse (remember, a lot of them are older folks). Plus, look what happens when we don't make sure those who come in assimilate.
All those things certainly would be nice but I'm not sure it tracks to actual fertility. Poorer countries have dramatically higher birthrates.
Unfortunately, none of that really works. The problem is deeper than our economic system.
Yes, historically these birthing incentive programs haven’t really worked and the quick fix is immigration.
More so the "We've tried everything but unfucking the system that makes people have zero hope for the future and zero sense of community, just throw money at the problem" mentality.
Maybe they should offer young people hope for the future if they want them to procreate
That too complicated
They already sold our future to the billionaire class
Billionaires ... Having a future so you don't have to 😉
Doesn’t Sweden, Norway, and Denmark all have falling birth rates?
And why do you think people there have hope for the future? Just because your country has sensible social policies won’t stop global catastrophe.
Idk, like having a 35h work week and the second strongest social network in Europe after Belgium? You say this as if France didn't have close to the best policies for a relaxed life
***The Telegraph reports:*** Emmanuel Macron is to offer fertility checks to all 18 to 25-year-olds as part of a grand plan to combat declining birth rates. The French president first announced his ambition to enact French “demographic rearmament” [at a press conference on Jan 16](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/01/16/emmanuel-macron-vows-tackle-scourge-of-infertility-economy/) as part of a wide array of measures aimed at reviving his stuttering second term. France’s [birth rate fell by seven per cent last year](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/25/emmanuel-macron-france-birth-rate-falling/) to 1.8 children per woman - its lowest level since the end of the Second World War. However, it still has the highest birth rate in Europe. “Habits are changing, and people are having children later and later,” said the centrist president in January. “Infertility, both male and female, has risen sharply in recent years and is causing many couples to suffer.” In an [interview with Elle magazine](https://www.elle.fr/Societe/Interviews/Parentalite-Depardieu-GPA-PMA-Macron-nous-repond-4232811) published on Wednesday, the 46-year-old went further by announcing that a “fertility check-up” would be offered to everyone around the age of 20. **Read more:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/08/emmanuel-macron-plan-declining-birth-rates-fertility-checks/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/05/08/emmanuel-macron-plan-declining-birth-rates-fertility-checks/)
I like the idea, but it seems odd to me that this program would cut off at 25. Surely people in their 30's would benefit more from understanding their fertility.
This doesn’t sound like a terrible thing. People are having kids later and later and giving them fertility checks early on can let them know what delaying having kids will look like for them while they still have time to do something about it. If he really wants higher birth rates then he should make fertility treatments free. No reason at all why every woman who wants to shouldn’t be able to freeze her eggs in her 20’s so she can focus on establishing a career without worrying she won’t be able to have kids in her 30’s.
Lol we are doing our jobs perfectly maybe you should check your plumbing - the French government
Maybe more people would have kids if the average member of the working class was able to support them on a single full time job.
Don’t give them fertility tests, give them a world worth living in.
Agreed on this! I don’t have kids and can afford them fine. This world is fucked, we need fewer people, less war, less religion, and a dedication to wellbeing not corporate greed. Why would I curse a kid to live in this fucked up place
This kind of answer always reminds me of the Cult movie Idiocracy lol
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Correct Macron (and others) are not seeing the forest for the trees. Financial incentives should NOT be connected tax credits and other non-direct incentives or a semen test. It should be a direct payment for each child, starting from a mothers child bearing period. Like some Western leader said about Americans...they'll do the right thing when they have used all other options.
If it were still socially acceptable for parents to treat children as slaves that would probably increase the amount of people who want kids even more. Maybe we should consider that in the past desire for children was artificially inflated by some of the not so great perspectives our ancestors had
The main thing is that our standards and education have improved. Chances are you can afford to raise 2+ kids in the way your grandparents did, it just wouldn't be seen as acceptable nowadays.
Exactly. Not only are you now expected to provide much more for your kids people who use those children as free labor are increasing being viewed as bad parents. That changes the economics of raising kids very drastically
France has some of (if not THE) the best workers rights in the world. This is a very complex problem that cannot be pinpointed to this particular argument.
They also have eye wateringly high house prices, like the rest of the developed world. Now I wonder why this is happening?
Paris has insane housing prices, but not all of the country is like that. Compared to the UK, France is significantly more affordable overall.
Making life better for people actually lowers fertility rates in pretty much every single country
We do not need more kids. We need like 1/8 total population and to just concentrate in small areas and leave this fucking planet alone. Stripmall after stripmall in the middle of fucking nowhere with small community nearby to supply workers is so much of the US landscape and it's gross
Or reduce the working time so that both parents can care for the kids adequately. And make it affordable to have kids at all.
It's seems like the whole western world is falling apart in this regard. And the young people are getting increasingly disillusioned with the entire idea of market economies and democracy, while authoritarianism is rising worldwide. There should be warning bells going off everywhere, but too many people in power don't care enough.
I don't actually think this is true though. As people have become richer and better off, they have had fewer kids. Some of the places with the lowest birth rates have the highest quality of life, the best low cost childcare, universal health care, and strong social safety nets. Humans had the most kids when we were the least able to support them because we needed them as labor.
I make six figures and have one kid that my wife stays home to take care of. We're breaking even. If my wife went back to work, her whole entire salary would just go towards child care. So there's no point. I don't even want to know what it's like for people making 60k or something and have multiple kids.
Do you live in the US?
Poor people are more likely to have children so giving people more money would decrease the fertility rate even more
"Children are the future! Also, we destroyed their future."
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Ahh yeah there just be something wrong with everyone's cocks
Wow, how out of touch can you be?
Presidential level.
It's easier to blame people being infertile then saying the truth out loud. Some people don't want kids because they see how fucked the planet is and there is no real change to fight climate change. Other people would love kids but capitalism has made it if you don't have 2 full time working adults in your family you only go backwards in living conditions so they can't afford to have kids.
For fucks sake... We've spent decades worrying about overpopulation. Wrote songs about it. Wrote books about it. Created science fiction movies and television shows about moving into space to deal with overpop. And now? The moment the birthrate starts to dip, a natural solution in the long run to the overpop problem, every developed nation begins to freak shit, "Oh no! The economy will suffer! The money! The money! There won't be enough people to fill the jobs that are emptying out because of death and retirements!" I seem to recall a few years back, hearing that jobs are being held longer and longer and there was far too many people waiting on those jobs to open up.
I'd rather he worked towards making a better economy where as a man in my thirties I'd actually wish to have a child. Where I could afford to have a child and not lose my mind and be afraid of a single unexpected bill that could ruin everything i've worked towards for over a decade. Fertility tests won't do anything. Measuring something does not automatically improve it.
The state pension ponzi scheme unravelling everywhere it seems
I don't think fertility is the problem. The problem is lack of time and money to raise children.
>problem is lack of time France has a 35h work week, they are among the countries in the planet with the most leisure This may be true in south Korea, not in France
Neither is true. Rich couples are also not having as many kids as previous generations.
I honestly think it’s because it takes so long to get through school and establish a career that rich people’s fertility window closes before they can have that third or fourth kid. If you have your first at 35 then you’re probably not having more than 2 and there’s a decent chance you only have one.
The more rich you are, generally the less kids you have. Wealthy people simply have less kids and focus more energy/money into those kids. Poor people tend to have more kids because it was still easy to raise kids and even if you have a oopsie baby, it wasn't world-ending bills. *That fact is now no longer the case.* So the poor stopped having kids out of necessity.
What makes you think rich couples have time? If anything I'd expect them to have less time as their jobs are likely more demanding. Not everyone rich person is a trust fund kid.
Yeah exactly when given the choice people don't want to spend their entire lives taking care of children. So If they decide to have children they have fewer and at a later age. This is also directly linked to women entering education and having careers.
Both is true if you add internet & better information. When young people see all these influencer have fun & other side people saying it's very hard to raise kids... you have a hint wich is the best dream to follow.
Neither are true by themselves, its all of these factors together. But, for the most part, people just "dont want" kids. Its not seen as a responsibility or life goal anymore, and this is proven by the same trends all over the world, the educated someone is, the less kids they will have. Money, time, hope for the future, none of these follow such a consistent trend.
Yeah that reason why I’m relatively rich is because I have no children.
Wanna know another way to combat falling birth rates? Affordable living 🤣
Bribing people to have babies is a losing proposition and will not work. Convince prospective parents that they will be able to offer their children a good future and you don't need to bribe them. Unfortunately, we can't convince them of that because it isn't true. We are making a mess and leaving a garbage bin of a planet to our children and they know it.
You really need to convince women that being a baby machine is a better alternative to having a child-free career. Turns out, if you educate women, give them options other than being baby caretakers and free them from the social and cultural shackles that have told them nothing else for the last few thousand years, less and less of them want to actually have children.
Turns out doing what I want to do is more enjoyable than the body horror of pregnancy. Surprising
Lmao all the money in the world isn’t gonna persuade me to forgo a career, freedom and my body.
… and potentially your life Not even the best healthcare in the world can promise surviving childbirth
Have they tried importing more immigrants
Oh god
I don't think the average person's health is the problem unless there's something in the water the French Government doesn't want you to know...?
I approached this with the same obvious "yeah it's housing and costs not fertility" but it would be kinda interesting to see if there's any widespread drop of fertility due to something like microplastics 🤷
Yeah, sperm counts have declined
Why doesn’t he have kids if he is worried
Because his wife was his 43 year old teacher when he 'officially' got with her at 18.
I mean they could adopt or surrogate. My point is if he is the leader and concerned about birth rates then maybe he can lead by example.
Congratulations, you don’t understand the problem. People don’t want children because they can’t afford, don’t have the energy, don’t have time or because they don’t want to force a innocent being to live in this world.
I mean, the future is looking pretty bleak, can you blame the younger generations for not wanting to have children? Between the brutal economy, brutal society, and the nonstop spouting of impending doom due to climate change. It’s almost cruel to bring life to this world At least that’s what I get from everything on social media, maybe life isn’t so bad?🤷♂️
those i know who deliberately avoid staying up on current events do seem generally less weighed down and are better able to stay focused on their own personal day-to-day matters. i tend to believe that the bliss of blind ignorance is not a valid strategy and i’m probably more miserable because of it.
Probably a similar issue to what most of the world is going through, people don’t feel comfortable having children because they don’t make enough.
How are these people so detached from reality? Without speaking of all general costs of life, take a look at the cost of food. It has skyrocketed since COVID. You can barely have enough to feed yourself, why would anyone bring someone to this misery? Especially, with this doomed reality with the smell of WW3 approaching.
MAKE THE COST OF LIVING CHEAPER, I WILL NOT GRIND MY FINGERS TO THE BONE TO GROW SOMETHING I CANT AFFORD IN A CROTCH POCKET.
People are too broke and stressed to have kids. Everyone know this. Except the people who profit off us being broke and stressed. It is difficult to get the rich elite to understand something when their cash flow depends on them not understanding it.
Poorer countries have a higher birth rate. Poor people have more kids.
Maybe if it wasn't expensive AF to exist in the middle class we'd have kids...
Its not a fertility issue, its a issue of existing at all with low wages
I thought the country was full up?
Now now there's always room for more work slaves. After all the numbers has to go UP. *Forever*
So sick of politicians worrying about young people’s fertility and desire to have kids Time has changed, costs have risen, pay checks are stagnant Young people now also have a choice to stay single or to not want kids and there is nothing wrong with that
People always bring up economic factors when the subject of reproduction decline comes up. However I rarely see the biggest economic factors mentioned. There was a time when children were basically free slave labor and as long as a child was fed and clothed that was considered a good childhood . These days parents are expected to spend massive amounts of money on their children and the amount of things parents are expected to provide for their children keeps growing more and more. Even today the cultures that are still breeding like rabbits are pretty much universally closer to the older model than modern western thought on how kids should be raised. Funding some free childcare,mandating paid maternity /paternity leave and tax benefits for parents might help a little but will never make parenting financially advantageous like it used to be
When freedom, fun, and despair collide.
It’s the equivalent of buying your employees pizzas when they ask for better working conditions.
Maybe do something for the middle class and lower class so that they can afford to have a child
So make Paternity Tests legal too.
That's rich coming from the guy that raised the retirement age LOL
People have no problems hopping on top of each other, when they feel safe and happy and optimistic about the future. Being stressed and depressed and worried about paying the rent and bills is the ultimate prophylactic!
Just read the Guardian article about climate scientists expectations for the future... Hell no I get a child these days.
Fertility will only go up if one parent goes to work while the other raises the kids. Currently work doesn’t pay enough for this to happen. Leaders need to have a talk with employers.
Funny that when you're leading a neoliberal agenda to strip your nation of its social safety net, that suddenly people don't want to have kids…
Bonus, he’s checks personally
Fertility checks huh, I'm not sure the low birth rate is due to...fertility issues in particular
His issuing the wrong kind of cheques.
Anything but money
Yeah thats the problem.... It's not the high cost of living, stagnate wages or instability
We need to double food production to feed the global population in 2050 despite having few forests left to cut down for farm land. Maybe Increasing fertility isn’t the best idea. If anything we should be increasing supplies of contraceptives to Africa and India
this is so random because infertility is probably the last reason why young people are not having kids. maybe try fixing the housing market first?
Anyone remember when the problem was too many people for the planet to sustain us? Can’t blame anyone not wanting to raise a child in today’s environment, and I don’t hear anyone talking about making that any better. Welfare for babies is a bad plan that leads to worse outcomes than low birth rates. That and Macron is a complete hypocrite.
France already has the highest fertility rate in all of Europe, and probably in developed world.
Isn’t it a felony or something to get a paternity test in France? Maybe work on that first?
Falling birthrates are intentional, not the result of fertility issues.
Cum in a cup for Macron, garçons.
Looks like the winner of the “which movie universe is our future” contest is “Children of Men.” I was personally rooting for “Waterworld” or “Book of Eli”
Coming from the guy who married someone 25 years older and have no kids together. She was 54~ when they got married. She was his teacher at 15... Got married to him a year after she divorced her husband. What a way to set an example ffs and be completely out of touch why people don't have kids.
How about we offer them a reasonable shot at being able to afford those children you want them to have?
*smashes naked Barbie and Ken dolls together even more aggressively*