Joseph Cardinal Höffner CHRISTIAN SOCIAL ... - Ordo Socialis

nature of the child. The company of children means happiness and joy for married couples in
their ample free time.
The rearing of children has also been made considerably easier through the modern finished
goods industry. It is all the more alarming that more and more people seem to have a disturbed
relation to life, which leads to more coffins than cribs. The number of viable births per
1000 inhabitants, which in Germany amounted to 35.6 in 1900, sank to 15.5 by the year 1953
and to 10.1 in 1980.
The period of natural population growth came to an end in 1972. The excess of deaths over
births -and there are no signs of change in view -will dominate the scene for a long time. In
1975 the excess of deaths over births reached its highest postwar figure with 12.1 deaths per
1000 inhabitants compared with 9.7 viable births leaving the excess of deaths over births at
148748.
In the year 1981, there were 97.635 more deaths in the Federal Republic of Germany than
viable births. During this period unborn life was destroyed 87.535 times through pregnancy
terminations in the territory of the Federal Republic. In 65466 cases, i.e. 74.8% of all recorded
pregnancy terminations the pregnant women had terminations exempt from penalty, authorized
because of a serious social state of need.
3. Two consequences:
a) The present situation leads to a loss of social position for families with many children. The
social standard of life, insofar as it is common among strata of population of equal rank, is
determined by households and families that have either no children under eighteen years of
age or at the most one or two. In the Federal Republic of Germany, 85.3% of all households
fall into this category. The consequences for families with more children are obvious: worse
living conditions, although it is precisely families with many children that need a larger and
well furnished home (with bath etc.), worse clothing, worse nutrition, worse educational opportunities,
and so on. One cannot object that children indeed mean an economic burden for
the parents in the early years but that with increasing age they become economically useful.
That is hardly true now even for the farmstead and for handicraft and merchant families. For
the families of workers and employees, however, children have become 'pure cost factors'
since factory work by children is illegal and children set up a household of their own as soon
as they earn enough money. Since children are usually born today within the first ten years of
marriage, younger families in particular are affected by the drop in the living standard. In the
Federal Republic of Germany, 36.9% of women in childless marriages are gainfully employed
today, so that a double income is available. But in families that have two or more small children,
married women must in most cases give up their job outside the home. Although family
needs rise with children, family income sinks. Need and income run counter each other.
b) If this shrinking process of the family continues, the danger threatens that in a few decades
the necessary social product will no longer be able to be mustered. Already today families
with three or four children supply more than two thirds of the next generation, and families
with two or more children 90% of the next generation. Many object that the falling birth rate
is offset by higher investments and progressive automation. It is indeed correct that, with the
relative decrease in the number of persons employed, efficiency and automation can make
possible a growing provision of industrial bulk goods, though this does not hold true for services.
Even if family policy is not limited to economic measures and, for example, should carefully
ward off external influences hostile to the family, it will nevertheless have to see its principal
task in the economic security of the family. One may then hope that the integration of the
family into the industrial society will be more and more successful. Of course, the equalization
of family burdens will not as such be a motive for giving life to even a single child for
parents who know the meaning of marriage and family.
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