Not only are mothers here reduced to cultural stereotypes whenever it is suggested that they might be interested in things like cookbooks, vacuum cleaners, sewing machines and irons, fathers in these parts are not treated any better.
The German Father’s Day stereotype (Father’s Day is today, incidentally) consists of fathers and other so-called “men” celebrating it by turning it into a drunken orgy of day-drinking debauchery in which mindless Herrenparties (gentlemen party groups) pull their ridiculously decorated Bollerwagen (handcarts) filled with booze and food but mostly booze through the countryside or greener urban landscape. It’s scandalous. To assume that all men are interested in that kind of nonsense, I mean.
I’d like to address this subject in a little more detail but I have to go help my neighbor load up our Bollerwagen. It’s getting on noon and we haven’t had a drink yet.
Lidl Germany has come under fire for suggesting people buy their mums cookbooks, vacuum cleaners, sewing machines and irons for Mother’s Day.
The logic appears to go like this: Germans will only have children if they are paid by the state to do so.
That this money must first be taken from them by the state to only later be given back to them if they behave properly (improperly?) is the first oddity here but not really the issue at the moment – or at least not the one German politicians want to talk about. The problem now is that Germans aren’t having enough children (only 12% of families with children here have 3 or more). They are not following the German reproduction regulation logic like they are supposed to and are refusing to have large families despite regular increases to the child benefit or Kindergeld payments given here.
In an attempt to counteract what is now the German one-child-per-family-if-they-have-any-children-at-all tradition, some reproduction regulators are suggesting that families now be given higher payments for each successive child born. I’m sure this will work just great. Well, I’m kind of sure it might work maybe, I mean.
Of course more money will first have to be taken in from the Germans before some of it can be given back to some of them again but that’s never bothered legislators here before so why break with a tradition like that now?
“Die wirtschaftliche Situation von Familien verbessert sich trotz der staatlichen Unterstützung im Durchschnitt nicht.”
Observing Hermann 