The news about the German birthrate, yesterday, is making big waves here in Germany (where I am stuck, but not for much longer!). Experts, academics and politicians are now demanding that childless people get smaller pensions than parents, or pay more into the retirement system.
When I saw R last night, I asked him why he thought the German birthrate was declining.
"We are a very child-unfriendly society. Children don't fit into people's plans." He pointed
out that there is little support from the government for parents. I
said that American parents got little support from the government,
either. R said that the few German nursery schools were oversubscribed, "and it would never cross anyone's mind to start a new one."
"Americans don't have public nursery schools either," I said. "That can't be the reason. " (Although in France, almost all children start school at age 3, petite section maternelle.) R said that he thought the most important reason was that people felt their children would face a difficult future.
Germans talk about a difficult future. Yet when you look around you, Germans look prosperous. Houses are well-kept-up, everyone has a shiny car (or else), people dress-- well, I can't say they dress well. You have rarely seen so many ugly shoes and coats. But they don't look poor.
"The majority still has it pretty good here. And that's why nothing changes."
R said his daughter did very well on her Abitur (the end-of-high-school exams, like the French baccalauréat). She got into one of the best medical schools in Germany. Medical school here begins right after high school, and the universities are all public and free, creating the endless-studies syndrome-- Germans all seem to have Ph.Ds.
R's daughter wants to become a pediatrician-- and then move to England or Spain. R himself is planning to move to Switzerland once his son has finished school.
We exchanged news of the As who have moved to Australia, and of B who has decided to go there for a year with her family-- but it's her second time to go there for the year, and her oldest son is in his third year there. "I think they won't come back," R said.
I thought of other Germans I know: the Hs, whose sons are growing up British; the Fs, who are raising theirs in Italian; the Ps in Portugal; the Ks in France; the Hs and the Ls sending their kids to London. In fact offhand I can't think of any German friends whose children plan to stay in Germany.
Then we went out to dinner. The restaurant was packed, perhaps 150 people, but there were only three waiters in the whole place. They were all from the former Yugoslavia.
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