Posted on 01/28/2006 8:05:41 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
Chancellor Angela Merkel has pushed Germany's low birth rate to the top of the political agenda for the first time since the Nazi era as an expert said the nation could die out if the trend continued.
A third of German women are not having children, a remarkable figure even compared with low birth rates in the rest of Europe. Among graduates the figure is as high as 40 per cent.
Every year 100,000 more Germans die than are born and each generation is shrinking by about a third.
Even in the poverty and despair after the Second World War, more babies were born than now. The figure has slumped to 1.3 children per woman, far short of the replacement rate of 2.1.
Some observers attribute the trend to young people's reluctance to sacrifice their comfortable way of life and leisure time to bring up the next generation.
Others argue that German society expects women to stay at home to look after the family and that child care is inadequate and expensive.
Mrs Merkel, 51, is not the best role model: she has no children. Asked why, she said: "It just did not fit in with my career path."
But she is fully aware that the onus is on her, the country's first female leader, to improve the lot of women, raise the birth rate and put Germany back at the top as an economic power within a decade.
"If the birth rate continues to fall, Germans are at risk of dying out," said Harald Michel, the head of the Institute for Applied Demography. He foresees a future in which the workforce will be unable to support the elderly, nor indeed the country.
Past reluctance to tackle the problem is largely explained by the sensitivity of child-bearing in a country which, under the Nazis, did all it could to raise the birth rate for the state.
"The Nazi ideal of kinder, küche, kirche (children, kitchen, church) still prevails," said Jutta Schmidt, 33, a sociologist and mother of two children from Hamburg.
"The pressure on women to fulfil the maternal role, coupled with the lack of support to carry it out, such as part-time jobs and child care provision, is so great that many would rather forgo the opportunity than risk failure."
In Nazi times women were awarded motherhood medals for bearing children. Child bearing was strictly under the control of the state, not the individual.
Had Ursula von der Leyen, 47, been a mother in the Third Reich, she would have won the silver medal. She is a gynaecologist, a mother of seven and, as the family minister, is Mrs Merkel's greatest hope.
She says that Germany is "extremely backward" in its attitude towards the family. Unless the birth rate rises, "we will have to turn out the light".
Mrs von der Leyen, a member of the Christian Democratic Union, has offered women one-year wage replacement subsidies and to raise the amount of child care that can be offset against tax. But some of her proposals, such as encouraging fathers to stay at home for two months after the birth of a child, have provoked stiff opposition even from male party colleagues. They accuse her of wanting to "tie men to the nappies".
For many, child care and not money is at the root of the problem. The country that invented the kindergarten 170 years ago is pitifully lacking in child care places.
Only 10 per cent of children under three have access to pre-school care and most of those are sent home at noon, a 2001 study showed. In Denmark the figure is 64 per cent and in Britain 34 per cent.
The problem is exacerbated by employers who are unwilling to help workers with young children - and schools, most of which also close at noon.
"People have to give up their careers because there are no child care places," said Renate Köcher, the director of the Allensbach polling institute. "And because they have given up their jobs, we have neglected to create more child care places."
Germany is also a country in which everything happens comparatively late. The average starting school age is almost seven. University takes the best part of a decade to complete, so the average student is in her late twenties when she graduates.
Therefore, finding a job, particularly in these days of high unemployment, stands much higher on the list of priorities than having babies.
Nah, I'm xenophobic, and some of my best friends are crackpots. I'd have a beer with them but won't run them for public office.
I'll have a beer with Buchanan any time, although I imagine he'd see me in being in the "amen corner" of the Israel Defense Minstry. Heck, even Keyes, who I do think has a great mind but who I wouldn't run for dogcatcher, cornered Buchanan about his overt appeals to racism and antisemitism.
BTW, Buchanan, being something of an Arab-ophile, may wish to have a word about your screenname and tagline, but I guess politics does make strange bedfellows.
there just seems to be a huge trend towards no kids in first world countries.
the U.S. is backwards in it's priorities. We should reward families that stay together and raise children in a two parent environment.
Might help conventional marriages work out a little more often. We are all taxed out of our minds to help welfare recipients and the dead wood or our society.
I have friends who are single parents, and can't imagine being in their shoes.
Its places like Calipornia and New York where people choose to have few, if any, children.
ok, but our government still has their priorities backwards, when they hand freebies out to the deadwood of society, and tax the heck out of two parent families and single parent families.
This has been the case since feminism and contraception and no fault divorce merged say, since the sixties and seventies. I am amazed by the number of women who think this way about there precious "careers." Talk about brainwashing; no children to love or to love them, from their youth through old age. Granted, most men these days have been brainwashed too, thinking that women are outlets for their lust and not much else. This is the flipside of the same coin, and just as sad. Commitment from either party, through thick and thin, forget it. Too much trouble. Our society is paying for it now and will pay more dearly in the future. A catastrophe in the making that future generations will see the tragedy for what it is, especially if Islam makes serious inroads.
Just like Hitler needed children to fill the ranks of his army, the modern Germans need more children to keep socialism going. Guess without the new ranks of patsies in their pyramid scheme, Germans won't get to retire at 55 and continue to live off the state until death do them part.
Are you suggesting I should help somehow?
I would have loved to have kids, so please tell me where I can pick up my check as consolation?
While your statements are right, it seems to me you're aiming at the wrong target for this discussion--the government bias already is in favor of having children. The problem is in the productivity side, where lack of productivity is also favored.
I'm just saying that our government supports the non productive end of society with welfare benefits. Lowering tax rates for families, two and one parent, would be of great benefit to allow them to keep their money rather than welfare, and social programs abounding.
Und die Partei ist zu Ende.
BTTT
Um, that's what I said...that it's not a question of parents vs. non-parents....it's a question of subsidizing lack of productivity. Totally different issue.
Lowering tax rates for families, two and one parent, would be of great benefit to allow them to keep their money rather than welfare, and social programs abounding.
So you're more socialist in your leanings? Why not make it lower taxes for everyone who is productive, regardless of children or no children?
Why should the government be involved in deciding to pass out money to those who have more children? If a couple can't afford to have children, then they shouldn't have them. (I.e., Why should a childless couple who can't afford children be forced to subsidize those who have children they can't afford--like our current system operates?)
Which consumes more public services (which is what taxes are for...common defense, public works, civil defense supplies, etc.): two people, or two people plus a child? So why should the two people be forced to contribute more to the public trough than two people plus a child?!?
The Infertility/Responsibility Tax is just one example of the creeping socialism that Eisenhower warned about--now even self-identified "conservatives" don't bat an eye at getting bribed by others' money.
Of course, dealing with this problem fairly and appropriately would involve having to stop illegal immigration and playing games with Social Security/reitirement, etc. And again, few have stomach for that.
Well, before sending me off to read, you can finish my own post, where I addressed your points in the last paragraph. Europe has allowed immigration to flood its cultures, for example. And are you not one who recognizes that if illegal immigration is lowered, wages of the lower pay scale will increase for Americans?
BUMP
Ban abortion.....I'm sure germany would have many more kids if many weren't killed before birth....
There are numerous factors, with no one solution that will get Western women to have 3+ children again. Economics plays a role, but so does better conditions for women and children.
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