Early 20th-century France faced an existential threat: Its citizens weren’t having enough babies. In 1900, the average French woman gave birth to three children throughout her lifetime while over the border in Germany women were averaging five. For decades, France’s population had hovered stubbornly at around 40 million while that of its European rivals grew larger. “It is the most significant fact in French life. In no other country in the world is the birth rate so low,” wrote American journalist Walter Weyl in 1912.
French society swung into action to avert the crisis. Pronatalist organizations sprung up, and by 1916 half of all French parliamentarians were part of a
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