France’s baby push: Why government efforts to boost births backfire

Despite a strong intellectual tradition and a historical propensity towards revolution, the French are viewed as social conformists. 

Whether heading off on holiday with their entire extended family, or sitting around a restaurant table with a dozen workmates, they usually operate in large groups, and are proud of their common civic values and shared cultural canon. 

Berets and stripey tops are outdated clichés, along with ever-burning Gitanes and a penchant for garlic, but you can still tell a French person by a shoulder-shrugging, charmingly moody demeanour that is unmistakably Gallic.

The stereotypes extend to domestic life, as young people are traditionally encouraged to settle down with three children and a Renault hatchback as early as possible. 

The tax and social security incentives for such an arrangement are very attractive, as are the masses of extremely cheap houses available outside the major cities. 

This is all linked to France’s past as a devout Roman Catholic nation, and a predominantly rural one centred on the sanctity of nuclear families and the countryside needed for them to expand. 

It is also a way of providing the recruits required for large armies, and the multiple police and paramilitary units that are always on duty across France. 

Extremely conservative mores are certainly evident in a new government initiative spurring citizens to start having babies before they turn 29. 

A 16-point plan aims to boost the fertility rate, which – as in most Western countries, including Britain and the US – is tumbling. As President Emmanuel Macron put it: if people want “France to stay France” then a rise in births is essential. 

Young people will thus receive letters full of “scientifically sound information” about how to ensure a pregnancy, while being encouraged to get on with it as quickly as possible.

The French nanny state is thus as bossy as ever, but there are now plenty of reasons why women and men might not want to respond to its diktats in the way they used to. 

President Macron, who is childless at 48, is a perfect example of how supremely successful French people do not necessarily see traditional roles as being the right ones. 

On the contrary, medical advances and rapidly changing mindsets are persuading people to have children far later, or not at all.

Article 1 of the current Constitution states that “France is a secular republic”, meaning the religious overtones of the new government literature have troubled many people too. 

This is especially so when far-right parties – including Rassemblement National, the largest party in parliament – push Christian values as being the bedrock of “true” France, while forgetting that the other major monotheistic religions, including Islam and Judaism, are just as socially conservative and family orientated. 

Beyond manipulating religion for political purposes, extremists are also inclined to support the Great Replacement Theory – the poisonous and statistically nonsensical argument that immigrant populations reproduce faster than “indigenous” European ones, and will eventually take over through strength of numbers. 

Hence the need for more of the “right kind” of children to keep France French. As one far-right and overtly racist poster during the last parliamentary election read: “Give a future to white children.”

The reality is that state encouragement to procreate is as sinister as it is ineffective. Life choices are many and varied, and, in 2026, we are all eminently capable of making our own.