“From 2025, we will create family leave, a new right for parents” – L’Express

L’Express: To what extent does France have a real birth rate problem?

Aurore Bergé : There has been a downward trend in the birth rate for ten years and an acceleration of this decline since 2022. Today, demographers and sociologists have difficulty explaining it: will it only be cyclical, as in the 1990s; Or is this likely to become a more structural phenomenon? It’s the starting point. Then, do we consider this to be a problem? Some people will say no, that there are too many of us, that it is in our interest to reduce the number of inhabitants of this planet…

Is this a bad argument? We sometimes find it in environmentalist circles…

Today, it is estimated that around 5% of people do not want to have children, whatever the reasons. Moreover, this movement remains in the minority. Even if I respect him, it seems to me that we should not give him disproportionate weight compared to what he represents in public opinion. On the other hand, my mission is to support those who want to start a family, and who find themselves obliged to postpone this project, to restrict their desire to have children or, unfortunately, to give it up. In my eyes, this is the only question that is valid for the public policies for which I am responsible: making what is desired possible; remove obstacles throughout the family project.

Isn’t the falling birth rate also an economic problem for the country? It was, in any case, one of the points raised by LR and the RN during the pension reform.

Yes, the decline in the birth rate is already having consequences on our social model which is based on solidarity between generations. But we cannot say to the French “have children because you must save our social model”! It is up to political leaders to guarantee its sustainability! It is up to us to find the answers, in terms of early childhood, parenthood, education, reconciling family and professional life for the thousands of people who, every year, give up, often in suffering, what is still one of the most powerful, most intimate projects one can have.

One in four couples in our country experience difficulty conceiving a child. One over four ! Too many of them experience it as a shameful illness, do not know where to turn, how to be supported, and too many have undoubtedly been recommended to postpone their family project with the argument of principle “it is not the good time”… Until it may be too late. PMA is a wonderful step forward, but it does not guarantee the success of every child’s project.

What are the obstacles identified to this desire to have children?

There are objective obstacles. The first is childcare. It is an immense and very concrete anguish, which emerges well before the arrival of a baby. How to combine it with your professional life? How to maintain a social life? In survey after survey, the question of childcare becomes absolutely central. My duty is to guarantee the public early childhood service, to allow all parents to have a childcare solution, whether it is a childminder, whether it is home care or a place in a crèche. A technocratic and patriarchal vision has long considered the subject as accessory. It’s not at all. On the contrary, it is at the heart of our demographic ambitions. This is why we have invested colossal resources, six billion euros between 2023 and 2027, for this public early childhood service. We have to pull out all the stops so that things can actually change in the lives of families. This will be definitively enshrined in law in a few days.

Our family policies remained largely stuck in the 1970s. A time when we thought it was a given to have children, when there were undoubtedly fewer questions to ask. We had younger children, we had fewer difficulties from a biological point of view in conceiving, the grandparents were nearby… This is no longer the reality of today’s families, it must be to assume. Added to this is the massive increase in separations, which raises the question of the responsibility and continued commitment of both parents. Because when you separate from your spouse, you should never separate from your child.

Finally, there is the question of family reconstitutions. We must ask ourselves the question of the status of in-laws. Today, France has nearly 800,000 reconstituted families with step-parents who have often been there since the children’s very early years, who raised them, who contributed to their education, who love them but who, from the day the next day, may no longer have any relationship with them, cannot transmit… This status of in-laws is a line of reflection that I want to launch, including in matters of donation and inheritance.

After your arrival at the government, at the end of July, you put on the table the idea of ​​transforming parental leave. Where we are ?

Here we are ! From 2025, we will create a new right for families. Finally, real family leave. Today we have a leave that exists, which is two years and which can go up to three years if it is shared between the two parents, compensated at a maximum of 430 euros per month. The idea is to create an additional right, a new right. After maternity leave and paternity leave, parents will each be entitled to family leave, which they can take at the same time or one after the other, full-time or part-time, for a birth or adoption. .

And this new family leave will be much better paid to guarantee the middle classes have access to it. Today, a parent who earns €2,000 or €3,000 per month cannot stop, even though they have just had a child, and see, overnight, their income drop to 430 euros. With our reform, parents will finally have the material and financial conditions to be able to stop and take care of their baby in its first months, if they wish. It will be their freedom, their right, their choice. It’s a real revolution!

Is this a new right, not a transformation of existing parental leave?

Yes, it’s a new right. Why not make the current parental leave coexist with this new family leave? This is one of the questions put on the table in the consultation that I am leading with the social partners and the UNAF at the request of the Prime Minister.

In the context we know in the National Assembly, with this relative majority, do you think you can have this measure adopted?

Honestly, what would be the objective reasons to oppose this new right? A right that will make life easier for families. A right which corresponds to a deep expectation of thousands of parents who tell us “We did not have enough time with our child”. A right which is favorable to equality between women and men because it is equitably shared. What could be the umpteenth criticism? I am convinced that this new family leave will create consensus. This is good news in the sometimes terrifying, anxiety-provoking times we are experiencing.

Let’s return to the decline in the birth rate: can a public policy today really encourage the French to have more children?

In any case, it can be disincentivizing, that’s very clear. A public policy that does not put all resources on the side of parents would be to the detriment of the number of children in our country. This is absolutely certain. And this is what we have been doing since 2017 with the extension of paternity leave and the first 1000 days strategy. For me, the goal is to create an environment that is increasingly family-friendly. Our country lacks kindness towards parents and children. Let’s stop, collectively, looking sideways at families who enter the train or a restaurant with a stroller. Children are the only population that we accept to socially exclude and discriminate because of their age. Family life should not be the small death of social life or the renunciation of professional ambitions. We all need to be more kind.

Does the country have enough resources, particularly in terms of staff in nurseries, hospitals and schools, to support an increase in the birth rate in the future? Today, there is a shortage of professionals in all medico-social fields. In general, moreover, in the entire field of care, of the human, of the link. We are in shortage of professionals firstly because, for a very long time, we did not really consider them. We haven’t really recognized them as professions in their own right. As if those who take care of the most important thing in our lives, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., that is to say our children, did nothing important during the day. And let’s be clear: their remuneration must better correspond to their immense social importance. We must both make those who are involved in this profession want to stay there and make others want to invest in it. This is what we are doing by putting resources on the table today, throughout the early childhood sector, in the home help professions and obviously in EHPADs. It must be constant work over the next three years to change the situation quickly.

We have seen cases of mistreatment in certain daycare centers emerge in the news, after the ORPEA affair. Have you taken any action? What do you plan to do to remedy these problems?

We did not wait for the journalistic investigations to come out. After the absolute tragedy of the death of little Lisa, a year and a half ago, in a crèche in Lyon, a report from the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs made it possible to collect thousands of testimonies from professionals in the sector to properly measure the reality of things. Mistreatment is not linked to a global economic model but to serious individual errors. They can exist anywhere.

This is why we have put in place a much more drastic control plan, linked to PMIs, and why we have changed the law. And I personally asked that the controls carried out on the ground be made public, with the greatest transparency. This is the basis of responsibility. With the communities, we are providing the means for a training and recruitment plan for professionals in order to improve the rate and quality of supervision of our children. The objective is a rate of 1 professional for 5 children. If we get there by the end of the five-year term, we will have taken a giant step forward.