Germans have stopped having children -- and the number of couples opting for a childless life is rising every year to the consternation of politicians and employers in the eurozone's biggest economy.
While figures released by the French government this month showed France's population could balloon from its current level of 60.2 million to 75 million by 2050, the UN predicts that Germany's is set to plummet from 82 million to 70.8 million in the same period.
"I am nearly 35 years old, I am married and I haven't got any children," said "Donna," participating in a recent discussion on the Internet site of women's magazine Brigitte.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
"There is no particular reason apart from the fact that I have never imagined myself having any," she said.
A study by Germany's federal institute for demographic research showed that 26 percent of men and 15 percent of women aged between 20 and 39 do not want to start a family, a sharp rise since 1992 when the figures were 12 percent of men and 10 percent of women.
"There is an increasing belief that not having children is the ideal way of life," the authors of the study concluded.
This growing trend has many people in Germany wringing their hands.
With a rapidly aging population, Germany is now distancing itself from its European neighbors in other ways too.
German women, for example, want an average of 1.7 children compared with at least two in most other European countries. Forty percent of university-educated women of child-bearing age are without a child.
"Abandoning the idea of children is abandoning the idea of life," Otto Schily, the radical lawyer turned German interior minister, said recently.
He should know: he has two daughters.
For many women, however, having children means abandoning their careers.
Working mothers complain that all too often they are seen as Rabenmutter, which translates as "cruel mothers" -- women who dump their kids in childcare so they can pursue their personal goals.
Yet in a country where schools generally finish for the day at 1:30pm, balancing work and children is a headache.
"Places in creches are hard to get, and expensive," said Andrea, 35, in the Brigitte chat room. "I just can't imagine myself having a child, staying at home and becoming financially dependent on my partner or the state."
The German government has pledged to create 230,000 daycare places by 2010 and the idea of extending the school day is under discussion in some regions.
Germans also tend to be students longer than in other countries, with many still enrolled at university and college until they are at least 30.
This lengthy study period is "a reliable method of contraception," said the minister responsible for families, Renate Schmidt.
The trend towards childlessness is recent -- until the start of the 1990s almost 60 percent of women aged between 25 and 29 had a baby. The figure has plunged to 29 percent today.
Many recent studies have pinpointed psychological factors as putting the brake on the desire to start a family.
"In Germany, having children isn't sexy," said Marie-Luise Lewicki, the editor of Eltern magazine.
"We don't just need creches and day-long schooling, we need a change in society," she said.
The federal institute for demographic research said the main reason cited for not having children was the lack of either a partner or a stable relationship, which accounted for 83 percent of respondents.
However, nearly 60 percent said concerns for the future of their potential children had dissuaded them.
In a different study, released by the Forsa polling institute in January, only 29 percent of women pointed to the financial burden of a child and only 39 percent named not wanting to give up their career as their reason for not having children.
Having a family "seems to have become an abstract idea," the federal institute concluded.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in recent days was the focus of the media due to his role in arranging a Chinese “student” group to visit Taiwan. While his team defends the visit as friendly, civilized and apolitical, the general impression is that it was a political stunt orchestrated as part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, as its members were mainly young communists or university graduates who speak of a future of a unified country. While Ma lived in Taiwan almost his entire life — except during his early childhood in Hong Kong and student years in the US —
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on Monday unilaterally passed a preliminary review of proposed amendments to the Public Officers Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法) in just one minute, while Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, government officials and the media were locked out. The hasty and discourteous move — the doors of the Internal Administration Committee chamber were locked and sealed with plastic wrap before the preliminary review meeting began — was a great setback for Taiwan’s democracy. Without any legislative discussion or public witnesses, KMT Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩), the committee’s convener, began the meeting at 9am and announced passage of the
Prior to marrying a Taiwanese and moving to Taiwan, a Chinese woman, surnamed Zhang (張), used her elder sister’s identity to deceive Chinese officials and obtain a resident identity card in China. After marrying a Taiwanese, surnamed Chen (陳) and applying to move to Taiwan, Zhang continued to impersonate her sister to obtain a Republic of China ID card. She used the false identity in Taiwan for 18 years. However, a judge ruled that her case does not constitute forgery and acquitted her. Does this mean that — as long as a sibling agrees — people can impersonate others to alter, forge
In response to a failure to understand the “good intentions” behind the use of the term “motherland,” a professor from China’s Fudan University recklessly claimed that Taiwan used to be a colony, so all it needs is a “good beating.” Such logic is risible. The Central Plains people in China were once colonized by the Mongolians, the Manchus and other foreign peoples — does that mean they also deserve a “good beating?” According to the professor, having been ruled by the Cheng Dynasty — named after its founder, Ming-loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功, also known as Koxinga) — as the Kingdom of Tungning,
RSS