To think France's plan to write to every 29 year old reminding them to breed is patronising nonsense??

@igelkott2026 Birth rates are declining globally. The real issue is that people are living longer thanks to modern medicine and improved living conditions. That’s why there’s so many of us.

The world population needs to drop. The problem is that the wrong sort of people are having kids. We need more intelligent, educated people to have children and fewer of the feckless, uneducated and unemployed.

Birth rates among immigrants drop to national average within generation or so. Birth rates are dropping rapidly worldwide.

Currently, countries like the UK rely on plundering poorer countries for their working age, well educated, amd well off citizens. Like yet another resource to be mined.

It does, just not among the "right" sort of people.

And destroy the planet.

All this is about is a panic that brown people are having more kids than white people. The horror of it.

There are too many people in the world already and the fewer children people have the better.

A lot of this isn’t unique to France, in my country (Eastern European one) you also need pre-marital health checks - for some STIs, and a psychiatric assessment to check there’s no reason why you can’t legally marry (eg you might lack the mental capacity to enter into a legal contract). You also can’t disinherit your children.
They also had some moronic adverts to encourage people to have children a while ago - something along the lines of how getting pregnant is like a free boob job as it makes your boobs bigger 🫣
So if you think the French adverts are bad…

Though on the whole Europe does need more people to have more children. Pretty much every country has an ageing population.

Is there a French version of MN and if so do they clamor to go 'no contact' with their parents as much as this one?

If I was French I’d probably be shocked to find out in other countries you can disinherit your kids (I know someone who did in favour of their new wife they married really late in life) and you can just wash your hands of the people who raised you.

Of course there are some situations where a family member does something horrific and doesn’t deserve to be bothered with again

Are you guys really just discovering that different countries have different cultures and different set of laws?

Obviously I realise that this was the reason but I was replying to a post that asserted that NO ONE was forced to have an examination before marriage. This may be an exceptional case but it still shows that it does happen.

Were talking about a country where you can't disinherit your kids, and you can be made to financially support your parents. I think it can.

Some people do actually want kids, though, so if they find out they can’t, then no, that's not a good thing for them personally. Not necessarily bad for society, though.

It might have been helpful to someone like me to know I couldn't freeze my eggs, as the idea never occurred to me then. I was 33 when my DH and I started ttc and I was already infertile and didn't have eggs. (I might not have had any at 29, either, but it would have been helpful to know that.) We adopted in the end.

@Designless Surely AI isn’t going to replace everyone?

I was curious after someone mentioned Japan and apparently the labor market there is tight due to a shortage of younger people. So I think that finding a job won’t be hard if the number of young people shrinks.

I got married in France in 2003 and we both had see a doctor. We dutifully toddled off to my gynae and I (but not my future husband mind) was sent off to the lab with a list of blood tests as long as my arm. They stopped this in 2008 apparently, but before then you couldn't get married without a doctor's certificate.

My baby is still cooking so no personal experience there, but my friends and coworkers have all had very positive experiences breastfeeding at work and when out and about. Where I am, it is generally viewed very positively to breastfeed and there are lots of initiatives to help people breastfeed when and how they like. Sounds similar to Italy, which is really positive.

Unfortunately, the change to France's default pattern of 6 weeks pre-birth + 10 weeks post has to be medically validated by a doctor. I asked for more leave post-birth and less leave before, and they said no. So it's not something everyone can do.

But this wasn’t the legal requirement. From the document:
*I, the undersigned, Doctor of Medicine, certify that I have:

✔ Performed a clinical examination of the person named below.
✔ For a woman under age 50: reviewed the results of serological tests for rubella and toxoplasmosis, unless the patient could prove immunity.
✔ Reviewed the results of a blood test including determination of blood group (A, B, O), Rh factor, and, where relevant, irregular antibody screening.
✔ Discussed with the examinees and offered a test for HIV, after informing them of risks of contamination (this is included in the legal text on the form).
✔ Commented on the official health information brochure that was handed to the future spouses*

There is no requirement for a gynaecological examination specified.

Mussolini had "The Battle for Births" ....

The medal still exists for those who have four or more. And have brought them up properly.

Wasn’t that examination to ensure she was a virgin? There’s no way they could have known for sure she was fertile just through a gynae examination. They (she and Charles) could have had unexplained infertility.

The world is hardly underpopulated.

Why? Have a look at the historical reasons behind it - across many countries BTW. It’s linked to diseases that may not be obvious that could be passed on to any future children so it was a kind of screening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premarital_medical_examination

She HAD to produce a male heir. Her only purpose in life was to have at least 1 boy. If they had discovered that she was infertile before the wedding the whole thing would have been cancelled . No good crossing their fingers and hoping for the best.

I suspect the subtext is they want nice "French" babies, rather than the alternative.

Isn't this a Tory and Reform shibboleth ? Breed for Britain ?

The UK’s birth rate is not too high, it is actually too low to sustain future generations