Original article from the newspaper Die Presse in German
The article I am writing about I found quite shocking, because it basically said that Austrians don’t want children anymore: here is my translation of it:
In Austrian men and women the wish to have children is lower than in any other country of the European Union. This is what an study by the Eurobarometer which has not been published yet says. 1.68 children is the average 25 to 39 year old Austrian women want. “People will always have children” did the former German chancellor Konrad Adenauer say. “I would not be so sure about that anymore” says Wolfgang Lutz, principal of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Because analogically with the decreasing wish to have children the already very low birthrate (1.46 children) might sink even more drastically than expected. The (improbable) worst case scenario is that in the year 2100 80% of the Austrian population is older than 65.
According to Lutz the reason for the missing longing to have children has several reasons: The “low fertility trap hypothesis” suggests that the number of children that surround young people influence their wish to have children themselves. Since the birthrate in Austria has been dropping constantly since the 1970s a whole generation grew up with a less children surrounding them, than in other countries like Spain where the birthrate started dropping later.
Additionally having children has a bad connotation. Words like “Sondernotstandshilfe” add to the impression that “mothers are problem cases”. Additionally to that it seems that the young people today are used to a pretty high standard of living and see ahead of them a quite uncertain future. And their fear is that with children they would not be able to keep up that standard of living.
That the wish for children among Austrian men is only meets just 1.3 might also have to do with the fact that nowadays they are strongly involved in raising children. In the past children were mainly a status symbol, now they involve labor for men too.
To animate the Austrian population to have children again it will take long-term solutions. What they should look like he cannot say. But “we have to do something about the way this develops. Because if the wish to have children keeps dropping like this, political means of motivation will not be of much help.
France might work as a good role model, where very child friendly politics over the past 50 years and the birthrates and the wish to have children are constantly high. But: If we would adapt the french model to Austria, “it would take decades to have any effect.”
I know that the numbes are not al, but the thing that really made me think is that those numbers of course include alreaday existing families, and those people who want to have a large family (and I am sure there are such!).
