“France, beyond the graves, seeks the cradles.”
These words spoken in 1919 by Paul Deschanel, in the aftermath of the First World War, would not have been out of place in Emmanuel Macron's speech on
“demographic rearmament”
from France.
In January, the President of the Republic returned to the martial rhetoric applied to family policy since the end of the 19th century.
His remarks may also refer to General de Gaulle's natalist speech in 1945, on the
“12 million beautiful babies that France needs in ten years”.
“We must not forget that at that time there was a political consensus on the fact that the low birth rate was one of the reasons for France's defeat.
We often attribute these pronatalist objectives to the right, but the left, notably the communists, largely shared them,”
recalls geographer Laurent Chalard, specialist in territorial dynamics.
“The debate on demographic change has been a French passion since…
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