A Letter To Boost French Birth Rate

To boost the birth rate, which has reached dramatically low levels in France, the government came up with the strange idea of sending a letter to all French citizens aged 29, offering them some advice. This curious exercise proves one thing above all: that Emmanuel Macron and his teams clearly understand nothing about family or birth rates.

France, which has long prided itself on being an exception in terms of fertility, has now entered the same demographic winter as its neighbours. In 2025, the fertility rate stood at 1.56 children per woman, the lowest level since the end of the First World War—at a time when the collapse in the birth rate was for reasons that were easy to understand.

There are many reasons for this collapse in France. Some factors are shared with the rest of the Western world—a profound anthropological crisis with a shift towards individualism and a devaluation of the family and children—while others are specific to France. The end of universal child benefits, which had previously been granted regardless of income, decided in 2014 under the socialist presidency of François Hollande, has, in the opinion of all demographic observers, had a profoundly deleterious effect on the French birth rate.

For several months now, President Macron has given the impression of having become aware of the dramatic state of births in the country he has governed since 2017. Already in his 2025 New Year’s address, he brandished the emphatic and thunderous concept of “demographic rearmament.” Scattered measures, supposedly in favour of the birth rate and families, have been taken without much consistency, such as the reform of parental leave, which runs counter to the real concerns of families, or the announcement of a major plan to combat infertility—which overlooks an essential reality: the fertility of couples goes hand in hand with their youth.

It is this lack of realism and common sense that prevails in the latest measure taken by the Lecornu government under Macron’s inspiration: sending a letter to French men and women aged 29 to ‘raise awareness’ of the challenge posed today by the rampant infertility of couples wishing to have children.

The message, currently being drafted, is expected to be sent before the summer. It would begin with the words: “It’s time to think about whether or not to have a child.”

Three main points are expected to be addressed in the letter: first, it will contain information on contraception and sexual health. It will then tackle the thorny issue of the biological clock, with different approaches for men and women. Finally, the message will provide information on the medical assistance available for procreation and gamete preservation in specialised centres.

The announcement of this new tax-funded gadget has been met with rather muted enthusiasm.

First of all, we might question the choice of the age of 29. While the government acknowledges that women are having their first child later and later in life, it is not attempting to reverse the trend. Twenty-nine is a late age to start thinking about starting a family, given that women reach peak fertility before the age of 25. Targeting a 29-year-old audience and suggesting that they think about having children is misguided, since this is the time when people are already well on their way to an active working life and when the arrival of a child, once professional habits and career prospects are established, becomes increasingly difficult to ‘plan.’ A few years earlier, the situation is different: a career plan can be built around starting a family from the outset.

But the age of 29 was not chosen at random: it is the age from which preservation of gametes is authorised in France without medical conditions. Today, “there are still far too many things that our fellow citizens do not know about the issues surrounding conception,” said health minister Stéphanie Rist. The underlying message of this public campaign would therefore be: don’t wait too long to have children, but in the worst case scenario, you can always freeze your gametes and think about it later.

In short, Macron’s project presents itself in a way that raises fears of resounding failure. The letter to the French people is influenced by several decades of progressive ideology that completely skews any project on fertility and the family. Addressing the issue of fertility primarily through contraception reflects this obsession with the sexual revolution: children are seen above all as an obstacle to individual fulfilment that must be guarded against and which can, under certain very strict conditions, be allowed within the framework of a tightly controlled and ultra-standardised project. Furthermore, choosing to launch a public communication campaign—extremely rare on the part of the state—on starting a family from the very specific angle of the fight against infertility is certainly not the most attractive approach, even if the challenge of infertility is a real one today.

The truth is that Emmanuel Macron, who is himself in a very special and infertile relationship, has no children and does not know what it means to have children and start a family. Without even judging his personal choices, this is an irrefutable fact.

Need we remind ourselves here of the ingredients of a genuine family culture? Love between a man and a woman, faith in the future, the joy of passing on traditions. These are simple but effective truths, which unfortunately are not worth repeating in France in 2026.

Hélène de Lauzun is the Paris correspondent for The European Conservative. She studied at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris. She taught French literature and civilization at Harvard and received a Ph.D. in History from the Sorbonne. She is the author of Histoire de l’Autriche (Perrin, 2021).

     

---

   

Hélène de Lauzun is the Paris correspondent for The European Conservative

   

---

Photo credit: Unsplash