janvier 19, 2007
Babies, Babies Everywhere
France is the most fecund nation in Europe, announced Insee, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. With over 830 900 infants born in 2006, la Patrie became the only European country to surpass the two baby per lady threshold, trouncing those 'traditional champions' of reproduction, the Irish.
The European mean is 1,52 children per woman, with countries in Eastern Europe often falling below 1,3. France, however, approaches another baby boom.
This amplified ratio of strollers to metro cars is not due to a simple increase in French women. On the contrary, there were 28 000 less 20 to 40 year-old women in 2006 than in 2005. In France as in most European countries, women are having babies later in life, and eight out of ten of them are sustaining careers as they do so. With municipal day care centers, free early education, and government allocations—not to mention generous maternity leaves—France encourages parenting by supporting the parents.
Yet we wonder when Libération names the French the "birth champions" if there isn’t something vaguely forties about the tone, as though France is finally fulfilling “Travail, Famille, Patrie.” Then again, we’ve nothing bad to say about ubiquitous crèches and respectful maternity leaves for mothers and fathers. Though the celebratory tone may stand at odds with concerns about global over-population, this may be true: a country that values its mothers and families merits a huzzah or two.
via Libération
Photo from www.forbabykids.com
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Just a detail: even if it's true that in French "libération" is female, everybody says only "Libération" when talking of the newspaper. It sounds really weird to say "La Libération", even if it's perfectly correct from a grammatical point of view (and even if we say "Le Monde"). The explanation is just that the name of the newpaper is purely and simply "Libération". That's all!
Fixé! Thanks for pointing that out. — Ed.
[1] Posted by: Thomas | janvier 19, 2007 5:07 PM
"over-population" is a relative concept...
In France one can hardly say that there is over-population: as long as most Frenchs are starving to death there is no over-population.
[2] Posted by: Thai Radio | janvier 20, 2007 8:35 AM
Some people seem to think that this is due to the fact that France has the highest proportion of muslims in Europe.
[3] Posted by: Alphabet Citizen![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.parisist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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janvier 21, 2007 6:39 PM
Pardon me, but France's maternity leave, municipal day-care centers and "government allocations" are replicated to varying degrees all across continental Europe, yet the fertility rate for most European countries is much lower.
Germany, for example, has a comparable system of family-oriented welfare benefits, but its fertility rate is extremely low in comparison to that of France.
On the other side of the coin, look at the United States, for god's sake. There are virtually NO benefits for parents to speak of, yet the fertility rate in the U.S. is even higher than that of France.
There has to be another aspect to this besides the self-congratulatory welfare state rah-rah that Parisist expressed in this post. Look into the changing demographics of France, which has Europe's highest proportion of Muslim immigrants, who coincidentally also have higher fertility rates than native-born French. Also look into the very high incidence of immigration in the United States, where Hispanic newcomers are far more likely to have 3 or more children than native-born white Americans.
Use your brain.
[4] Posted by: chris | janvier 21, 2007 7:09 PM
I couldn’t agree more that governmental support is far from the calibrator of reproductive rates, and that culture and immigration have vast influence on such a figure. It is similarly myopic, however, to seize a distillation of one particular article as an editorial statement. Parisist did not presume to delineate the reason behind France’s birth rate in four paragraphs (indeed, a reason for as complex a statistic would be necessarily insufficient). Nor was it Parisist’s object to engage in comparative international policy.
Rather, equally important to depth of information is sensitivity to its presentation. This is a critique of Libération’s trumpeting (which failed to address immigration and reduced the discrepancy between German and French birthrates to Germany’s social stigmas). It is also one, as indicated, of this blurb. Ideally, blogs become not a replacement for news sources but rather a supplement, a critique, an egress. That is, after all, why we post a link to the article itself.
Yet comments are a powerful check on our conscience as writers and readers. A lesson: clarity is always needed when it concerns what is comment and what is report.
[5] Posted by: joanna | janvier 21, 2007 8:37 PM
But why even write for a blog if doing so presupposes a cursory, glib, and unsatisfactory answer. From what I've read of your work, Ms. Parisist, you've an agile mind that would be better flexed critiquing Baudelaire than the whimsy of newspapers. Regardless, I look forward to your next post.
[6] Posted by: pedro | janvier 22, 2007 5:55 PM