

German child care

Fighting over the Kinder

Crèches trump the euro and much else in the German election campaign

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Readers' comments



Stavros Saripanidis

Dear Editors,

A 2.1 fertility rate is necessary in order to maintain a Country's population stable, over one generation.

In Germany, child rearing is already heavily subsidised.

2013 fertility rates in Denmark (1.73) and the Netherlands (1.78) remain inadequate, despite exemplary funding and child care!


Low fertility rates in Europe have obviously nothing to do with State funding. They are part of new cultural, social and sexual trends.

Stavros Saripanidis, Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology

A Basque

I am not German, although I live with one and have a daughter together. I come from a background where parents have equally shared child care. Both my parents have been full time workers outside the house. And I don't feel that I have been abandoned. My mother does not feel that she had to work double and what is more important (for me) she does not feel that her closest surrounding (family and friends) treated her differently because she is a woman. I am the fourth generation of working moms outside the house.
My little German experience is showing me how conservative Germany can be when it comes to women's rights. Rather than "Fighting over the Kinder" I would have titled the article "Fighting over women's rights" as this is at the core of the issue.
In the four years that I have been out of the labour market, two as full-time mother, no one in Germany has so far asked me of my future plans or when I would be going back to work (outside).
In my home country, or friends from overseas that I have, they have raised the question. I am not Scandinavian or French. I come from even more to the South. Discovering this part of German mentality has come as a shock to me. I know by now that it is not easy for many German women that become mothers to tell their families that they want to be mothers as much as paid workers in the career of their choice or job found outside. Both should be and can be possible. Or can't it be possible to be father and paid worker at the same time? If yes, BUT... then we simply do not believe in equal opportunities for all human beings. Where does Germany stand on this?


TE: "This is the latest flare-up in a culture war that has made family policy one of the most contested issues ahead of the general election on September 22nd, shoving aside apparently weightier issues like the future of the euro and the politics of energy"

According to a representative poll (August 15th,http://presse.phoenix.de/news/pressemitteilungen/2013/08/20130815_PM_Umfragen/20130815_PM_Umfragen.phtml ) the most important issues are:
1. Rents
2. The future of the Euro
3. Minimum wage
4. Ways out of the financial crisis
5. Energy politics
The issue that supposedly shoved aside other weightier issues (like 2 and 5 above) at least didn't appear among the top five issues.


Germany does not have the money for childcare. Greece will need another bailout. Greece will need new bailout on a regular basis. Without regular bailouts, half of Greeks will starve. Germany should take responsibility for Greece. Where Germans should put money: Childcare or Greek bailouts to save starving Greeks?

Luci Sandor

"A shortage of child care is one reason why women in Germany are more likely than their neighbours to stay out of the labour market. It may also explain why they have fewer children (1.36 per woman on average)." German women work less than other women, according to the first phrase, but then they work more, according to the second.

Hi Ulenspiegel,
Accepted but but but. I am not German and for an outsider it sounds like “Alice in wonderland down the rabbit hole”. This is the politic of chasing butterfly’s on a picnic. Germany has a critical labour market shortage and importing foreign workers with create social tension. You say “1.2 billion are in Germany peanuts” but your finance minister is not declaring open figures, in English we say “fiddling the books”. After the election some very big bills will come.

David in Surrey

Well it's better than the UK. Here, stay-at-home mums have lost child benefit and child care support to give more money to families which earn MORE money they do. New childcare allowances apply if the family is earning up to £300,000 but only if both parents work but there is no child benefit if a single earner family makes more than £60,000.

Perhaps someone could consider the effect on all those Germans of being looked after by their own mothers and what effect it has had on the most productive workers in Europe.....


German child care. Fighting over the Kinder. “I am the universal mother the heart of the family”. Kristina Schröder the dithering star of German satire shows famous as the Yahoo chief for “just nipping off the have a baby”. As sitting on a cuckoo’s egg care money is offered to mothers and fathers who devote themselves in the first years after the birth of a child at home full-time education. The monthly allowance is paid in cash will cost the state 1.2 billion euros. This "nationalization" of parenting raises the question whether the educational content, if any is in accordance with Article 6 of the German constitutional Law. In the end the state and thus all taxpayers would have to bear additional economic burdens of child rearing. If such en endeavor amounts to taking “O” and “A” level educational exams in the first year of life is unclear. Funny politics !

Your argument does not work as long as you do not discus the costs of the alternatives like increased immigration, longer life working times etc. Politically it is suicide, at least if you want the votes of the younger generation, to oppose such program. Of course it costs money, but 1.2 billions are in Germany peanuts in comparison to other experiments like re-unification, energiewende etc., so what?

The more critical aspect is that there is no fair discussion of the alternative, namely a shrinking population which has IMHO clear advantages in a densly populated country like Germany, i.e. what are the costs of a steady-state with let's say 0.25%-0.5% decrease of population per year.

Melissia in reply to NoyNoga

While I dislike the "welfare queen" argument, I agree with the sentiment near the end, about how working women can easily provide better for their children than non-working women.

The dichotomy presented to women of career vs family is a lie, as it's very possible to have both. It's more difficult, but it's also, I think, more fulfilling.

After all, to turn the old phrase on its head, what's the point of having the cake if you cannot eat it, too?

There are innumerable families in the USA where both parents work-- and yet still manage to raise well-adjusted children. And, though it is more difficult (it is easier for two people to invest themselves in their child's upbringing than one, but not the latter is not impossible), there are also numerous examples of single parents likewise raising children that are well-adjusted.

The needs of each child, each family, are different. Saying that your idea of a perfect family would work for everyone... well, it wouldn't. Plenty of psychopaths and violent criminals were raised by a working dad and stay at home mom, after all...


Given mothers money to stay at home will cause the same problems as the Erziehungsgeld, did a few years ago. This money was for mothers of toddlers to 'raise' (erziehen) their children at home before they were old enough to go to Kindergarten. And what happened. Various anti-social elements (those who don't want to work anyway and most certainly don't fancy a career) had multiple children, 3 and more, and did not 'raise' them, but let them run wild. Later the children were put into care, as they were not socialised and unable to live in the community, let alone with their parents, who didn't want them anyway, because once they were 3y.o. they didn't bring any extra money. I have seen this happen again and again. Germany should support women who work and do their duty to society by paying taxes. Also with so many single children households, this is a good way of socialising children. I was in a creche from age 2 and it served me very well. Women are human beings, not breeding machines and they have rights to have a fulfilled work life. Especially, as most men walk out on their wives and children at some point anyway. A woman with a career can then support her children through highschool and university and this will benefit the state in the long run.


Syria: a strike that could spark regional war



And that’s the grave problem. Israel is the only secret nuclear weapons state in the world and is completely outside the inspectorate of the IAEA, nor has it signed the nuclear NPT, nor ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), unlike the vast majority of the world including the US and the EU.

It is now widely assumed that Israel’s covert, nuclear-armed 7th Flotilla comprising five German-built, Dolphin AIP Class 2 submarines, each capable of carrying up to a combined total of 16 Atlas-Elektronik torpedoes plus Popeye Turbo SLCM cruise missiles, equipped with 200kg nuclear warheads – is at present submerged in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Iranian Gulf.

The question is: what part, if any, will this covert, nuclear-armed flotilla have in the proposed, imminent US/UK attack upon Syria? It seems highly unlikely that Israel will pass-up the opportunity to deal a massive, clandestine, nuclear blow against Syria, the ally of their competitor for regional hegemony, Iran, in order to further its own political agenda. And that is the danger according to those who see in these grave crisis a spark that could easily trigger a regional war leading to WW3.

The last question is: why did Angela Merkel insist on supplying Israel with a fleet of (subsidised) German built submarines that could very easily be modified to lethal, nuclear-armed, war vessels when she was well aware that Israel had refused to sign and ratify the international conventions against nuclear and chemical WMD? It makes no sense.

Melissia in reply to Rannug

Since when has that ever stopped politicians from talking about it as a distractions from the issues that matter the most to the electorate at the time?

We see it in US politics all the time.


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