Ahead of Valentine’s Day, France has a message for young adults: Have kids before it’s too late.
France’s Ministry of Health has announced that French President Emmanuel Macron will send out a letter urging 29-year-olds to have children before it’s too late, explaining that this age represents an important turning point in fertility.
The ministry also announced a series of measures to “allow everyone to make informed, personal choices.” Health Minister Stéphanie Rist’s office has told press that “the role of politicians is not to be prescriptive but to open up possibilities,” according to Le Figaro.
The letter, written by Macron, will be sent by the French government to all 29-year-olds, reportedly before summer’s end, providing scientific information on fertility and artificial insemination. Back in 2024, Macron had called for a “demographic rearmament.”
The letter is part of a 16-point plan to halt France’s declining birth rate and ensure that French men and women do not face fertility issues later and wish they had had the proper information earlier in life. Macron “reiterates that fertility is a shared responsibility of women and men,” according to France’s Health Ministry, as both sexes have a “biological clock.”
It also stated that one in eight couples suffers from infertility, and that women can freeze their eggs at the age of 29, even without a medical certificate, with social security covering the cost of preserving eggs until the age of 37.
The health ministry’s plan envisages expanding fertility centers and researching various causes of infertility.
France currently has 1.56 children per woman, much lower than the fertility rate of 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population, notes Hungarian portal HIrado, adding that it is still, however, higher than the rate in most countries in the Western world and in developed countries in the Far East (e.g., South Korea, Japan, China).
Some young people expressed displeasure with Macron’s message and cited financial and environmental reasons for postponing having children. Parental leave is a big reason many have postponed having children.
“My son will soon be two years old, and I am struggling to get paid for my maternity leave, which only lasted four months with a c-section,” wrote one woman, according to the women’s magazine Her.ie. Another said, “I wish one day mothers would be paid properly for taking care of their children in the first years of their lives. This is so important.”
The ministry also highlighted that it will be conducting a thorough review of perinatal and maternal health, two areas where France is notably weak. “France has a higher maternal and infant mortality rate than its main European neighbors, maternal mortality remains unchanged, and infant mortality, particularly neonatal mortality, has been increasing slightly since 2011,” the ministry warns.
