Friday, January 27, 2006

More babies needed

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Germany agonises over 30% childless women

From the above story:

"Germany was plunged into an anguished debate yesterday about how to encourage reluctant couples to breed after new figures showed Germany with the world's highest proportion of childless women.

Thirty per cent of German women have not had children, according to European Union statistics from 2005, with the figure rising among female graduates to 40%. Germany's new family minister, Ursula von der Leyen, said that unless the birth rate picked up the country would have to "turn the light out"."

And this:

"In Europe 2.1 is considered to be the population replacement level. This table shows the mean number of children per woman (2004 figures)

Ireland 1.99
France 1.90
Norway 1.81
Sweden 1.75
UK 1.74
Netherlands 1.73
Germany 1.37
Italy 1.33
Spain 1.32
Greece 1.29"

Australia's rate: about 1.75.

It would be interesting if anyone could come up with convincing cultural explanations for the variations between the European countries. I can see some pointing towards how "macho" a culture is (reflecting on how much a father is prepared to put in to helping raise a child.) But are Greek men close to Spainish men in this regard? And what about Italians and their supposed fondness for their families? Why is their rate significantly below that of, say, France, which to my mind has much less of a traditional reputation for big happy families? And how about Ireland. Did they hold onto Catholic attitudes to family planning much longer than the Italians themselves did?

Of course, it may just be that looking for such over-arching cultural explanations is a mistake. But it is a fun game.

In any event, Mark Steyn's frequently raised concerns about much of western European committing demographic suicide seems very well placed.

2 comments:

Karna O'Dea said...

In the previous post, you complain about the Catholic Church's position on contraception. In this post you are complaining about the effects of ignoring the Church's position on contraception. Irony, anyone?

Steve said...

Yes, I thought someone may notice that!

However, while I can see a legitimate argument against methods that allow fertilization but then prevent implantation, it is much harder to see the logic in a teaching that allows one method of contraception designed to avoid fertization (natural planning methods) but not other methods that have the same aim (the birth control pill and condoms.) And in this I believe it makes no exception even for the most morally "uncontroversial" cases (eg a married couple that has a very legitimate desire not to have another child due to expected difficulties in pregnancy, worries about genetic illness etc.)

This makes no sense to me. I also understand that there was substantial opinion within the Church for a different teaching from that finally delivered.

The consequence of such an "all or nothing" teaching is that nearly all Catholics ignore it, and the Church at the ground level) is also forced to ignore it to retain any credibility at all with its weekly congregation.

Surely the Church will eventually modify the teaching.