GERMANY AGONISES OVER 30% CHILDLESS WOMEN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

· Highest number in world choose not to have family
· Minister highlights the threat of low birthrate

Luke Harding in Berlin
Friday January 27, 2006
The Guardian


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".

Ms von der Leyen, a mother of seven and an ally of Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, told Stern magazine yesterday that not only women but also "deeply uncertain" men were to blame. "They are unsure about the role of fatherhood," she said.

Last month Ms von der Leyen tabled a series of radical proposals, including requiring men to take two months off work to look after a newborn child if they wished to qualify fully for state-funded child welfare support. The scheme would offer parents 67% of their previous incomes while staying at home. It would be limited to a year, up to a monthly maximum of €1,800 (£1,234). Working parents would also be able to offset €3,000 a year of childcare costs against tax, encouraging women to have more children. The proposals are based on schemes in Scandinavia, where birth rates are higher than in Germany.

However, her proposals have met resistance. Several male politicians in her own Christian Democrat party have derided the idea of men abandoning work to change nappies.

The Social Democrats, junior partners in Germany's coalition government, have also expressed unease, not least because the themes of childcare and women's rights traditionally belonged to the left.

"Compulsory paid leave for fathers is a good idea," Professor Norbert Schneider, a sociologist at Mainz University, told the Guardian. "Germany now has the highest number of childless women in the world. This trend has been going on since at least the 90s. What we also know is that the higher the level of education, the more likely a woman is to remain childless."

Prof Schneider said several factors were to blame for Germany's low birth rate, including inadequate childcare provision, a school day that ends at 1pm, and old-fashioned attitudes among employers. By the time they had finished university, and found a good job, many German women were already in their mid-30s, he said.

"We have a situation where if a woman wants to take time off to have children, that's accepted. But if a man asks his firm if he can go on leave to look after a child his career is finished. It's taboo. This isn't just a woman's problem - it's a man's problem."

He added: "The classical family picture is still very much alive in Germany. Women are expected to look after the children while men go out and work."

The latest figures are taken from a study of women born in the 1960s. Overall, Germany's birth rate is one of the lowest in Europe with an average of 1.37 children per woman, compared with 1.75 in Sweden and 1.74 in the UK. German mothers are also the oldest - with an average age of 30 for a first child - and most parents opt for only one or two children.

Yesterday Ms von der Leyen said she had been taken aback by some hostile responses to her proposal that men should take two months off work. One male television presenter demanded to know whether she wanted to whip men back into their homes.

"It shows the deep contempt with which raising children is regarded," she said, adding that another difficulty was that some women were unable to find a suitable man.

Ms von der Leyen has attracted media flak for working in Berlin while her husband and seven children remain in Hannover. However, she told Stern: "I'm astonished that women still have to justify themselves when they want to work. No father has to do this."

Birth rates

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
Source: Eurostat

[Basra-]

Someone here will fit very good among the Germans,childless population!

[wesley]

Darf ich um diesen Tanz bitten?

[fagash_killer]

ich bin faqash_kiler du heibst

[fagash_killer]

ich bin faqash_kiler du heibst