The decline in the number of births should be seen in connection with the ‘gender divergence’ between increasingly progressive young women and increasingly conservative young men, observes economist Pauline Grosjean in her column.
The number of births has continued to decline in France in 2025. The fertility rate, at 1.56 children per woman, reached its lowest level since 1918. It is true that most of France’s neighbors are faring even worse, and France still holds its – rather relative – status as a champion of birth rates. This decline is a universal and long-term phenomenon, with explanations that have shifted over time.
The initial phase, which has been the most studied, is that of the demographic transition, marked by the shift from a regime of high mortality and fertility to one of low mortality and fertility. France was already an exception, having started its demographic transition in the 18th century, before other countries. Without this early transition, some economists estimate, France’s population would today stand at 250 million.
I read different takes on having kids before but this is just… wow. What you’re describing is some extremely idealized idea or parenthood that applies to maybe 1% of parents in the world. Most people have kids because they help with work and support you when your old. In developed countries most people have kids because culturally it’s just something you do, because it’s a status symbol, because they can’t afford birth control or simply because they are bored. For many parents it’s a completely selfish act, they just want something they can control and use to realize their unfulfilled dreams. At the same time every normal adult has to be responsible all the time, be it at work, with their friends, their partner. Thinking that taking care of a kid is the only way someone is truly responsible is just silly.
I don’t know what type of bubble you grew up in but real world doesn’t look the way you think it does. Different people have different ideas for life and having kids does not define anyone. Looking at everyone through the prism of parenthood is some really weird obsession.
1% ? Both my mom and my MIL are obsessed with me and my wife, respectively. Same with my brother, her brother. Like, that’s not true, that’s not what I’ve seen. My friends with kids are obsessed with them, some to the point of losing their minds on a regular basis in worry, lol. Idk man, I think you’re letting your bad, very geographically localized (like you said, “developed countries”) experience blind you to a wider, very different reality. And yes, for many, maybe the world’s majority, that’s how it goes. It doesn’t mean they won’t have their own psychological pathologies and forgo virtue at times, we’re talking about people here, but trust me that for them, having children is their dream come true, the main one, and they would literally rather die than lose them or anything too tragic come to them.
Yeah, if we’re talking Korea, Japan, France, Germany, etc, things are different, but that’s due to a mixture of trauma and an ideology that rejects responsibility and doesn’t value parenthood as much as it values the way less stressful “fun” (which in this case, is sweet labour, but whatever), and you’re talking from that perspective so of course we disagree on the value of parenthood, but you cannot disagree (or haven’t yet, at least) that those very beliefs are what’s at the core of the failing birthrates… which is all I was trying to talk about here, tbh, I wasn’t expecting this long of an exchange regarding virtue, parenthood and Western values. 😅 It was nice but I just came from a long shift, lol.
I will explicitly disagree with you here
What you’re pointing to as the cause - changing perceptions of children, and them no longer being seen as a milestone - is simply a symptom of the root cause: Children are no longer a boon. They’re now a burden
This what the poster above you was saying. Children used to be valuable as a source of labor, and to provide for you when you can no longer work
I don’t think this is the only cause, but I do think it’s the primary reason for the shift in mentality