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Originally Posted by mousquet
I was very surprised the 1st time I heard of this. The basic problem in Germany is some sort of little sexism combined to a certain notion of parenting. The latter is the key issue here. I think that's what Crawford is alluding to. In the German lifestyle, a young mother shouldn't be working. They're supposed to stay home to take care of their little kids. Once kids are teens, they may work without being called unfit, neglectful mothers. It can't work in contemporary society. Many young women would rather care about their careers and say - we'll see about kids later.
They only need to learn how to rely on nurseries while they're at work, then this particular problem would be solved. I know some mean French would say - ha ha, we'll soon be the largest population of Western Europe. The smarter point is the Germans are actually quite helpful, eh. It's no secret here. So we have no interest in seeing their population declining.
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This seems to be the preferred explanation of the moment among demographers, but I'm not convinced. For one, Germany has the second highest overall female labor participation rate among G7 countries and an average maternal employment rate (higher than the US and about the same as the UK). Moreover, working mothers have been the norm in East Germany since long before anywhere in Western Europe or North America, yet birth rates there are no higher than in West German states. Similarly, Austria has one of the highest maternal activity rates in the world, but its fertility rate is nearly as low as Germany's.
There is a strong 'naturalist' undercurrent in West Germany that might explain why parents are reluctant to leave their children at childcare centers all day, but again, sociocultural norms and attitudes with regard to child rearing/parenthood in English-speaking countries are much more similar to those of (West) Germans than to those of the French, yet their fertility rates are closer to the latter.
Germany has become something of a laboratory for demographic/immigration policies and dealing with an aging workforce. It should be noted that fertility rates of non-immigrant Canadians or white Americans, for instance, aren't all that much higher than those of Germans (France seems to be an exception in this regard). What makes Germany's problems more acute, however, is that its immigrants have similarly low fertility rates as the native population and that fertility rates have been consistently low for longer than other countries, so that the shift in its age structure is more advanced.