LARGE FAMILIES, FRIENDS OR ENEMIES?

In 30 years, the number of large families has decreased significantly. They went from 600,000 to 300,000 [1]. Should we deplore it? Is the large family itself a source of misery and poverty? It is sometimes accused of “plundering” the planet through increased consumption needs and even of polluting it. It is the spearhead of immigration as the large families are largely of non-French origin. All of these are questions or comments that are frequently heard and that deserve to be stopped to make things right.

The data relating to large families are known to us from an INSEE study published in 2015 and which reports the data for 2011 [2]: Large families are those made up of 3 children or more. In 2011, metropolitan France had 1.7 million large families with at least 3 minor children, or 1 in 5 families. If we add the overseas territories, the figures increase considerably.

Within these families, 1 in 6 families are mixed and 1 in 6 with a single parent. The other 4 are
therefore traditional.

Large families and poverty

Also according to INSEE, the standard of living of families decreases with the number of children, so much so that large families are more affected by poverty: 35% of couples with 4 or more children live below the poverty line.

Michel Godet, also in 2011, that is to say before the lowering of the family quotient ceiling and the verification of the means of family allowances, had already analyzed that “even after taxes and transfers, the standard of living of a family paired with three or more children is on average 25% lower than that of a childless couple “. The 2015 report of the High Council of the Family (HCF) on the cost of the child, estimates the child poverty rate at 30.2% in large families” despite the aid more oriented towards these families “.

The most commonly heard conclusion is this: since large families are poor and poverty is an evil we want to eradicate, let’s eliminate large families!

A strange mistake that makes large families themselves the scapegoat. This is the theory of the think tank Terra Nova, a constant reference of the government: “The older brothers seem to have a rather unfavorable effect on the schooling of children and their social trajectory, especially as regards girls”. This fear originated in a surprising publication from the National Bureau of Economics Research in which three economists allegedly showed that children of large families suffer from an increasing deficit, based on the number of siblings, of their intellectual and emotional abilities! A curious analysis that would confuse causes and effects: that populations with reduced intellectual and emotional abilities are also unable to control their fertility, should not necessarily imply that the number of children is the cause of these deficiencies when it can simply be the consequence. This is what this study ends up acknowledging by pointing out that the extent of the “handicap” of children of large families varies a lot with the abilities of the mother! Does this study on large families not run the risk of extrapolating the case of some populations from disadvantaged neighborhoods of large metropolitan areas, to generalize it to all large families?

Furthermore, it is not curious to ask about the availability of a mother of a family for each of her eight or nine children without worrying about this same availability for the mother of two who devotes eight hours a day to her career.

History teems with examples of illustrious descendants of large or very numerous families whose humanity would have been impoverished if such Malthusian ideas had prevented them from being born: Marshal Mac-Mahon, 16th son, Saint Catherine of Siena, who advised princes and kings in the fourteenth century, he was the 23 of 25 children of a modest dyer; closest to us, Châteaubriand, like Yves Meaudre, is the tenth of their brothers and many others.

Why are large families poorer than others?

• As we have seen above, the standard of living of families worsens with the arrival of children. And depending on the socio-economic level of families, if this degradation does not always lead to poverty, in a statistical sense, it can lead to demotion. Recall that according to A. Math the average monetary expenditure, per child and per month is € 750 (not taking into account expenditure in kind: evaluation of the time spent, nor of the indirect cost: deficit in terms of salary or career).
• According to the INSEE study cited above, large families are found proportionally more among non-graduates and first-generation immigrants. Let us recall that the number of children living in 2012 in an immigrant family represented nearly 20% of children.
  How much today?
• It is normal that large families are found mainly among the poorest, children being their main resource through allowances, while wealthy families are on the contrary discouraged because of the significant drop in their standard of living. It is not without reason that Michel godet underlined “the perverse effects of social targeting and positive discrimination” and took up Antoine Math’s analysis: “measures targeted at the poor end up being poor measures”.
• Mothers with large families are led to reduce or interrupt their professional work even though they need a second salary the most financially. The current compensation schemes severely penalize female graduates who have a very remunerative career since the replacement allowance (CLCA) is € 390.92 for anyone who completely interrupts their work, regardless of their salary. (In Sweden it is equivalent to 80% of the salary). The young child care benefit (PAJE) is again awarded subject to means testing.
• More than 15% of single-parent families, particularly affected by poverty, are large families.
• The link between family poverty and family policy was established in the INSEE Populations and Societies Bulletin n ° 512: “In countries practicing a family policy, the relative poverty of families has decreased, unlike in other countries… “
• It should also be noted the decrease in large families in wealthy backgrounds. However, there must be large families in all walks of life. But the more aid is subordinated to income ceilings, the more difficult it is for the middle or wealthy classes to bring up many children. They are the ones who contribute and will contribute the most and who create the most jobs. It is important to encourage and help build families, and why not, large families, without distinction in all layers of the population without excluding any. This has a name: universal family policy. In 2011, we could say that executives had more children on average than employees (2.3 against 1.5). However, the latest measures have severely penalized high- and medium-high income families, and women executives make a much greater sacrifice than others by interrupting their careers because of the alignment with the minimum wage of the Complement of Free choice of activity (CLCA).

Large families are essential

We have seen above that people who have counted in history come from large families. Who can say if we have not deprived ourselves today, through narrow family planning, of great personalities who would have renewed our dying elites?

One thing is certain: demographic maintenance absolutely depends on large families. While two children are needed, mathematically to replace both parents, children of ranks 3, 4, 5 and above are needed to replace people with only one or no children.

The infertility rate, that is the proportion of women ending their fertile life without children, was 11.7% in 2012. Add that this is the case for 15% of men. About 18% of women have only one child.

Large families may have their own drawbacks: more poverty, lack of peace and privacy, shared rooms, less treats and more rationing, clothes that are not first-hand, and I pass…

But what is it in the face of the happiness of having brothers and sisters with whom to share games and bickering, affectionate little plots for parents, solidarity in moments big and small. And when the parents get old, several of them “carry” them in turn. A president of the European Federation of Associations of Large Families, the Portuguese Fernando Castro, used to say: “If you want to make a child happy, give him a brother or a sister; if you want to make a child very happy, give him lots of brothers and sisters”.

A big advantage of large families is that the diversity of children – their physical characteristics, tastes, aptitudes and character traits -prevents parents from projecting onto their only child, from wanting him or her like them, or for them. Parents may have less time for each other, but at least they don’t risk over-investing them with stifling love.

Finally, if life in society is learned naturally in the family, it is even more true in large families: learning to occupy one’s place, nothing but one’s place but all of its place; share, give and forgive, help each other: help and accept to be helped, learn to be often teased, mocked, annoyed without dramatizing, knowing that arguments and reconciliation are part of daily life, relativizing one’s own failures and successes by assisting up close to those of close relations, to know the value of patience and discretion, to experience the need for a minimum of order, the sharing of tasks, the services that one provides or that one asks for … An idyllic picture of large families who experience the same difficulties as any human society, we can take advantage of these constraints to form characters who will adapt to the difficulties of life in society.

Large families are under threat

A survey by the Confederation of Catholic Family Associations (CNAFC) shows that recent anti-family measures such as the double lowering of the family quotient, the means-testing of family allowances and the reduction in the birth bonus and child support affect more than 4 in 10 French people, and larger families more strongly. According to the same survey, 62% of parents with two or more children would postpone a new birth as a result.

Michel Godet already spoke in 2013 of a “real tax harassment against large families”, but things keep getting worse.

Since September it is the reductions granted to large families for school canteens, called “discounts in principle” which have been abolished and survivors’ pensions, essential in particular for mothers of large families who have “worked” less than the others, subject to conditions of resources. And in the months to come, the “beneficiaries” of social security will be eliminated and it is the State which should take charge of the health costs of women and children, with a new contribution, according to resources and the woman’s property.

These latest measures will hit mothers with large families head-on, since it is they who are most likely to neglect their professional life for the benefit of children.

When it comes to housing, rising standards have pushed up costs and while much has been done in this area for the disabled, nothing is being done for large families.

We have seen that the very official report by economist Antoine Math estimates the average cost of a child at € 9,000 per year. Even if some economies of scale are possible, the remainder is important and the standard of living of households drops to a minimum of 5 to 10% for each child from the 3rd . Alongside individualism, hedonism is one of the reasons that the number of large families in the traditional sense has fallen dangerously.