by MATYAS TEMESFOI – RATHER than address its collapsing birth rate, European leaders are instead completely obsessed with their ageing demographic of voters.
Turkish President Recep Erdogan recently announced plans to scrap the retirement age altogether, while French President Emmanuel Macron is in the process of raising his.
- We are looking at a grim future in the West, where childless people are working into their 70s.
- Children – and their grandparents – are now viewed as a burden.
- If young married couples felt any support, they just might save Europe.
Even though Erdogan’s actions appear unwise at face value – and can be attributed to the difficult election he will face next year – there are other factors at play here.
Both the Turkish and French policies could be interpreted in many different ways, however, they follow an often unspoken narrative – which must be addressed sooner or later.
AGEING
The narrative I choose to pursue leads us from the youthful population of Turkey to the ageing of France.
It’s not just France whose population is ageing, in fact it is the whole of Europe and most Western societies.
According to Statista’s 2021 data, Europe is leading in the proportion of elderly population – with 19 per cent, followed by North America with 17 per cent, Oceania at 13 per cent followed by Asia and South America at 9 per cent each.
If we look at the population pyramid of the EU, we see another unsettling data trend: if it continues in the same trajectory, we will experience for the first time in living memory an “inverted pyramid”.
One of the most claimed causes of an ageing population is our improving healthcare, which raises life expectancy – and this appears straight forward.
The other cause is more layered and textured, though it sounds simple: less people are being born.
And when it comes to an explanation, there are many theories.
I believe that the core of the issue is related to the frequent trend of the defamation of traditional family values.
When the subject of family is discussed in our present social hemisphere, the focus of popular discussion is mostly on adults, and whether they can be of the same sex etc.
Very few words are spoken of children or grandparents. And I firmly believe they are of much more importance.
Today’s strange ideology leads us to believe that children are the end of freedom and retirement is equal to a death sentence, making us fear there is no life after 60.
Children – and their grandparents – are now viewed as a burden to bear.
When we think of traditional Western families, our imagery of the family photo lacks grandparents.
Two or three children in today’s Western society might seem plenty, but our grandparents often had five or six, which nowadays seems insane. Unbeknown to us, in other parts of the world, this is common.
In the traditional family, children take care of their elderly parents just as they had been supported by them. And that worked for most of mankind’s history.
Nowadays, people want to “live” more, without care nor responsibility – travel and be “free”, without regard to the past nor the future.
However, the past and the future are not that easily discarded – once we were the future, and we will soon become the past.
Western individualism and its self-indulged lifestyle comes at a high price. This is increasingly apparent as more people retire leaving fewer children to work.
This anti-family “path-of-least-resistance” solution – at least in Europe – is viewed as simply raising the retirement age.
If that turns out to be all our politicians have, then our existence is in danger.
We are looking at a grim future in the West, where people are working into their 70s, retirement homes are filled to the rim and a diminishing younger generation is struggling to keep infrastructure functioning.
VALUES
There is another possibility which is often overlooked: the promotion of Christian values and governmental support for the family unit.
In Hungary, for example, there is enormous governmental support for families – and it is paying off.
According to Eurostat: Compared with 2020, only six EU Member States (Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) had an increased share of young people in their population in 2021.
Meanwhile all other Member States shared a decrease or were at the very least constant.
There are, of course, many factors playing in choosing to begin a family – though if young married couples were better supported, they just might save Europe.PC
One for the father, one for the mother and one for the nation. That was the Liberal Party motto under our greatest living Prime Minister, John Howard. Under Morrison, Kean and Perrottet, the new Liberal Party doctrine is ‘kill the unborn and euthanise the grand parents they never got meet’.