EU Population: Reaching the point of terminal decline?

international | eu | news report Wednesday March 29, 2006 15:30 by Kathy Sinnott

European birthrate in freefall

“Every minute from now on is never your own, girl” . With these words the midwife plonked my friend’s new born son on her stomach. My friend was 18. She had arrived at the delivery room alone, laboured for hours and she was exhausted. Though she was an independent type or at least tried to be, it was all too much for her. She had wanted the nurse to say “Congratulations you have a beautiful son, you did a great job”. Instead, all romance dispelled, she lifted her head, stared down her nose, past her chin at the splotchy purple being , sighed deeply and kind of squared her shoulders to the future.

25 years later she can laugh about it. Her life has not been the easiest. She told me that possibly this was the appropriate introduction to motherhood. She is not sure that the romantic ideas she cherished at the time did motherhood justice or would have served her as well as the midwife's words. She loves her children and has been a great mother. She would do it all again, with only a few changes.

Why do we do it? Why do we become mothers? And having done it why do we do it again, and again and for some of us again and again.

This is the question that is challenging the European Union.

I suppose it was appropriate that we had our plenary debate on the demography of Europe a few days before Mothers Day. The birthrate of Europe has been in freefall for several decades. (Ireland is the exception). It is now approaching the point of terminal decline. If we get to this stage, the experts tell us, the population cannot recover.

It has become clear that the problem has to be solved soon. We have been addressing it and other aspects of the demographic crisis like population aging and associated loss in economic vitality in committees, intergroups, seminars and plenary since the alarm was sounded around Mothers Day last year.

One of the urgent questions before the European institutions is how to get women to have more babies. In EU funded research, women were asked how many children they would like to have. The consistent finding is that women in the EU want to have approximately 2.3 babies. Women in the EU are having only 1.5. 2.1 babies per woman is the average needed for a population to maintain itself. (I have a hard time getting my head around the .1, .3 and .5 when talking about babies but I tell myself this is statistics not real life.)

Looking at the difference in women’s wish for more children than they are having, the European Commission are trying to figure out what is causing women to have fewer children than they themselves want. I have suggested to them that they ask women with and without children and ask men - after all babies have two parents. I suggest that when they ask, they truly listen to the answers and resolve to promote policies based on the wisdom they glean rather than on their Lisbon (European Economic) Strategy.

It is my guess that if asked, young mothers (and fathers) are going to talk about financial restraints, especially crippling mortgages, the necessity of two incomes and the cost of childcare and job insecurity. They will point to lack of family friendly employment policies. They are going to talk about the end of the consumer dream either because they have bought into it and see children as an obstacle to going on the kind of holidays, having the kind of house furnishings , car, waistline and freedom they want. Or because they are aware of the pressure and power of the commercial image of the happy free single. They may talk about the instability of relationships and family structures, of their insecurity about the future and their reluctance to take on the responsibility and make the level of commitment motherhood and fatherhood require.

I think the Commission will find that the complexity involved for many today in the decision to parent will be in sharp contrast to the simpler response they will get from many of the older generations of parents.

I think they will say they didn’t agonize over the decision or even consciously make a decision to become mothers and fathers. It was just a natural part of maturing and taking their place in the scheme of things. They may speak about it in vague terms, “I didn’t question it.” “It’s just what came next in my life”. They may talk about becoming parents in religious terms referring to children as gifts. The actual mothering and fathering may have required great personal sacrifice but entering into it was based more on acceptance or assumption of the normalcy of childbearing than an exercise in budgeting and balancing of all manner of personal and financial resources.

Though I can swim and dive off the edge of a pool, I could not dive off a diving board. Growing up this irked me and as a teenager I tried over and over again. I would climb the ladder to the board determined, walk to the end and look down. I would size up the distance to the water, think about the impact of hitting it, the depth I would sink, the length of time I would be under. The longer I delayed and thought, the more fearful I became. I would become rooted to the spot, the kids on the ladder behind me would start shouting, “Hurry up”, “Dive”, “Chicken” Occasionally I would get enough courage to just step off the diving board but more often than not I would have to turn around, walk the length of the board back to the ladder forcing everyone to back down it while I climbed down.

I never did dive. I think there is a bit of a parallel with becoming a mom. If we take all the background problems, mortgage, job, childhood sicknesses and accidents, juvenile delinquency, commuting times, add them to nappies, lost sleep, childrearing expenses, the nausea, backache and labour of the pregnancy process, and measure against what we know of our ability and coping skills and contrast the lot with our ambitions and image of the future, we will more often than not climb back down the ladder.

It is important to be realistic but let’s be fully realistic and also consider other factors like the goodness of people, the Providence of God, the sanctity, continuity and, complimentarily, the unpredictability of life, and the fact that a woman will not be the same person when she has a child. A friend illustrated it well. As a young woman, she was fastidious and incapable of tolerating a single crumb in her bed. Her first child changed all that. She can now sleep anywhere, on anything, any time. In a deep if sleepy way she has gained an appreciation of sleep, of the three little ones who crawling into the bed during the night and disturb it and of the man who patiently moves over for each new arrival.

Belated Happy Mothers Day!