Closing the fertility gap. At the EU Parliament a “secular” agenda against falling birth rates.

Brussels – A “secular and progressive” Agenda to address the fertility gap – the difference between how many children people would like to have and how many they actually have – by putting individual free choice at the core. “It’s not about convincing anyone to have children or more children. We simply want to create the conditions so that everyone can be free to have as many children as they want, and to have them, or to at least start trying, when they want,” Eleonora Voltolina, journalist, social entrepreneur, and founder of The Why Wait Agenda initiative, explained, launching at the European Parliament the public commitment to act at the European level to close the fertility gap and address the issue of external factors that can affect people’s choice.

Almost everywhere in Europe, people want to have slightly more than two children but the total fertility rate is currently only 1.53 children per woman, Voltolina recalled, introducing the reasons why “many people feel compelled to put off the choice to have children.” From fertility problems to discrimination against women in the workplace because they are potentially at risk of motherhood, from inequalities within the family on caregiving activities to access to medically assisted reproduction today denied in many countries to certain categories of people. That is why, faced with a complex reality, answers cannot be simplistic: “Choice must always be the guiding star” and, unlike the “vast majority of organizations and political parties that currently place birth rates at the top of their political agendas,” The Why Wait Agenda strongly reiterates that “any restriction of reproductive and sexual rights, such as contraception and abortion, as a political strategy to increase birth rates must be completely rejected.”

Crucial to closing the fertility gap include fertility awareness and education, policies for equal parental leave, cultural change toward equal parenting, countering the motherhood penalty (the additional disadvantage of women with children compared to those without) in the labor market, and universal access to medically assisted reproduction, regardless of marital status or sexual orientation. “We are not here to judge people by when, how, or with whom they choose to start a family,” Voltolina made clear, addressing anyone who feels interested in the issue of birthrate: “We want to talk about heterosexual couples having children, single women, Lgbtq+ couples,” to families “with young parents and with elderly parents, mothers, and fathers who are homemakers or who work,” to caregiving activities “that have no gender.” Hence the appeal to MEPs of this and the post-election European legislature in June: “I hope that the next EU Parliament will not consider the declining birth rate as a women-only problem,” she says, reiterating that “it is necessary to consider children as a shared responsibility, inside and outside the home to achieve gender equality.”

Among the first signatories of the commitment launched in the project of Journalism for Social Change is the head-delegation of the Democratic Party to the European Parliament, Brando Benifei, who supported the Agenda on behalf of the entire group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats: “I am pleased to sign this commitment, which takes an intelligent and articulate position on the crucial issue of birth rate.” At the January 24 presentation at the European Parliament, demographer and professor at the University of Padua Alessandra Minello spoke of “the centrality of fertility is not only limited to its economic aspect,” but “personal experiences, especially those related to reproductive health, must be put at the center of reflection.” The founder and director of the Dutch Emancipator Foundation, Jens Van Tricht, strongly emphasized that “our priority is the engagement and responsibilities of fathers in care, family, and reproduction,” including through “equality of paid and unpaid work, revaluation of care and reproduction, work-life balance,” to be achieved through a “profound cultural transformation to free everyone from the gender stereotypes that limit each of us.”