Having children has to be cool again. Political pressure will not make anyone give birth
April 4, 2026
Birth rates are falling sharply across Europe and the entire developed world. Elsewhere too, politicians and demographers are grappling with why some people do not want to have children and others, even if they would like to, simply do not have them.
In countries like the Czech Republic, politicians, whether in government or opposition, periodically sound the alarm and propose — and sometimes actually introduce — all sorts of measures, ranging from increasing parental allowances to extreme (and still ineffective) family policies modelled on Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, where the emphasis from school onwards is on the “traditional family” and on the continuation of the ethnically Hungarian nation, and young couples receive advantageous loans or benefits.
