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.
Okay, I spent all of my late teenage years to early adulthood in France so I feel I can chime in: French people, like most Westerners I’ve met, don’t know what they should do with their lives and the burden of responsibility of having children is simply not that appealing compared to having fun, either partying and doing coke or collecting figurines and dakimakuras. Even romance and love is fucked because marriage is seen as outdated and so serious so life long monogamy, for many, is just meh or scary. People don’t date for any objective, they just get together cause they’re lonely or sexually starved. And if they do understand what they should be doing, they’ll be old and weary, and either the psychological scars will stop them from fully commiting to something or biology will have done its thing and now you’re 42 trying to have your first kid, of course it’s gonna be difficult.
Now, whilst I have my value judgement on it, I’m not making any right now, I’m just describing what I’m seeing. Hedonism, consumerism, and an ideological vacuum, means that people won’t be making big commitments like having children. Of course the Muslims will, that makes sense, no surprise over there.
PS: and no, it’s not a financial thing. The immigrants with no support or family money that goes back several generations, working shitty min wage jobs, have and want to have children. It’s an ideological difference.
What a terrible take. Having children doesn’t mean someone has their life figured out and has an objective in life. Lots of people have kids just because they think it’s something you should do. I keep reading articles about how more and more kids go to school without even most basic skills like climbing stairs. Parents just give them phones and ignore them. What objective did they have when they decided to have kids? At the same time people without kids don’t just have fun and do coke. Like, WTF? People pursue their interests, study, travel, volunteer… They don’t wake up when their 40 with psychological scars realizing they wasted their lives.
Some people have an idea about what to do with their lives and some don’t. Having kids has nothing to do with it.
Well, if they don’t take parenthood seriously and just have kids because they’re not cautious or think “it’s the right time”, that’s not good, of course, but that doesn’t invalidate what I’m saying. Parenthood is the decision to make your entire life revolve around your lifelong project, a product of love. Where, even more so than with a partner, you discover the beauty and sweetness of giving, of selflessness, which is virtuous. For me, if you make the conscious decision not to have kids (biological, adopted, or even being the primary caretaker of a nephew for instance), you will never be a fully developed human being, because you never experienced what adulthood is really about: responsibility, and the pleasure of taking it. And of course if you’re a categorically bad parent, which kinda makes you a bad person altogether, you are this way because you’re not taking this responsibility seriously, and you’re also an incomplete human being.
And again, if this was the current Western mentality, these headlines wouldn’t be a thing. Now, whether you feel like every population, or even just the European one, should at least be healthily above replacement, or not, that’s something else. Personally, idc (perhaps I should but I haven’t thought about it much, ngl), but what I do know is that not prioritising childrearing, and not seeing it as a fundamental developmental milestone for every adult, are behind these falling birthrates.