If a conservative party uses the term “family” in their mouths, voters can rely on it: The election program pours out a cornucopia of sweet word creations. They supposedly want to take special care of parents with children. In the 2021 election campaign, the largest ruling party, the CDU / CSU, chose Germany as a “family country”. Real life lags behind this rhetoric. Parents and their children are ignored and disadvantaged – before and after the federal election.
Economists do the math: Those who raise children have less money available than others. Ten to 40 percent less than the average for single parents and couples with small children. This is not surprising, because parents can often work less than childless people, and some want to too. However, the financial gap to childless people would be smaller if politicians seriously supported parents. With really comprehensive care offers for daughters and sons. And with real tax breaks and grants instead of a little bit of child benefit.
Childless couples accumulate twice as much wealth as families
The German idea of promoting families, however, stopped in the 1950s, when women mostly stayed at home and marriage mostly meant children. Today, however, often means marriage Not Children. Spouse splitting invariably grants the greatest tax advantage when the wife stays at home, although most of them want to work today – regardless of whether someone has children. This family refusal is one of the reasons why childless couples amass more than twice as much wealth as couples with children.
In the pandemic, parents experienced what priority they enjoy. Some federal states opened hardware stores in front of schools. And hardly any minister of education induced the teaching staff to teach video for a few hours a day – something even cheap private schools can do. Every second mother did her job in the evening or on the weekend to look after the children. The reward for such efforts was a little child bonus, which did not prevent one in three low-income families from running out of money. One in five of them skipped meals in Germany in 2020.
Some families became particularly concerned during the pandemic. However, they hardly play a role in some election manifestos.
(Photo: Madhourse via www.imago-images.de/imago images / Panthermedia)
Some voters may wonder what the parties are planning for families after this pandemic experience. There are differences, as calculated by the Center for European Economic Research. The SPD, the Greens and the Left are planning to help poor parents with basic child benefits. In general, they want to better position the low-wage earners and the middle class, who usually include parents.
At the CDU / CSU, the self-declared goal of “family land” includes relieving companies and high earners far more after the election than the majority – and thus than most parents. In addition, the Union wants to hold on to spouse splitting, which promotes marriages, regardless of whether there are children. And that punishes mothers financially when they go back to work. The Union sends a fatal signal to parents – and to all men and women who are considering whether they want to become one.
Children are important to this society
It would be correct to allow parents to experience more social justice. There is something else at stake. Contrary to what some citizens think they know, children are not just a nice private affair. The financial security for old age, illness and the need for care in the Federal Republic is essentially based on the fact that children are born. The pension, for example, is primarily designed as a pay-as-you-go system. Workers and companies pay contributions out of which the pensions of current retirees are paid. If no new employees are born, no pensions are paid – or much less. And companies are running out of skilled workers.
Far fewer children have been born in Germany in the past few decades than would be necessary to meet the need for skilled workers or to finance growing numbers of pensioners. It is high time to take countermeasures with tax advantages and childcare offers for families. As in France, where a corresponding policy had consequences: The neighboring country experienced a 50 percent higher birth rate than the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1990s and 2000s.