In an environment shaped by weak growth, high energy prices and rising levies, that narrative meets a receptive audience. Parenthood no longer appears as a self-evident element of life planning, but as a calculated risk. And where risk prevails, meaning yields to cost-benefit analysis.
The affirmation of childlessness as a cultural trend
At the same time, self-styled quality media repeatedly publish portraits of people who have chosen to remain childless. The broadcaster WDR has two women discuss their lives without children. Die Zeit asks: ‘Why did you decide against children?’ And Die Welt declares: ‘Does a child’s smile make up for everything? Excuse me, I do not think so.’
The tone is striking. The pieces are often staged as confessions, as taboo-breaking acts of self-empowerment. Parenthood appears not as the norm, but as an option subject to reservation. Particularly notable is the recurring reference to an Israeli study on the phenomenon of ‘Regretting Motherhood’. It is regularly invoked to suggest that some mothers regret their decision. The study dates from the 2010s, is based on a limited qualitative sample and is by no means representative of the population as a whole. Large-scale, internationally comparative data on the systematic regret of parenthood scarcely exist. Yet that same study is cited time and again – often without methodological context.
From a media perspective, this works well: the taboo is broken, the private is politicised, individual unease is generalised. Isolated voices become a structural problem. Ambivalent feelings are elevated into a cultural diagnosis. Taken together, the result is a picture in which parenthood appears above all as a potential burden.
At the same time, alternative family models are prominently staged. The left-wing daily taz accompanies a lesbian trio who wish to raise a child ‘on equal terms and in a needs-oriented way’. The family no longer appears as an evolved structure, but as an ideological craft project: three adults, maximum self-realisation, the child as a shared social experiment.
By contrast, mother and father are discussed as a risk factor, as a source of frustration, identity loss and economic imbalance. That is the real imbalance in the debate: the traditional family is dissected, psychologised and costed, while even the most avant-garde construction is celebrated as proof of progress. Those who point out that contradiction are deemed backward-looking. Those who ignore it are considered enlightened.
The shift is also visible in a quotation shared by ZDF from the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung. There, antifeminism is defined in part as the assumption of a supposedly ‘natural order’ of society – for example a hierarchy of the sexes – and the view that the family constitutes a ‘pillar of society’. Anyone holding that position is said to subscribe to a closed antifeminist worldview.
The Amadeu Antonio Stiftung is a state-funded non-governmental organisation dedicated to combating right-wing extremism, racism and antisemitism, and regularly supports studies and educational projects in the field of threats to democracy. Critics have for years accused it of a clear ideological orientation. Notable is the semantic shift: what long counted as social consensus – the family as a supporting structure – is here marked as an ideological trait, while the organisation’s own normative perspective is not labelled as such.
Between economic rationality and cultural unease
Demographically, Germany finds itself in a precarious position. The birth rate is low, the population is ageing rapidly, and the pension system is based on intergenerational transfers. Each generation of workers finances the previous one. At the same time, individual expectations regarding quality of life, self-realisation and economic security are high.
Children, in this perception, clash with predictability. They entail long-term commitments of time, career interruptions and enduring financial obligations. The media take up these tensions – and amplify them. In a digital public sphere, pointed and subjective narratives travel better than sober statistics. ‘I regret my child’ attracts more attention than ‘The majority are content’.
There is also a structural factor. Urban newsrooms contain an above-average share of academics, often with delayed or absent plans for children. The media do not merely reflect society; they also reflect their own milieus. What begins as an individual decision thus becomes a cultural trend.
The real gap lies less in criticism of parenthood than in the absence of a confident counter-narrative. Positive accounts exist, yet they are rarely staged as discursive interventions. Doubt is spectacular; contentment is not.
The result is a climate in which parenthood is rationalised, costed and psychologised. The child becomes a projection screen for anxieties: economic insecurity, overload, loss of autonomy. In such a climate, every headline about ‘children being too expensive’ or ‘regretted motherhood’ is more than a personal testimony. It forms part of a discourse that turns the self-evident into a risky option – and elevates risk into the dominant narrative.
