On reflection, she thinks she's "heard it all" about her choice not to have a second child. "In my family, people don't understand at all," explained Anaïs Renaud, 46, home help and mother of a 9-year-old girl. "They told me she'd be unhappy, selfish, a little emperor... All really distressing things that undermine my choice as a mother." One day, an aunt even asked her: "And if you die, have you thought about her?" She was left dumbfounded.

In a less brutal style, a week after giving birth, Sophie (people quoted by their first names wish to remain anonymous), a 46-year-old painting restorer and mother of a 4-year-old boy, was asked by her own father, himself from a large family: "You'll have to think about having a second one because there are four seats in a car!"

The annual demographic report published by the French national statistics institute INSEE on Tuesday, January 14, shows a downward trend in the number of births since 2011. In 2024, 663,000 children were born. This is 2.2% fewer than in 2023 and 21.5% fewer than in 2010, the year of the last peak in births, the publication noted.

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