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Germany Fights Population Drop

nytimes.com

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Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#31

Post by freehunter »

thejdude wrote: post #7

German here. The initiative to provide a kindergarden for every child is quite a failure. It was decreed by the federal govt that every city (i.e. local govt) has to provide enough resources, but there simply aren't enough kindergarden workers for that (and not enough money to get more people to do that badly paid job). As I see it, it was just an easy way to gain votes. It's easy to pass laws that your own governmen…

Coming from the US, the idea that kindergarten is not required seems odd to me. I was going to say that kindergarten is required here in the US, but I thought I should double check that just to be sure. I was pretty surprised by the results. Only 16 of the 50 states require kindergarten as part of the mandatory (compulsory) education [1]. The state where I went to school doesn't require kindergarten, but my very very poor family still sent me to school at age 5.

So yeah, I guess we don't require kindergarten, but I've never encountered anyone in the US who did not attend kindergarten. So it still sounds odd that Germany doesn't have universal kindergarten zumal das Wort ist Deutsch.

[1] http://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_3.asp

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#32

Post by a8da6b0c91d »

freehunter wrote: post #25
tomp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while the mother returns to work But why? I'm young and child-less, so I'm not speaking out of experience, but I really see no reasons why we should be encouraging people to be able to work while having kids . Instead, I think we should enable them to not work and have kids . 50 years ago, it was more than possible to sustain a family with only a single working parent. Nowadays, this doesn't seem even remotely poss…

I think it's considered healthy these days for children to spend time away from their family in the care of others. It helps to develop a sense of individuality and independence from the parents at a younger age. Plus, from what I've heard, sometimes the parents and the children just need a break from each other. Yes, this can be done by taking the kid to a park or other social activities, but two working parents is…

I have friends and family who work in primary education and they all say it's immediately obvious which children have two working parents. The kids without a full time homemaker have far more developmental problems.

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#33

Post by TulliusCicero »

sliverstorm wrote: post #18
cylinder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the biggest gap in western governments currently, and huge productivity boosts could be had if they solve this problem. Especially in the US. It's incomprehensible that a parent should have to pay thousands per month just to be able to have a child and work at the same time. Paid maternal leave is not the big issue! After six months of leave, the problem remains that a child needs to be looked after a…

It's incomprehensible that a parent should have to pay thousands per month just to be able to have a child and work at the same time. Why is it incomprehensible? Watching a kid takes time, time costs money. Someone has to pay for it. Maybe you don't think it's right that the parent should be the one to pay for supervision of their kid, but I'm still lost as to how you arrived at "incomprehensible".

It's incomprehensible that it still works this way in a modern economy. The eventual financial benefit of the child goes to society, not the parents, therefore it follows that society should bear the initial financial cost.

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#34

Post by hnal943 »

epx wrote: post #21

Society needs fresh blood to work, pay taxes, pay our retirement pensions, but the bill is still stuck upon the individuals that choose to have children. Only crazy people have children nowadays.

Do you think people choose to have kids out of obligation to "Society?"

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#35

Post by TulliusCicero »

freehunter wrote: post #31
thejdude wrote: post #7

German here. The initiative to provide a kindergarden for every child is quite a failure. It was decreed by the federal govt that every city (i.e. local govt) has to provide enough resources, but there simply aren't enough kindergarden workers for that (and not enough money to get more people to do that badly paid job). As I see it, it was just an easy way to gain votes. It's easy to pass laws that your own governmen…

Coming from the US, the idea that kindergarten is not required seems odd to me. I was going to say that kindergarten is required here in the US, but I thought I should double check that just to be sure. I was pretty surprised by the results. Only 16 of the 50 states require kindergarten as part of the mandatory (compulsory) education [1]. The state where I went to school doesn't require kindergarten, but my very very…

IIRC Kindergarten isn't as narrowly defined in Germany as in the US; in Germany it also covers pre-school years.

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#36

Post by klunger »

jobu wrote: post #6

"Demographers say that a far better investment would be to support women juggling motherhood and careers by expanding day care and after-school programs." In college I had a professor from East Germany that talked about this. The communists did a lot of things wrong, but one thing they got right was an impressive support system for working parents. The preschools and child care programs were excellent, and women were…

Norway has an excellent subsidized preschool program. It is called it kindergarten here, but is for children age 1-5. Children start public school at age 6 and most parents have paid leave for one parent or the other for a child aged 0-1.

The kindergarten prices are based on a sliding scale (with a maximum fee), so even a single mother with a relatively low paying job can afford it and rich people don't pay absurd amounts either. The result is that almost all parents work, it is frowned upon to be a "stay at home mom," and single mothers do not struggle so terribly, like in the US where there is very little childcare support.

The other result is that Norway is one of the few countries in Europe with a positive growth rate (not even counting immigration). One could argue that the other factors like paid maternity/paternity leave help, but the affordable child care seems much more important to most parents I know here.

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#37

Post by TulliusCicero »

hnal943 wrote: post #34
epx wrote: post #21

Society needs fresh blood to work, pay taxes, pay our retirement pensions, but the bill is still stuck upon the individuals that choose to have children. Only crazy people have children nowadays.

Do you think people choose to have kids out of obligation to "Society?"

Most don't, obviously. He's still right, though: kids financially benefit the wider society, but most of the initial costs are borne by the individual parents. And since statistically speaking, having kids doesn't make you any happier (and at least temporarily makes you less happy), having kids does seem rather irrational on its face.

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#38

Post by JeffL »

lkrubner wrote: post #28

This is an editorial comment disguised as objective reporting: "But bogged down with failed banks and dwindling budgets, few are in any position to do anything about it." The reasoning is something like "We can not save ourselves from collapse because we are collapsing." This is not a serious line of reasoning. Whenever people are faced with 2 problems, they need to make a decision about which problem is more urgent.…

We are not poorer now, but as you pointed out, children have gone from being profitable to being a burden, so no matter how much money we may have, there is less incentive to have children.

I'm also thinking that back in the day, your children were your retirement plan, so better have enough of them to make sure you will be taken care of. But now that the state is our retirement plan, even less reason to have kids.

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#39

Post by TulliusCicero »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #29

> “If you look closely at the numbers, what you see is the higher the gender equality, the higher the birthrate,” I think that's exactly backwards. Afghanistan has the highest birthrate. The less gender equality, the higher the birthrate. You get astronomical birthrates in the Hasidim and Islamic parts of Africa where women hold a subservient place to their husbands and have a constrained gender role. The Nazis had s…

Nah, you can fix the sentence by adding what was unspoken but assumed:

> "If you look closely at the numbers, what you see is that in developed countries, the higher the gender equality, the higher the birthrate,”

Re: Germany Fights Population Drop

#40

Post by lutusp »

hnal943 wrote: post #34
epx wrote: post #21

Society needs fresh blood to work, pay taxes, pay our retirement pensions, but the bill is still stuck upon the individuals that choose to have children. Only crazy people have children nowadays.

Do you think people choose to have kids out of obligation to "Society?"

In a word, yes. Let me remind you of the meaning of "proletarian".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat

Quote: "... children—proles (from Latin proli, "offspring")—were listed instead of their property; hence, the name proletarius, "the one who produces offspring"."

In Rome the proletariat were nothing less than baby factories. Many were completely indoctrinated in this role, regarding it as their duty.

And this class has existed, with different names, to the present.

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