Emma Pearson

speaker

40 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 1 Jul

Emma Pearson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Today with David McCullagh · Work first, family second? Maternity leave rights, are they enough? · 1 Jul 2026 podcast

You'd think people would be ecstatic about it.

But actually, there is here quite a strong culture of people going back to work quite soon.

And like I said, because there's good, cheap childcare, it's considered pretty normal that you'll go back to work after your four months, and then your child will be in creche or in preschool, and the fees are sort of largely taken care of.

So I think it's maybe less of a problem than in the UK or in Ireland, where it's just

very hard getting any kind of childcare.

It's mostly provided in the private sector, but the fees are set by the government and you're reimbursed for it.

So it's kind of half and half, I guess.

And also, like, if you choose to use, like, a childminder or a nanny in your home, you can claim money for that or you can get tax breaks for that.

So the state's quite involved, I guess.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, France always used to be kind of the exception in Europe in that we did still have a fairly high birth rate, but that's kind of really fallen in the last few years.

So, yeah, the government's quite involved in that.

Emmanuel Macron last year said he wanted to do this, what he called demographic rearmament.

It was a very weird phrase that no one really understood, but it's supposed to be trying to boost the birth rate.

So they've got a few of these sort of measures going on.

There's this one.

They're also writing to like all 27-year-old women in the country, get a letter basically saying, have you thought about having kids?

So there's a few of these sort of initiatives going on.

I don't know whether they're actually going to be all that successful.

But yes, it's all about trying to boost the birth rate, like you said.

Showing 21–40 of 40 · page 2 of 2