Epinal is a French town not too far from Nancy or Strasbourg. They award something called a French Family Medal and the winners are pictured above in a local newspaper La Liberté de l’Est.
Mme Dairi raised 7 children, Malika Etassi 6, Yeza Sohbani 6, Khaddouj Karim 6, Djamila Beynée 5, Fatna El Bour 5. […] Françoise Skorynnée, raised 4 children.
So when Mark Steyn writes about changing demographics in Europe, apparently he wasn’t kidding. On a different note, I find it both strange and intriguing that they have a “family medal.”
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Rebecca adds: Wow. Vive la France libre.
While the government can certainly make it more, or less, of a hassle to have children, it can’t actually change the degree to which people want to make family their priority. This is why, attempts at increasing the birth rate aside, Quebec has the lowest birthrate in Canada and the segment of France that is reproducing is markedly different from the population overall.
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Andrea adds: Had I known that Mark Steyn would link to this post from National Review Online, I would have spent more time on it.
To explain then, why I find it “strange and intriguing” that they have a family medal:
Strange because in our post-60s era of feminism-motherhood and raising a family has been sadly and strangely diminished as the accomplishment that it is. It is some vestige of a bygone era, then for a woman my age (31) to read of a “family medal.” We are left with nothing more than an annual Hallmark remembrance to the grand accomplishment of raising kids.
Strange also because it seems that the state in France is attempting to condone some worthy traditional values, but the face of their state has changed so dramatically that they are not in fact being traditional at all and may end up condoning things like Shariah law in short order.
Intriguing because I believe we should honour motherhood. But how, in this age and era?
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