Nuclear Implosion

With youngest son Théophane nestled in the folds of her blue summer dress, Claire Denis looks as serene as a Renaissance Madonna. Her older children are safely berthed with their big sister, and this morning she continued the massive packing that her imminent house move demands. In just a few days,

Denis, 38, her husband and their brood of nine will expand into a larger residence. Now 450 crates are sealed and only 50 more wait to be filled with toys and clothes and kitchenware and books and photos and the other flotsam of family life. The woman deserves a medal.

That's exactly the conclusion the French authorities reached earlier this year. In May, Denis traveled from her home in St.-Germain-en-Laye, an affluent Parisian commuter town, to the capital. There, in the Salle des Fêtes of the Elysées Palace, French President Jacques Chirac presented her with the Médaille de la Famille Française — the medal of the French family, founded in the '20s to express the nation's gratitude for fecundity. In France, a quartet of children might net their mother a bronze award, six or seven could snare her a silver, but only a respectable married mother of eight or more is deemed worthy of gold.

Each year, honors are bestowed on several thousand large families. If the concept seems anachronistic, that's because it is. There's a revolution sweeping through Europe, one more radical than any baby boomer on hallucinogenics could have dreamt up. The ideal of family life celebrated at the Elysées Palace and in town halls across France — of the nuclear family, that is, a man and woman, plus the offspring that they alone produced — is being toppled. In its place, Europeans are developing their own, innovative models of family. For millions, that means delaying the decision to have children until later in life — or not having them at all. For others, it means accepting a union between a gay or lesbian couple as a family, whether or not the Catholic Church agrees. Still other couples split up and re-form, in ever more complex constellations involving stepchildren and adopted children, as well as co-parents and friends who are co-opted as carers. For better or worse — and these changes all carry economic and emotional consequences — most European adults no longer live their lives in the bosom of a nuclear family.

One result of this ferment is fewer children, and the French are far from alone among West European governments in seeking to encourage population growth, fearing economic stagnation as the workforce dwindles. For some governments, that means pushing traditional values. Others are trying to work with social change. In its first term of office, Britain's Labour government introduced tax credits to support families with children but axed benefits that applied only to married couples. In July, Britain's Public Health Minister floated proposals to allow the country's fertility clinics to take on female patients regardless of whether a prospective father was involved, which would enable lesbians and single mothers to apply for treatment.

The hard fact is that most European populations are shrinking and getting older, and today's children can look forward to seeing a big chunk of their future earnings taxed to support their elders. Even for countries with liberal immigration policies, maintaining current population levels requires a birthrate of around 2.1 children per woman. Yet in 2004, Spain recorded a birthrate of 1.32, lower even than Germany's 1.37 and Italy's 1.33. Even France, the second-most fertile European country after Ireland thanks to the noble efforts of Claire Denis and her compatriots, failed to hit replacement levels, with a birthrate of 1.9.