#family-policy

#family-policy

Sweden's prime minister has promised to put IVF at the heart of his re-election campaign as he tries to win over female voters amid the country's record low birthrate. Ulf Kristersson's government recently increased the number of state-funded IVF attempts granted to aspiring first-time parents from three to six. Now he has said that if his party, the centre-right Moderates whose minority-run coalition depends on the support of the far-right Sweden Democrats hold on to power in September's general election, they will also fund IVF for additional children.

New York City, which already provides free preschool for three- and four-year-olds, is a step closer to providing free universal childcare for two-year-olds. On Thursday, Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a plan for the free childcare program, which they said will start by focusing on high-need areas and then gradually expand to cover the city. The mayor said he expected about 2,000 children to be covered by the program this fall.

For all of the professional gains women have made over the past several decades, one stubborn measure of inequality-the gender wage gap-has been especially difficult to stamp out. And it's a disparity that can be traced in large part to parenthood. In nearly every country on Earth, the arrival of children tends to coincide with a lasting drop in employment and earnings for moms but not dads.

Image: Aline Spantig/DW Guten Tag from DW's newsroom in Bonn, where there is still a lot of Christmas shopping to be done.

The French government has launched a consultation to gather the public's views on parenthood and policies related to parenthood, in an effort to understand declining fertility rates. The goal of the report is to "target the economic and socio-cultural causes that have led to a decline in the birth rate in France, but also to understand the related consequences," MP Constance de Pélichy told the French press. Anyone can take the survey (which is entirely in French).