◎ Foyo Boizhenu
In response to the challenge of declining birthrate and to increase the willingness of the younger generation to get married and have children, the government has launched a plan to increase workers' marriage leave from 8 days to 14 days. The additional 6 days of wages will be subsidized by the government to employers. An extra six days of marriage leave is certainly a good thing, but if it is regarded as an important policy to encourage marriage and childbirth, we have to ask: Will young people really dare to get married and have children because of these extra six days of leave? Taiwan is moving from "cannot afford to raise children" to "unafraid to get married or have children" or even "does not want to get married or have children." The reasons are roughly as follows:
The Ministry of Labor recently held a press conference to announce amendments to the draft "Labor Leave Rules" and extend marriage leave from 8 days to 14 days (file photo). The first is practical pressure.
What young people are really afraid of is not not enough marriage leave, but life after the marriage leave ends. House prices are high and rents are heavy, and salary growth may not keep up with the cost of living; after getting married and having children, housing, childcare, and education come one after another. If both husband and wife work, who will take care of the children? If one person leaves the workplace temporarily, what will happen to his family's income and career? The marriage leave is only 14 days, but the marriage may last fifty years; the government subsidizes six days' salary, but raising children is the responsibility of twenty or thirty years. Putting the two together, we can see the distance between policies and problems.
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The second, and more profound issue than money, is that family values are changing.
For a long time, our education and society have placed increasing emphasis on personal autonomy, rights and self-actualization. These values are worth cherishing, but if we only teach the next generation to pursue "what I want" and less talk about "what I am willing to bear for whom", marriage and family will naturally easily change from a joint construction of life to a multiple-choice question of measuring personal gains and losses. When getting married means sacrificing freedom, having children means lowering the quality of life, and family responsibilities are seen as a heavy cost, it may be difficult to rekindle the desire to start a family no matter how much subsidies you receive.
The third question deserves more serious attention from the government: Do young people still believe in the future? In the final analysis, population policy is a policy of confidence.
If a person is willing to get married and have children, it means that he believes that tomorrow is worth looking forward to, and that this society is worth letting the next generation live. If you know that you still cannot afford a house after working hard all your life, if the gap between the income of hard work and the cost of living is always a source of anxiety, if the policy continues to introduce new subsidies but does not allow young people to establish stable expectations for housing, employment, childcare and long-term life, then what the government is really losing is not just the birth population, but the confidence of the younger generation in the future. This is the most deserving review of the current low birthrate policy.
Childcare subsidies, childcare subsidies, childcare leave, rent subsidies, marriage and childcare homes, and increased marriage leave are all policies one after another. It seems that the government has done a lot; however, the number of births continues to decline. This reminds us that the number of policies does not mean that the policies are effective, and the more subsidies, it does not mean that the core of the problem has been solved. The declining birthrate is no longer a private matter of which family wants to have children, but a structural issue concerning the future of the country. The next generation continues to shrink. In the future, it will not only be school enrollment that will bear the impact, but also the labor force, industry, taxation, medical care, long-term care, and even the supply of national defense troops. What the government should really do is perhaps not to continue to ask "what else can be given more", but to bravely ask: "Why do young people dare not even think about the future of starting a family?" It can be done to increase the marriage leave from 8 days to 14 days, but the branches and leaves cannot be regarded as the roots of the tree.
Policies such as childcare subsidies respond to the trend of declining birthrates, but Taiwan's birth population continues to decline. (File photo) What we really need to save from the declining birthrate is not just birth numbers, but a generation’s expectations for marriage, recognition of family, and confidence in the future of this land. When young people no longer believe in tomorrow, how can they get the next generation if they are given an extra six days of marriage leave?
(The author is a part-time lecturer at Meihe University of Science and Technology)
