Brits Vs. French

Hello everyone,

Happy Friday!

Going off topic this week (what’s new) to feign outrage and shock at how French and English politicians are trying to remind us that we’re creating problems with our lack of baby-making. But it’s the Bulletin, so we’ll have fun with it by pitting them against each other. Nous allons have fun.

For our brilliant American readers, a quick primer: the English and the French have a centuries-old rivalry that is equal parts genuine disdain and deep, unspoken love. Think of it as the longest situationship in history. I’m half French and lived in London for a decade, so I’m claiming the right to mock both.

Let’s start with France. The French health ministry recently announced that starting this year, it will send a letter to every 29-year-old in the country - male and female - reminding them about their fertility. The letter will cover egg freezing (which, by the way, is covered by the French government for women aged 29–37, yay), infertility stats, and general reproductive health info. It’s part of a 16-point national plan to tackle declining birth rates. France recorded more deaths than births last year for the first time since World War II, so they’re choosing drama.

And honestly? Parts of it aren’t terrible. Reminding people that egg freezing exists and is free is genuinely useful. I like that this letter goes to the boys too. Magnifique!

Less magnifique, however, is that the letter completely ignores why people aren’t having babies. It’s not because 29-year-olds forgot they had reproductive organs. It’s because rent costs more than a kidney. It’s because childcare is a second mortgage. It’s because the only thing that’s still cheap in France is the baguette, and that’s only because the government regulated the price of bread for decades and the price of the baguette is more scrutinised than the mystery of why Parisian women exist on croissants and still seem to be thin.

You want people to have kids? Don’t send them a letter. Build affordable housing. Create affordable childcare options. Indeed, the data is clear: where there is affordable childcare, there are more babies.

Now let’s hop over to the UK, where the framing of the ‘fertility crisis’ is - and I say this with the full weight of British understatement - significantly worse.

Enter Matt Goodwin, a small-time UK politician who decided this was his moment to weigh in on women’s choices and bodies. He declared that we need to explain to “young girls and women the biological reality of this crisis” because “many women in Britain are having children much too late in life and they would prefer to have children much earlier on.”

Ehm, excusez-moi? Women would prefer to have children earlier? Would we really, Matt? And where, Matt, are the men in this conversation? Nowhere to be found, apparently. Because in Goodwin’s version of the fertility debate, the problem is women making selfish life choices, not systemic failure. He’s also previously floated the idea that childless people should be taxed extra (FYI, one of the most notable ‘childless tax’ policies we know was introduced in the Soviet Union by none other than Joseph Stalin in 1941, so maybe check your history books before proposing idiotic policies, Matt ).

Might I add that this is the kind of policy you come up with when you’ve never spoken to a woman who has experienced infertility or pregnancy loss.

So in the great ‘bataille’ of France vs. the UK on fertility policy, who wins?

Honestly, both are losers. But if I had to award a point - and I do, because the France-England rivalry demands it - the point goes narrowly to France. At least they sent the letter to everyone and included something genuinely useful about free egg freezing. The UK’s contribution was just a man on YouTube telling women they’re doing it wrong. Groundbreaking.

Here’s what I actually want to say to every government currently trying to crawl into our homes, our lives, and apparently now our pants: get out. Fix the systems that make it so effing hard to start a family in the first place. Affordable childcare. Affordable housing. Fair and funded parental leave. And finally, fix the fact that fertility treatment costs thousands. Fix the actual problems - and then, respectfully, fuck off out of our ovaries.

The only person who should be all up in your ovaries is you.

Take care of yourself this weekend.

Warmly,

Tess, Co-founder & CEO