The unlucky truth about love
February 13, 2026
Is that a love letter in your mailbox or a letter from the government urging you to have a baby before it’s too late? For young adults in France, it could be either. The French government is sending letters to every 29-year-old in the country to encourage them to have children younger, i.e., now. Nothing says happy Valentine’s Day like a collapsing birth rate.
It won’t work — and not just because there is nothing less attractive than a bureaucrat lecturing about family planning. It’s not going to work because in Western countries with flagging birth rates, nothing, so far, has worked. For all the governmental attempts with housing strategies, tax incentives or egg-freezing subsidies, nothing has reversed the trajectory of birth rates in a lasting way.
