Women's Issues

'Regretting motherhood' debate rages in Germany

Because how dare a lady want to look at her life and go,"Yes, this."

Yikes. I had no idea this was such a big thing in Germany.

edited 27th Jun '16 6:21:00 AM by Bur

In a 5-3 decision, the US Supreme Court has ruled a Texas law restricting abortion access to be unconstitutional.

WOW I expected a 4-4 split as usual. Big happy day.

It's probably because Germany has a looming demographic crisis.

No, it's the other way round. Germany has a demographic crisis because the shaming of working mothers. This leads to women not getting children at all.

It's one reason why Germany is tied with Japan and umm crap I forget the other EU country for lowest birth rates.

On the other side of the fence France had a low birth rate and has done the exact opposite with promoting its ok to be a working mother and has helped enable daycare services in major office buildings and malls and such. Their birth rate has turned around sharply since then.

Is it sad that my first thought was "At least they aren't as bad as Japan"? (Even though the end result of continuing down this road is a situation identical to Japan's.)

Edit: Okay, so I wasn't the only one who thought of comparing it to Japan.

edited 27th Jun '16 8:12:38 AM by TotemicHero

Getting numbers, the ones I was thinking of was from a few years ago.

From last year, the 10 countries with the lowest birth rates as of last year

Births per year per 1000 people

• 214 San Marino 8.7
• 215 Taiwan 8.55
• 216 Slovenia 8.54
• 217 Andorra 8.48
• 218 Germany 8.42
• 219 Korea, South 8.26
• 220 Singapore 8.1
• 221 Japan 8.07
• 222 Saint Pierre and Miquelon 7.7
• 223 Monaco 6.72

Much of the rest of Europe isn't much better though and France was once down there but now they are 159th at 12.49 births which is right around the US and UK.

edited 27th Jun '16 8:35:37 AM by Memers

Adding in the cultural issues...yikes, that's pretty close to "Japan bad" in terms of outlook.

Keep in mind that Germany right now is the biggest economic power in the region, so given Japan's poor prospects, this could screw over the EU in the long run. (See? There are practical reasons why you can't just screw over a good part of your work force through sexism.)

Germany isn't Japan levels of bad when it comes to aging population, remember Germany doesn't have as racist an immigration policy as Japan and thus gets young people of working age without them actually being born in Germany.

Culturally it may be similarly bad about the treatment of working mothers though.

A) Germany is worse then Japan.

B) Most of Europe is worse then Japan.

C) South Korea is WAY worese then Japan.

Its just that our media likes to doomsay about it.... CONSTANTLY.

You are using the wrong number, you want total fertility rate, which is actualy not that bad amongst the developed world

Japan

Germany

South Korea

That however is accurate, that immagrant workers can easily solve this, thankfully for Germany there part of the EU.

edited 27th Jun '16 10:56:49 AM by Imca

Aren't the birth rates in general going down amongst the big countries due to a variety of reasons?

I remember reading some stuff about some women and men not choosing to have children at all for various different societal and financial reasons (not even counting personal ones).

It's not big countries so much as its economically developed ones, in the developed world a kid is a burden that you have to put money into and in 20-30 years may provide some payoff in the form of taking care of your retirement.

In the underdeveloped world a kid can be an asset, once they're at schooling age you can have them get a job or work the family farm, they become a source of income much faster in the underdeveloped world because they need to become one, even when they do get schooling the kid can still be much more helpful due to child labour being more accepted and schooling not being as full time as it is in the developed world.

That and people have a lot more choice in the developed world, birth control is far from easily accessible in the underdeveloped world.

edited 27th Jun '16 2:16:31 PM by Silasw

And its not really a bad thing either, with automation and imigrant labor to pick up the slack in unskilled labour.... it is actualy benificial long term, since our current numbers and rate of growth are NOT sustaniable as a race.

edited 27th Jun '16 2:32:00 PM by Imca

Well, it would be better if that population growth was spread out evenly. Cause certain countries (or regions within a country) are facing a duel issue of low fertility rates and youth flight. And having a huge chunk of your population retired and largely dependent on government funded healthcare/benefits isn't sustainable.

And I'm not sure that automation is going to make up for that. And for some countries its far too late for immigration to pick up the slack.

edited 27th Jun '16 4:12:28 PM by Rationalinsanity

There is also the issue of training and educating the immigrant population to pick up more skilled work positions and having a lot of low skill workers is only good when you have a large basics consumer base or export a lot of basic goods, if you can't absorb them all you get is unemployment and increased crime statistics due to said unemployment.

How can do women become successful at work if the time taken to achieve success means she'll have to reproduce by then?

She doesn't have to have kids. If she wants to, she'll get maternity leave (or the father takes care of the kid etc.) and gets back to work when she can. Cultural attitudes are the problem, and they get more pronounced as people realize they don't have to reproduce.

edited 29th Jun '16 12:27:08 AM by TerminusEst

Only in some countries/companies. Most however getting pregnant will cost you your job and/or cost all seniority and progress because of that.

Like I said, cultural. "Be useful or don't be anything" does seem to be the mentality.

edited 29th Jun '16 12:33:12 AM by TerminusEst

Just to clarify: assume we're focusing on the women who do want to reproduce. In addition, companies hiring women won't know whether they're going to reproduce. If an women doesn't reproduce, great! But if she does, the company will have to pay for her months of maternity leave. By contrast, whether or not a man decides to reproduce, he can continue to work for years.

How do we deal with companies using this line of thinking? Tell them the woman can also continue working for a long time, with only relatively short breaks? What exactly is the attitude behind "choose between work or reproduction"? What would be the best way to tackle it?

edited 29th Jun '16 12:38:53 AM by hellomoto

Ignoring the culture of country/company, there is often an extremely mechanical and risk-averse mentality in such companies. Uncertainty is bad, therefore we shall pay less or somehow mitigate the possible costs. Therefore, the fact that the female of the species has the ability to get pregnant is considered a risk.

edited 29th Jun '16 12:56:49 AM by TerminusEst

Men get paternity leave, at times mandatory I belive. Likewise if we make being a stay at home father more acceptable then the risk of a new parent quiting the job will become equal regardless of their gender.

I can count the countries with paternity leave in one hand, meanwhile the few countries I know that don't have maternity leave for sure are the US and China.