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Replacement of parental leave with “shorter and better paid birth leave” and fight against infertility… The measures announced by the President to boost the birth rate obscure the real obstacles faced by people wishing to have children, such as absence of public early childhood services.
A martial injunction, which even enters the bedrooms of the French. Tuesday evening, in his press conference from the Elysée, Emmanuel Macron declined his new mantra to respond to what he presents as a birth crisis. Economic, civic, the “rearmament“Macronian now also wants to be “demographic», asserted the Head of State, a few hours after the dissemination by INSEE of figures showing a historic decline in births (-6.6% in 2023). “Our France will be stronger through the revival of the birth rate”urged the president, announcing a plan to combat infertility and a new “birth leave”. Measures intended to respond to the French fertility rate at half mast: this stood in 2023 at 1.68 children per woman (compared to 1.79 in 2022), a year during which less than 700,000 babies pushed their first cry, a threshold never crossed since the end of the Second World War. As for infertility, it is increasing by 0.3% per year in men and 0.4% in women, recalls Professor Samir Hamamah, president