Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-19-Speech-2-072"
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"en.20070619.6.2-072"2
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"Mr President, in this report, the rapporteur gives a comprehensive account of all the things that could and should be done to better reconcile family life and study in the European Union.
Demographic developments show clearly that increasingly few well-educated women are prepared to combine their careers with starting a family – and why should they: young women in academia make the utmost demands of themselves, and so they make these of the family, too. The German proverb: ‘To whom the Lord gives young, He also gives the means to feed them’ may have influenced women’s thinking in the past, but those days are gone.
Now it is the turn of us politicians to make provision for meeting the demands of young people. That means we must rebuild the family-friendly society that now lies before us in ruins. Anyone who brings up children nowadays must either be very wealthy or live very modestly as, up to now, our society has been promoting everything above children. Just take a look around: where are the open spaces where children can enjoy carefree play nowadays? Where are children really welcome? Even parks are littered with ‘no playing’ signs. Last week, in my home town, Vienna, a man shot at children playing, claiming they were too loud. Most Member States are investing far too little of taxpayers’ money in education and parenting, Mr Heaton-Harris. Our classrooms are overcrowded, teachers are overstretched. We are trying to produce self-confident individualists in schools that still work like barracks.
Are we promoting family-friendly living? No, we are not: the property market is solely driven by the profit motive. Young people in the city are now happy if they can afford a room in a shared house. That may not have stopped people having children decades ago, but what young people particularly want nowadays is quality of life, and that is what politicians must guarantee them."@en1
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