However, in the fertility discussion, it is very easy to forget that real people live behind demographic indicators.
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Recently, Professor Dr. Gediminas Karoblis published a book titled “Why Give Birth,” to the creation of which, as he writes in the introduction, “ChatGPT” contributed. This is an interesting sign of our times: we can discuss one of the most intimate human life decisions using artificial intelligence.
I decided to talk not with “ChatGPT,” but with real women.
I asked my social media followers one question: what would encourage you to have (more) children if you are even considering this possibility?
I received hundreds of answers.
And in general, not every woman has to want to have children.
There was everything in them: women dreaming of large families, stories of infertility, fear of being alone, anxiety about money, complicated pregnancies and childbirth experiences, anger at men who do not pay alimony, and very specific proposals to the state. And in general, not every woman has to want to have children. The state’s task is not to convince her to change her mind. Its task is to create the most favorable conditions for those women who want children.
After reading hundreds of answers, it is hard to believe that the fertility problem can be solved with one benefit or another tax relief.
It is easy to want more children. It is harder to raise them
I got pregnant quite young. I was 24. At that time, I did not think about state benefits or social guarantees because I simply really wanted to become a mother. Now I am 33, expecting my third child, and I increasingly raise an eyebrow when listening to discussions about promoting fertility in Lithuania.
In these discussions, a child is often reduced to an abstraction in a demographic report, a future worker, taxpayer, soldier.
However, between the decision to have a child and the taxpayer, there is pregnancy, childbirth, sleepless nights, illnesses, kindergartens, school, constant household chores, relationship trials, career breaks, and decades-long responsibility for another person.
Pregnancy and childbirth are intense physical and psychological experiences, the consequences of which we cannot always predict.
And what if the child is born with serious health problems? What happens to the family’s income, the mother’s career, the parents’ relationship, their physical and psychological health? Who takes care of the family when child care becomes not a matter of a few years but a lifelong responsibility?
Who takes care of the family when child care becomes not a matter of a few years but a lifelong responsibility?
And another risk, which is talked about much less: what if the family breaks up?
This is not a hypothetical fear. In 2024, Lithuania registered 12.9 thousand marriages and 7.1 thousand divorces. In the same year, almost 4 thousand couples raising common minor children divorced.
Currently, nearly 17 thousand children in Lithuania receive state-paid maintenance benefits because they do not receive the full or partial maintenance awarded by the court from one or both parents. Since July this year, the state pays up to 185 euros per month for such a child.
A woman who says that a reliable, emotionally mature partner would encourage her to have children is not picky. She wants to build a family with a person who truly plans to be an equal partner, not someone who “helps mom.” It is strange that a woman is expected to bravely take on all this risk, while caution towards her is often turned into selfishness or pickiness.
A child needs not only a mother
Many women who answered my question want not a man who “helps mom,” but a father who takes responsibility for the child just as much as the mother.
Being a father means not only occasionally changing diapers or letting the partner rest for one evening.
Being a father means not only occasionally changing diapers or letting the partner rest for one evening. It means knowing when the child needs to see a doctor, where his sportswear is, when to pick him up from school, what to do when he is sick, and how to share the daily, often invisible burden of care.
Therefore, in fertility policy, we should ask not only women: what do you need to want more children?
We should also ask men: do you want children and what kind of fathers are you ready to be?
In society, child-rearing still disproportionately falls on women’s shoulders; we cannot pretend that the decision to have a child is solely an individual woman’s choice.
A child costs not only money
Financial insecurity was one of the most frequently repeated themes. And this is understandable: a child needs not only love but also housing, food, clothes, care.
However, money is only one part of the cost of raising a child. The other is paid in time, lost opportunities, career breaks, and daily care and emotional burden, which we often do not see in economic calculations.
Therefore, in fertility policy, we should ask not only women: what do you need to want more children?
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When one parent more often stays home with a sick child, shortens working hours, gives up career opportunities, or withdraws from the labor market for a long time, it has real consequences for the family’s income.
However, we cannot explain the fertility crisis only by benefits.
I have been living in France for a year, where standard maternity leave for the first and second child lasts 16 weeks – six weeks before birth and ten after. For the third and subsequent children, it is longer – 26 weeks.
And yet France has long been one of the European countries where fertility rates were much higher than in Lithuania. Although in recent years they have also sharply decreased – in 2024, the total fertility rate in France was 1.62 children per woman – it was still one of the highest in Europe.
This reminds us that there is no single magic measure that, once introduced, would suddenly make people have more children. Higher or lower fertility is influenced not only by benefits. It is affected by the whole life around the child: whether the family can afford a bigger home, whether both parents can work, who will pick up the child from kindergarten when he is sick, whether it is possible to balance work and family, whether the woman will not lose her economic independence after childbirth.
It is publicly declared that children are our future, and family is the foundation of society. But in reality, motherhood and children are not the center and value of society, and this is so aptly sensed and felt by the women who wrote to me.
Women shared that they feel huge double standards – they are expected somehow at the same time to have more children, return to work faster, be perfect mothers, have careers, beautiful bodies, tidy homes, and emotionally stable children.
Women shared that they feel huge double standards.
Give birth, but don’t stay in motherhood too long. Work like a person without children, but be a good mother.
And who will take care of the child when both parents work?
How to raise children in a society where both parents work? Who will pick up the child from school and where will we put him during holidays? How to teleport through traffic jams in a big city after work to kindergarten? Who will stay home when he is sick? What will happen to the mother’s career when she has to take sick leave for a sick child for the third time in a month?
Here the fertility question becomes an infrastructure question.
Do we have enough kindergartens? Is after-school care accessible? Is the labor market flexible enough? Can families afford bigger housing? Are public spaces adapted for children? Is the presence of children in public spaces still considered a disturbance to adult comfort?
Our “village” has emptied out
More than one woman shared feeling pressure to have (more) children from their parents, but they cannot provide real help. Grandparents work, live in other cities or countries, have their own lives.
This reminds us of the old saying: it takes a village to raise a child.
However, the modern Lithuanian village has in many cases emptied out – families have become nuclear. Friends live in other cities or countries, grandparents work, neighbors are often strangers. Many care services must be paid for. Money can buy a nanny, but it cannot always buy a community.
And here arises a question that we talk too little about in fertility policy: what kind of society helps raise a child?
Raising children is not a private matter
Our society relies on a huge amount of care work: child care, elderly care, patient nursing, daily household chores, and caring for the family’s emotional well-being.
A large part of this work is still done by women – often quietly, invisibly, and without pay.
Care is invisible social infrastructure. We use it every day but notice it only when it breaks down.
Perhaps that is why we should talk about fertility not only by asking how many children Lithuania needs but also by saying what Lithuania is ready to do for them.
Perhaps that is why we should talk about fertility not only by asking how many children Lithuania needs but also by saying what Lithuania is ready to do for them.
A child is not just a person needed for the future economy. He is a person who today needs someone to feed, dress, take to places, pick up, comfort, nurse, listen to, and put to sleep.
What value do we give to life?
Politicians have rational reasons to want more children – society is aging, the number of workers is decreasing, the burden on the social protection system is increasing.
But by solving one problem, we may fail to notice another: are we starting to see a person as a means?
A child is not a future worker, taxpayer, or soldier.
He is first and foremost a human being.
Therefore, the question of fertility is also a question of values. What place does life occupy on the scale of societal values? How much value is given to a person who produces nothing, earns nothing, and pays nothing to the state?
If we want people in Lithuania to raise children, it is not enough to say – have more children. We need to create an environment where a woman can feel safe about her and her child’s future, and child-rearing is not left solely to the private family matter.
Before asking why women do not give birth, let us first explore what kind of Lithuania we offer their children.
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