Mothers of large families receive the Medal of the French Family

TIBERGE of Galliawatch writes:

Elizabeth Badinter, like Simone Veil, has consistently closed her eyes to the reality of the destruction of the French family and the slow steady takeover of the country by Islam. Both women, being Jewish, have aroused no small amount of resentment among traditional Catholics. Robert Badinter, her husband, was responsible for the ban on capital punishment.

Badinter claims that fertility of  French women is just fine, denying statistical evidence to the contrary. Tiberge has posted twice, here and here, on the Medal of the French Family, which goes to mothers of more than five children. Muslim women have dominated the awards in recent years.

— Comments —-

Greg J. writes:

Badinter is indifferent to the fertility of French women because she denies that there is any important distinction between European French families and Muslim “French” families. To the extent that Badinter acknowledges the importance of population replacement at all, any kind of population will do. Since all human beings are radically interchangeable and all begin life as atomistic blank slates, it matters not a fig which cultural and ethnic groups are reproducing. One wonders what opinion Badinter must hold of the treatment of women within Islam, not exactly a feminist regime.

Laura writes:

Actually, in this book at least, Badinter is fairly nationalistic in that she recognizes that the issue of native French fertility is important. She boasts of French laissez-faire mothering traditions and says they make motherhood more appealing than elsewhere in Europe. “Which makes one wonder whether the eternal appeal to the maternal instinct, and the behavior it presupposes, are in fact motherhood’s worst enemies.”

She  dismisses out of hand the evidence that Muslim women in France have significantly higher fertility rates. She argues that second-generation immigrants revert to native French fertility levels. Her grasp of the statistics appears willfully misleading.

Greg responds:

Ah, thank you for clarifying that. This is good news that she is at least superficially nationalistic with respect to native French fertility. In light of this, the next question that arises is, “Why would she want to distort the stats about immigrant fertility?” In other words, why would Badinter want to conceal or obscure the full impact of Muslim immigration into France? Surely she doesn’t imagine that the Islamification of France will facilitate feminism there. Another question I have is why an uber-feminist like Badinter would bother pretending that there is no fertility emergency among natives. Is she simply pandering to traditionalists? Or is she simply denying the demographic reality because it undermines the idea of feminist utopia? For example, some feminists openly clamor for measures to lower worldwide populations, arguing that abortion is not only an important civil right for individuals, but also an important aspect of ecological stewardship. But Badinter seems not to share this view, given her insistence that France is not shrinking. So if she does agree with traditionalists that humans must continue breeding for humanity to survive, then how does she square that idea with her support of abortion rights?

And of course I realize that I might be giving her far too much credit in assuming that she has thought through her entire worldview systematically. Also, my entire understanding of her philosophy has come from reading your excellent coverage of the book.

Laura writes:

Thank you.

I think it is a case of denying the fruits of feminism and attempting to justify continued dedication to “equality.” She wants to erase any doubts that it has all been for the best.

She writes:

The individualism and hedonism that are hallmarks of our culture have become the primary motivations for having children.

This is a traditionalist sounding statement. But her point is that parents, mothers in particular, are seeking too much satisfaction in the few children they have, and should be devoting more time to other things, such as work in the paid job market.

Vincent C. writes:

Many, if not most, people are vaguely familiar with Benito Mussolini’s program in Italy to encourage the growth of population by subsidies and/or direct grants to large families following World War I. Italy had been affected by huge military losses during the three years of war; hence, a greater number of children would fill that vacuum. But what is far less known was the effort of the French government at Vichy to do the same thing.

There is an interesting historical twist to Elizabeth Badinter’s opinion that French women are providing sufficient offspring, for she must know that the overwhelming number of births in France today are to Muslim women, and that France within two generations, if current birthrates continue, will be a Muslim majority country. I’ve read that in France there are seven Muslim children born to one Christian, which, even for Europe, is a staggering statistic. In towns and cities throughout France, churches have been converted to mosques, for aside from the falling birthrate, weekly attendance at Mass or services amongst the Christian population is abysmally low.

Elizabeth Badinter is a marvelous example of the many liberal and leftists in Europe who are convinced that Christianity poses a far greater threat than does Islam, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. But there is a bit of history that shows that France, at one time, at least, was deeply concerned about the absence of French children to fulfill its historic place on the continent, and carry its cultural banners.

Following the fall of France in 1940, while the German army occupied the northern half, the nation’s southern tier was unoccupied and called the Vichy Free Zone, which lasted until November, 1942. The French war hero of World War I, Marshall Petain, the hero of Verdun, was given political control of that zone, and sought to establish programs that would bring about more children to a nation that had been truly devastated by military losses during the previous war. (And as it also was during WWII, where more French civilians died as a result of Allied bombardments than during the Luftwaffe’s blitz bombings of England.)

Acting on his own, Marshall Petain continued the practice, begun after the World War I of outlawing contraception, but penalties against abortion, and particularly toward abortionists, including death by the guillotine, were now instituted. Women who continued to breastfeed their babies (they had to be of a legally married couple and French) beyond the age of one were given priority cards for lining up at food lines. Mothers of five children were presented with a bronze medal, a silver for the eighth, and a gold for the tenth. When the Nazi army occupied Vichy in November, 1942, these programs passed into French history.

No sane and rational person today would wish to restore a nation’s birthrate by installing a Vichy or Fascist type government. But Elizabeth Badinter and those who sail with her are indifferent to the threat of the demographic disaster that awaits France after she is no longer living. By demeaning childbearing and misleading the French public about the dangers of the current demographic curve, she, as a true liberal, will never say that she was sorry for her actions.

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