They're fit. And rich. Mary Hart would say they positively glow. They're never strained for time or help, and their kids look like they're out of a Polo ad. They are celebrity moms -- Gwen, Reese, Gwyneth, Katie -- and they're the reason $12 California Baby massage oils, $95 "Mummy and Me" reflexology treatments, and $1,200 Bugaboo strollers have come to seem not wholly unreasonable for a family of average means.Despite the obvious fact that the actual work of mothering is no less gruelling than it ever was, the popular concept of motherhood has never been more rarefied. Celebrity tabloids that make motherhood look as breezy as Jennifer Garner taking her little daughter Violet down a park slide have helped spawn a multi-million-dollar industry of high-priced Blissful Mommy props: organic baby foods, boutique onesies, designer furniture and pink, camouflage diaper bags. To look at it all, one might think procreation itself was a fad, newly invented by Hollywood. Pregnancy has been fetishized to the point where right now, designers high and low are modelling their fashions after maternity wear -- with empire waists and fabrics that billow to make a woman with even the tautest abs look about five months along. How strange, then, that just as the mommy industry is booming, we're in the grips of a baby bust. Canada's fertility rate has been in a free fall for decades. In recent years, though, it has hovered at an all-time low of roughly 1.5 children per woman(we need 2.1 if we're going to replace ourselves). Social analysts pin it on some jumble of female education and fiscal autonomy, secularization, birth control, Sex and the City, a heightened desire for personal freedom, and increasing uncertainty about bringing a child into a world plagued by terrorism, global warming and Lindsay Lohan. In a hyper-individualistic, ultra-commodified culture like ours, motherhood, for better and worse, is less a fact of life than just another lifestyle choice...................All over the developed world, the same pattern is apparent. Russia, Britain, Ireland, Australia, Spain, Italy and dozens of other countries are contending with fertility rates well below replacement levels. Forty per cent of female university graduates in Germany are childless. In Japan, where the birth rate has sunk to a record low of 1.26, family planning groups are blaming the Internet, charging that fertile men and women are spending too much time online, and not enough having sex.....................Faced with this odd conundrum -- a supply-and-demand crisis in which the suppliers(women)theoretically have the capacity to meet demand(for babies)but are opting not to -- economists and demographers are left scratching their heads. By now, just about every country in the developed world has implemented some policy or monetary incentives, ranging from baby bonuses to tax breaks. Still, the numbers fall. Short of establishing a Handmaid's Tale regime, they're wondering, what will it take to make women have babies?(And they're not talking just one.).......The most promising recent case study is that of France, where the government has successfully sparked a baby boom by implementing a series of extraordinarily generous benefits and incentives for parents. There is a calibrated income-tax rate for families whereby the more children a couple has, the more money they keep in their pockets. The state offers a monthly allowance of roughly $400, which is bumped up when the child reaches the age of 11. Parents are entitled to a tax deduction for in-home child care help(which Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who stepped down this week, recently announced will be doubled). There is an extensive state-run crèche system, where parents can leave their toddlers at a moment's notice, for free. Families with three or more kids are deemed "famille nombreuses" and are eligible for zero income tax, heavily subsidized rent and transportation, and state-funded parental leaves that can extend for years. They also get free access to many public amenities, and about $325 per year toward extracurricular arts and athletics programs for the kids.In only two years, France's fertility rate has climbed from 1.8 to 2.0, and only a quarter of its overall population growth last year was attributed to immigration. It's not a matter of finding ways to get women to stay home, either. Quite the opposite. In France, almost 80 per cent of women work. "What you're really promoting is women's ability to stay attached to the workplace," says Bravo, "and the more you do that, and the more you let people have whole lives, the more they'll be able to care for their families and advance in their professions. We know that the countries that have the worst work-life policies are the ones that also have falling fertility rates." So far, France's success in this area doesn't appear to have come at the expense of other things. According to a new study by the Institute for German Economics(IW), France is now on track to become Europe's most powerful economy by 2035, supplanting Germany as the titleholder..........In this sense, applying the French model in North America is not so simple. The issue here is not just about economic incentives, or costs and benefits. It's about attitudes. In an immediate sense, North Americans -- even Canadians -- are generally less inclined to be strapped with other people's problems. "I think the countries that are doing reasonably well in Europe have an attitude that it takes a community to raise a child," says Duxbury. "The European model is, 'We have to make it possible for those people who can afford to have and raise kids to have them.' Our model in North America is, 'Well, you decided to have a child. That was your personal decision, so don't expect us to help you.' "The great hypocrisy of this model is that we extol family values and the role of the at-home mom, says Bravo, and yet we make it virtually impossible for women who aren't independently wealthy to stay home. We expect middle- and lower-class women to work and, when it comes to parental responsibilities, we expect them to figure it out on their own dime. Then we label it a choice, so we can say, 'If she had only chosen differently, she'd have more money, and more time with her kids.'The choice, then, is a non-choice. We speak of opting out, but in fact, most women are forced out by impossible work-life expectations. Only the elite truly "opt" out. The personal fulfillment or "choice" model, Duxbury says, is a fancy way of deflecting the onus onto women. "Employers always say no one made you have a kid," she says. "They say, 'We've got operational responsibilites. If you can't be here for us, don't expect us to treat you the same. Don't expect to have work-life balance and be promoted and be a star.' Women have taken that to heart and they haven't had kids.".......On the other hand, in Germany, which now has the highest proportion of childless women in Europe, the "mommy wars" are just starting to heat up. Recently, a bestselling book called The Eva Principle: For A New Femininity by Eva Herman, a former TV news reporter, fuelled a national controversy by suggesting that women's emancipation was a horrible miscalculation and that men and women would be happier and society would thrive if women would just shut up, stay home and raise the kids. Meanwhile, the country's new family minister, Ursula von der Leyen, a mother of seven, introduced a number of progressive proposals, including one requiring men to take a two-month work leave upon the birth of a child, or risk being denied state-funded child support. Not surprisingly, male politicians balked. Even those within von der Leyen's own party don't like the idea of being shunted home to change dirty diapers. Evidentally, they think men have better things to do with their time. Surely most women would invite them to join the club.............Read more:  http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20070528_105313_105313