Mother’s Day returns this year in a strange climate. That of a demographic concern that has become obsessive. “Birth crisis”, “demographic collapse”: there seems to be no superlative strong enough to describe the situation we have entered, with now more deaths than births. As if the decline in the number of babies alone heralded the end of the world.
However, this reversal of the curves had been planned for a long time. Since the 1970s, we have known that we are no longer having as many children as during the Trente Glorieuses and that, due to the aging of the population, deaths would automatically end up exceeding births for a few years.
Instrumentalizations and injunctions
The French population has increased by 70% compared to the beginning of the 20th century, and the world population is five times larger. If humanity can fear for its future, it is not the declining birth rate that threatens it. At multiple times in our history, the birth rate has fallen then increased without a particular pronatalist policy really having much to do with it. In each era the same fears, the same debates, the same exploitations return. And of course, for women, the same injunctions.
In 2026, we are still called upon to give birth for the homeland, to save pensions or support the economy. My point is simple: panic makes us make bad decisions and sends us in the wrong direction.
What if we were really interested in the birth rate based on those who make it possible? Let’s step back and listen to mothers. Because if the fertility rate has fallen below the figure of 1.6 children per woman in France, the majority of women continue to want families with more than two children. This discrepancy should deeply question us. It says something about our times.
No miracle measure
If we really listened to mothers, we would understand that there is no miracle measure, simple and inexpensive, capable of instantly increasing births. The answer does not exist because the question is not the right one. The question is not how to make women produce more and more human beings, but under what conditions life can continue to be livable.
Women do not renounce motherhood out of individual whim or contemporary selfishness. They know that raising a child requires security, resources, stability, confidence in the future. And they lack all of this.
If we listened to them, we would understand that their living conditions, equality between women and men, peace and prosperity are essential determinants of the desire to have children. That for life to flourish, we need an environment capable of producing water, air and food, a health system capable of providing care, a school capable of nurturing growth and ensuring a future. And time. Time for care. The time life takes.
Let women be free
But we don’t listen to mothers, who we celebrate during a holiday before sending them back to the responsibilities of the private sphere for the rest of the year, who we would like to see disappear from businesses or from the benches of the Assembly. Mothers who are punished when they protect their children from incestuous fathers, who are allowed to survive on meager incomes when they raise their children alone, as evidenced by the latest note from the Observatory for the Economic Emancipation of Women on the cost of single parenthood for women.
Children who we wish for but who we welcome so poorly, who disturb us on trains, in cafes and in the streets, who we protect neither at school nor on social networks. Those for whom the State is responsible are not doing much better: a huge proportion of young people from child welfare end up on the street. And how could it be otherwise when we speak of children as future contributors, future consumers or future deaths in combat? In short, like instruments, resources useful for a higher purpose.
We walk with our heads upside down. Because it is life that should be the aim of all public policy. At the dawn of a presidential election, the subject of the birth rate could nevertheless allow us to come together around a major objective: creating the conditions for a livable world. And finally leave women free to decide how many children they want.
Abandon this umpteenth attempt to regain control over women’s bodies. And finally face the courageous decisions necessary for humanity to continue to exist. On the eve of Mother’s Day, something obvious deserves to be remembered: more than ever, motherhood is political.
(1) Author of The demographic panic. A feminist response, Les Petits Matins, 132 p., €14, 2026.
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