Flemish Left Meltdown Over Vlaams Belang’s Pro-Family Policies | Increased assistance to young mothers framed by media and socialists as ‘forcing women to have children’ and ‘return to the 1950s.’
... In the past ten years, the number of live births in Flanders dropped from 1.81 to 1.53 children per woman....
Vlaams Belang party proposes a relatively generous "baby bonus" to encourage births.
... The newspaper quotes socialist Vooruit MP Freya Van den Bossche, who in a recent interview decried the “very conservative revival” our time is seeing, in which “more and more voices are calling for sending women back to the hearth.” She labeled as “creepy” the Vlaams Belang proposal to grant women who opt to have “many children at a young age” more financial assistance, i.e., doubling the one-time birth premium (from €1,200 to €2,400) when the mother is younger than 30 at the time of her child’s birth.
In its party program, Vlaams Belang notes that “encouraging earlier births is a legitimate objective as it corresponds to biological reality, and thus contributes to the health of the woman and child.”
The article goes on to describe protests by the Green Party including dressing up as characters in Margaret Atwood's Handmaids Tale.
A study done in Canada (fertility rate 1.4 children per woman, thus even lower than that listed for Flanders) found that women actually wanted to have more children (the desired number being 2.2) but for a variety of reasons including feeling the need to save money and not having a suitable partner (see https://www.cardus.ca/news/news-releases/backgrounder-she-s-not-having-a-baby-why-half-of-canadian-women-are-falling-short-of-their-fertility-desires/ )
It can be argued that the idea of the Government (rather than civil society) rewarding births is perhaps problematic. Back in the day, when a man's wife had a baby, the man's boss gave him a raise. This was to recognize that (a) he probably needed more money and (b) having children is a net benefit to a society and he was being compensated for that. So the idea of a "baby bonus" is not groundbreaking in itself.
The left is very anti-woman and anti-fertility.
My observation would be dismissed by lefties as anecdotal, but having encountered this multiple times, I believe it is valid. Over the last 20 years I have lost count of the young women who regretted putting off having children. Some delayed the decision based on their career goals and some on the belief they hadn’t found the right guy.
And, to be fair, I’ve also known more than a few guys who claimed to be avowed bachelors until they started closing in on their 40th birthday. Then, suddenly, they started taking stock of their life and realizing what was missing.
I think what the left fears is human nature, human instinct. Absent the leftist social engineering pressures people will instinctively revert back to earlier social models. They will marry earlier and have children earlier. And, these two things will result in them becoming conservative earlier.
A lot of factors play into it.
Good young men and women are finding it difficult to meet each other. Back in the day, there were tons of Church-affiliated social groups (drama societies, bowling clubs, etc.). But those are long gone, and few people go to Church anyway.
Even if they do find each other, delay of marriage is often because of education. Many jobs that really only require high school are asking for bachelor's degrees just to cut down the number of applicants.
When they do manage to have children it's often only one rather than the two or three they had hoped for.
It is difficult (not impossible, but takes planning) to live on one income. Few pole have done that sort of planning, so there are fewer stay-at-home Moms for mutual support.
I agree. One of the reasons the left want such a tight stranglehold on education, because school is the main indoctrination point. The rise in private and home schooling is a good thing, but when it really starts to threaten the leftist hegemony, those alternatives will be targeted for harassment and regulation to the point of closure.
Have your first in your early 20's and more once the fear of having a child is gone, you do not want to be 50+ when your children are ready to legally leave the nest. IMO.