Frances Comically Bad Fertility Policy (Simone & Malcolm Debate)

In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into France's recent policy proposals aimed at combating the country's falling fertility rates. They analyze President Emmanuel Macron's plan, which includes offering fertility checks for young people, implementing a "birth leave" scheme, and introducing a possible "duty to visit" for fathers in single-parent families. Malcolm and Simone discuss the potential impact of these policies, highlighting the ineffectiveness of fertility checks in encouraging parenthood and the unintended consequences of mandating father involvement. They also touch on the importance of equitable divorce laws, the myth of the two-parent household, and the role of cultural factors in shaping fertility outcomes. Throughout the conversation, the couple emphasizes the need for policymakers to focus on fostering a culture that values family formation and pronatalism, rather than implementing misguided policies that may exacerbate the problem.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, this is Malcolm and Simone here and we are happy to be talking about some pronatalist and policy today. Today's episode is going to be focused on France's recent policy proposals to combat demographic collapse. However, I have not seen them.

So Simone is going to be presenting them to me, and you are going to be getting my in real time reaction.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Yeah, so I recently came across this telegraph article was published, I think, a little earlier this month, but it's about policies that have been discussed for a while. It's called France to offer young people, fertility tax to combat falling fertility rates.

And it discusses a couple of policies, which at best. Not going to do anything at worst are probably going to cause damage at least unless I'm crazy. I want your take on this so the gist is that France's president Emmanuel [00:01:00] Macron is laudable for recognizing demographic collapse as an issue and talking about it France's fertility rate relative to the rest of the EU is actually pretty good.

Malcolm Collins: It, but it had a massive collapse this last year. It did. 70 percent year over year.

Simone Collins: They're still above the EU average. They're still above the UK. They're still above Germany and they're still above Spain. So like generally speaking, France is, the one that looks good maybe because it's a little more Catholic.

Who knows? There's a lot. No. It's because it's less Catholic. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: really? Yeah. If you contrast it with other countries, it's actually more secular. And again, this is what we've seen across a lot of things is that the more Catholic a country is in Europe, the lower its fertility rate was the average Catholic majority country in Europe having a fertility rate of only 1.

3.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But that makes sense then. But anyway they still recognize it's a problem. I really appreciate that. So they get points for that. All right. Petty points for that. But the latest thing that Emmanuel Macron. Prince's president has proposed is fertility checks for young people. He's trying to [00:02:00] get people to test their fertility earlier.

But quite honestly, doing so isn't going to boost fertility.

Malcolm Collins: It sounds like an interesting idea from the

Simone Collins: article. I'll read what they say. Emmanuel Macron is. To offer fertility checks to all 18 to 25 year olds as part of a grand plan to combat declining fertility rates, the French president first announced his ambition to enact French demographic rearmament, which that's fun.

That's a fun term. At a press conference on January 16th, as part of a wide array of measures aimed at reviving his stuttering second term. I don't think that's going to help and I can tell you why, but I want to hear why you think that's interesting and worth trying.

Malcolm Collins: So what age ranges 18 to 25?

Why wouldn't this? It's a great idea actually. So it's very similar to me, to the policy where conservatives to fight abortion, they made it so that women had to [00:03:00] look at a picture of their ultrasound before getting an abortion which dramatically lowers the chance of abortion. They are creating a policy, which is.

encouraging people to recognize their short fertility windows, which is one of the core issues in society today in terms of falling fertility rates, is men do not realize they have fertility windows. They think that because some men occasionally have kids when they're older, that it is normal for the male fertility window to expand.

And well past 40 and it just is not you might occasionally get that, you're going to have a really high rates of diseases and stuff like that. And you're going to have it's just not great. So that's one huge thing that hopefully it can help clear up that myth and force people to understand that myth.

And what

Simone Collins: McCrone recognizes and mentioned in a magazine interview is quote, every woman should have access, should have free access to her body. But one figure stands out for me. The [00:04:00] fertility rate is 1. 8 and the rate of desire for a child is 2. 3. Now that's a good point, right? So there are more, there are women in France who want to, on average, have more kids than they have.

And so it recognizes that people are having fertility problems or that they're not starting when they should. And maybe one, one thing you can enact to change that is to inform them about their fertility. Again, I just. Here's why it's

Malcolm Collins: not informing them about their fertility. You're reading what's happening wrong.

Okay. It's forcing them to take a reality check on their fertility window through the most realistic mechanism available to them. Through just hard data. Women often don't realize how short their fertility window is. Yeah. After 35, if a woman gets pregnant, that's considered a geriatric pregnancy. That is considered an extremely old age pregnancy and likely to lead to complications.

A lot of women don't know the window is 35. They're like, Oh maybe by the time I'm 40 and I'll start thinking about it in my mid thirties. No, if you start thinking about it in your mid thirties, you are [00:05:00] not going to have many kids. You've already lost. You need to be getting married and starting having kids.

In your late twenties, not mid thirties. Okay. So that's another thing. But again,

Simone Collins: here's why I don't think it's going to work. Okay. As much as everyone's we just should inform people. We just need to let them know that their fertility window is short. I don't honestly think that the problem is that people are being unrealistic about their short fertility windows.

I think that many people. Who want to have kids are aware. So basically the people who already want to have kids and plan on having kids know that their fertility window is short and they're struggling to find partners and they're struggling to get their careers in orders and they're still going to wait to have kids because they feel like

Malcolm Collins: literally seen this even among fans of this show.

When we've talked about is males who are under the illusion that their fertility, they're going to be like able to have kids. It's one

Simone Collins: factor. I don't think it's the factor. I think it's one factor, but It's definitely not the defining factor.

Malcolm Collins: It's just, no, it's not the [00:06:00] defining factor, but it is an inexpensive, like if I was going to put the weight anywhere policy wise,