Romain Delès is a lecturer at the University of Bordeaux, a researcher at the Centre Emile-Durkheim, and a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is the author of the essay "Equal Parents, Happy Parents? How Gender Norms Intersect with Representations of Parenthood" in an anthology of essays from the 2024-2025 laureates of the Fondation pour les Sciences Sociales, Enfanter. Natalité, démographie et politiques publiques ("Having Children: Birth Rate, Demographics and Public Policy").

French parents are the European champions of parental pessimism. We can see it in the results of the International Social Survey Programme [2012], an international sociological survey: 41% of French parents believe that children "encroach on their freedom," compared to only 9% in Norway, 14% in Denmark, 7% in Iceland, and 5% in Finland; 49% declare that children "limit their professional opportunities," compared to only 22% in Finland, 28% in Norway, and 30% in Iceland; 74% consider them "a financial burden," which is the highest rate, after Portugal, among the 14 European countries I studied.

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