"Mothers and grandmothers, victims of the pension reform"

Ludovine de la Rochère is president of the Manif pour tous.

Obviously, when we arrive at 1.7 contributors for 1 retiree, it is necessary to reform our pension system to ensure its financing and therefore its maintenance.

With pay-as-you-go pensions, there are several possibilities, as we know: increase the pension contribution of employees, but the levies are already reaching an unparalleled scale elsewhere in our country.

The limit of what is bearable having been reached, this solution was ruled out by our leaders.

Another possibility is to lower the amount of pensions, but there again, the French would not have accepted it, and we understand them.

All that remained, said Elisabeth Borne, was the solution of extending the contribution period.

Admittedly, in the immediate future, to save the pay-as-you-go pension system, this is the only reasonable choice.

But beyond?

If the birth rate continues to fall, a new reform will be needed in the next few years to extend the contribution period again.

As opposition figures and elected officials have pointed out, without the reconstruction of a policy of support and encouragement for families, the current reform does not solve much: it is very short term.

However, in the context of the parliamentary debate on the pension bill, the government has good reason to retort that family policy is not the subject: “move on, there is nothing to see!”.

Admittedly,

, family policy cannot be reviewed in this text.

SEE

- Pensions: "The fact that this reform is fair requires the abolition of special schemes", says Jean-Eudes du Mesnil du Buisson

The government intends to apply the new age of 64 to all employees, including mothers who have worked all their lives, without any interruption (excluding maternity leave, which lasts a few weeks) and full time.

Ludovine de la Rochere

But in reality, the rules governing retirement have largely to do with the family, and in particular with motherhood: thus, for each child she has given birth to or adopted, quarters are granted to the mother with a view to his retirement.

The number of trimesters per child varies according to whether the mother is active in the public sector or the private sector, which is absurd, but that is no longer the question.

Indeed, the government intends to apply the new age of 64 to all employees (excluding long careers), including mothers who have worked all their life, without any interruption (excluding maternity leave, which lasts a few weeks) and full-time.

The consequence of this rigidity on the retirement age is that a mother would therefore have all of the quarters required at 61, 62 or 63 (depending on the number of children) but would have to continue working until 64.

This amounts to eliminating,

, their quarters for children to all working women who have ensured both the education of their children and their professional life!

Read alsoThese young people who no longer trust the pay-as-you-go system to ensure an adequate retirement

And this will involve an ever-increasing number of women over the years since more and more of them work non-stop and until retirement age.

Young mothers will also be victims of this measure from the outset since their own mothers will work longer and will no longer be able to help them when their children are small, that is to say entirely dependent, at the age of illness infants and long and recurrent school holidays.

As for these mothers at the end of their careers, who will have had children (who have been contributing for years when they themselves reach the age of 60-62) and who will have worked all their lives, have they not not the right to finally devote themselves fully to their family, to take advantage of this time, which can be wonderful, before approaching old age?

This reform is contrary to the need to support the family and – perhaps even more serious – contrary to the recognition that society should have of women who have children for the benefit of all French people.

Once again, parents are pushed aside, forgotten, both by the government and by the unions.

Ludovine de la Rochere

This government's refusal to take maternity into account also leads to the creation of a new inequality between men and women since the latter will contribute more than the former.

As if professional life did not already generate significant inequalities between men and women due to the very fact of motherhood, inequalities that the government claims to fight every day.

Here, it is the government itself that knowingly creates this additional inequality!

In turn, fathers are also concerned because the transfer of quarters, which became possible for children born after 2010, will become ineffective, and for the same reason: that of the rigid minimum age of 64 for retirement at full rate.

Once again, parents are pushed aside, forgotten, both by the government and by the unions.

Indeed, no one denounced this disastrous consequence of the reform.

A foolish mistake on their part.

The financing of pensions and beyond, the dynamism of our country largely depends on the generations that arrive.

But without fathers and mothers, their ranks will thin.

Our leaders must know how to see it, take it into account and better, finally value motherhood and fatherhood.

Both financially and in the spirit that animates our company.

And this requires, to begin with, the effective and concrete consideration of all the trimesters for children acquired by the mothers.

As it stands, the text of the reform is a societal scandal: the government and Parliament must amend it, there is still time.

SEE

- Pensions: "I would like the Senate to be able to enrich this text", says Macron