Forget deficits. For many, childcare is big worry as French budget cuts loom.

The EU is likely miffed that France will miss its 2015 austerity targets. But at home, critics are focused on a proposed $880 million in cuts to France's generous parental perks.

|
Philippe Wojazer/Reuters
A government member holds a press release of France's 2015 Budget Project as he leaves following the weekly cabinet meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris Wednesday.

The headlines abroad about France's 2015 budget are understandably focused on the government's defiance of the European Union's mandated austerity. But within France, among families – particularly those like mine, with young children – concerns hit much closer to home: specifically, the generous parental perks now on the cutting board.

France’s Socialist government said today that it would not bring borrowing down to EU mandates of 3 percent of output until 2017 – two years later than it promised, after already having received an extension from 2013. “No further effort will be demanded of the French, because the government – while taking the fiscal responsibility needed to put the country on the right track – rejects austerity," the budget statement said.

Yet in France, that announcement has been overshadowed by the fact that the budget includes the biggest cost cuts in recent history – 21 billion euros ($26 billion). Among them would be a 700 million-euro ($880 million) cut to family benefits, including one-off payments for the birth of children.

The health minister's introduction of the welfare budget set the media abuzz about other family-related changes as well, from payments for second children to parental leave policies. Le Figaro claimed in an editorial Tuesday that “having children in France will soon become a luxury.”

Such policies are wrong-headed, the editorial says, because they helped keep the fertility rate of France the second-highest in Europe – one strength that France has over aging Germany, which beats France on most every other measure.

They've also kept working mothers here sane and ultimately in the workforce – so effectively that the Monitor questioned if French women even needed feminist activism in a piece last year.

Faced with these new policies, many would say that women still do, especially on the issue of parental leave.

Currently a parent can stay home until a child reaches his or her third birthday, with a guarantee of keeping the same job or an equivalent and some state support. The vast majority of those who use this benefit are women. The new policy seeks to split the time in half between both parents, giving one 18 months and the other the remaining 18. Otherwise the couple loses it altogether.

The changes in parental leave are touted as an effort toward gender equality, as in Sweden, where partners must also use their parental leave or the couple loses it. There it works.

But in France, many say that this policy does nothing to counter gender roles. Rather, they say, it is just a disguise for cost savings, as most spouses – usually men – simply won’t take 18 months off.

One friend of mine was set to go back to work after a year at home with her son, but, facing the prospect of uncertain hours, she decided to stay home. She’s planning on going back within weeks – he is now 2 – but if the hours are too erratic and she can't find a balance, she knows she has a full year until she has to legally return. She says her partner would not, and could not, make that same choice.

Not all French can afford to make a similar choice, either, but the flexibility is something that American working mothers can only dream of.

And now it might become just a dream in France, too.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Forget deficits. For many, childcare is big worry as French budget cuts loom.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2014/1001/Forget-deficits.-For-many-childcare-is-big-worry-as-French-budget-cuts-loom
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe