As Europe Grows Grayer, France Devises a Baby Boom

When Staub became pregnant with twins last year, the family moved out of their cramped apartment in suburban Paris and into a renovated stone farmhouse with massive plate-glass windows and exposed wood beam ceilings in Jumeauville, which translates in English as Twin City.

Staub, a slender woman with an animated face framed by honey-colored hair that brushes her shoulders, took a year off from her job at SFR, a major cellphone company, collecting monthly maternity leave benefits and a guarantee that her job would be waiting for her when she returned.

Under French law, a woman can opt not to work or to work part time until her child is 3 years old -- and her full-time job will be guaranteed when she returns. "In other countries, maternity leaves are seen as a handicap for mothers who want to have a career," Staub said. "It's different in France."

A colleague at Staub's company, Axelle de Barbeyrac, 35, also has four children, including twins. She works four days a week, a part-time schedule that she can continue, with government subsidies, until the twins are 3 next year.

She lives in the Paris suburb of Ville d'Avray, a 10-minute train ride west of the La Defense high-technology, high-rise corridor on the edge of the capital where both women work. Barbeyrac catches the 5:09 p.m. train home, walks to the government-subsidized day-care center where her 2 1/2 -year-old twins have spent the day ($670 a month for both), then picks up Ines, 8, and Feh, 6, at the after-school program that ends at 6 p.m. ($75 a month for the two).

As she arrives home to begin the four-child assembly line in the bathtub, the sidewalks around her cream-colored stucco house are crowded with schoolchildren on scooters and mothers pushing a stroller with one hand and gripping a toddler with the other.

"I don't know if the French system encourages women to have more children," said Barbeyrac, whose husband is a documentary filmmaker. "But people don't stop having children because of money concerns."

Maylis Staub agrees. Staub, who is married to a lawyer, returned to work in August. Instead of using the government-supported day-care centers, she hired a nanny -- subsidized by tax breaks on part of the nanny's salary -- to care for her 10-month-old twins, Quitterie and Hermine.

When both women's twins reach 3 years of age, they will qualify for the free government preschool programs that most French children attend until kindergarten.

"The child-care system in France is very well thought out," said Staub, sitting on a sofa on a recent Saturday afternoon with feverish 8-year-old Margaux on one side, fidgety 6-year-old Jules on the other, and one of the twins on her lap. "Everything is organized to make mothers' lives easier."

The French system also fosters different attitudes about working mothers. French working moms say they feel far less guilt than friends in the United States or Europe because French society recognizes children are well cared-for while mothers are at work.

As a result, French women are not only having more children than their European counterparts, but far more of them work outside the home than in most European countries. Three-fourths of all French mothers with at least two children are employed.