Dispute over family policy: the mistakes of bishop mixa

Dispute over family policy The mistakes of Bishop Mixa

  • Sebastian Großert

Bishop Walter Mixa of Augsburg is criticized for his statements on family policy. Photo: dpa

DÜSSELDORF. Mixa would have in its »Declaration from Thursday written, the patterns of thought of the Ministry of Family reminded oppressively of the ideology of state childcare for children in the lost GDR. The GDR had the highest density of daycare centers and at the same time the lowest birth rate in Europe.

In his criticism, Mixa referred to proposals from the Minister of Family, von der Leyen, who wants to massively increase the number of crèche places to support working mothers. Mixa, who is also a Catholic German military bishop, described the plans as “hostile to children and ideologically blinded”. They demoted the woman to the "childbearing machine".

But the bishop and his colleagues got a bit confused about this stimulus topic: The claim that the GDR had the red lantern in Europe in terms of birth rates turns out to be wrong after just a few keyboard and mouse clicks. So it says in the essay »" Population development in East Germany " of the demography researcher Steffen Kroehnert from the private Berlin Institute for Population and Development: "With an average of 1.6 children per woman (1989), the overall fertility in the GDR was significantly higher than in the Federal Republic (1.3)."

The GDR was not at the bottom of Europe in the last year of its complete existence. But it still comes trouble: The »" Future Radar 2030 ", a study by the Mainz think tank Zukunftsinitiative Rheinland-palatinate, it can be seen that it cannot have been since the mid-1960s: since then the birth rate in the east of Germany has always been higher than in the west – until just 1989. Which country actually had the lowest birth rate before reunification: “West Germany “Says the demography professor Michaela Kreyenfeld dry, who teaches at the University of Rostock and does research at the Max Planck Institute for Demography there.

But that’s not all: the connection the bishop constructed between the extensive childcare in the GDR and its supposedly low birth rate is not the one the minister wanted. The childcare offers did not lead to a decline, but to an increase in the birth rate if you believe the experts. The "Future Radar" states: "The family policy measures in the former GDR were able to counteract the drop in the birth rate from 1970 onwards. "

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