The French government, by contrast, supports an extensive network of day-care and after-school centers, many open until 6 p.m.
Social attitudes only deepen the problems. While the law entitles men to paid family leave, few take it, fearing it will cripple their careers. Yet women who work while rearing children meet disapproval from colleagues and bosses. On a recent television talk show, the male host showed Dr. von der Leyen a fictitious newspaper front page, with a smiling photo of her and a headline, ''Mama, Where Were You When I Was Small?''
''In the day-to-day life of a working woman, the Rabenmutter is still very much alive,'' said Martin Werding, a family policy expert at the Ifo Institute of Economic Research in Munich. As Dr. von der Leyen put it, ''The bad conscience will kill you.''
Rather than vault the hurdles and shoulder the guilt, many German women skip having children. In 2005, 42 percent of those with academic careers were childless. That is double the percentage in France, which has one of Europe's highest birthrates.
Dr. von der Leyen, 47, traces her determination to work and have children to encouragement she received in the 1990's while working at Stanford University. Her bosses, she said, were impressed by her ability to juggle a job and a household. In Germany, by contrast, a boss who heard she was expecting a third child told her she would have too little energy to work.
Dr. von der Leyen says she now wants to combine the flexible child care of France with the financial incentives of Sweden. Her main proposal, adapted from Sweden, is to shorten parental leave support in Germany to 12 months, but tie payments – up to $2,200 a month – to income. Higher-income families would have more incentive to have babies, while the shorter duration would prod mothers to return to work sooner.
She would also require fathers to take at least two months off work, if a family is to receive the full 12 months of benefits, to pressure men to take more responsibility.
That provision has particularly rankled conservatives in the Christian Democratic Party, which governs Germany in a grand coalition with the Social Democrats.
Some of that is old-fashioned gender politics: Many Christian Democrats, like conservatives in most places, champion traditional families, with a working father and a homemaking mother. But Germany's particular history also raises emotions in the debate, sometimes in contradictory ways. The Nazis were the last enthusiastic practitioners of family policy in Germany, a fact that has made people here queasy about any repopulation schemes. But the Nazis also celebrated the stay-at-home mother, a fact that Dr. von der Leyen's supporters cite.
''The thinking that mothers should look after children and men should go out and support the family is a product of our dark past,'' said Reiner Klingholz, director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development. ''It's still in the minds of people, even if they sound liberal or progressive.''
Source: Mark Landler, “Quoth the Raven: I Bake Cookies, Too,” From The New York Times, © April 23, 2006 The New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited. www.nytimes.com.
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