This is a conclusion I arrived at some time ago when thinking about Israel and the fertility of secular Israelis. Many of the material and institutional conditions often cited in fertility debates are present elsewhere as well. Where I live, in the Czech Republic, life does not feel particularly anti-family at all. There are playgrounds everywhere, children are visibly present in public spaces, pavements are easy to navigate with strollers, and grandparents in most cases play an active role in helping to care for their grandchildren. There is also a reasonable and non-negligible level of state support for families.

And yet, fertility remains far below any desirable level. The reason, I suspect, is that something more fundamental is missing: a shared grand narrative. Post-communist Europe is not strongly shaped by the openly anti-familial or oikophobic, self-critical progressive ideologies found in parts of the West. Instead, the dominant leitmotif of the past thirty-five years has been essentially material: let’s get wealthy, let’s grow, let’s catch up with the West. That, however, is not enough.