Liberty, equality, fecundity

At a wedding in the Loire last weekend, in the grounds of the groom’s parents’ small château, an acquaintance from work unexpectedly materialised out of the crowd. In his early thirties, he introduced me to his blonde, gangling wife, maybe a year younger than he. The conversation turned to children: they have four, including a five-month-old baby — ‘and a fifth is on the way’. ‘Where are they?’ I asked. They were staying with his wife’s siblings, of which there are ten.

The phenomenon of young parents and large families is widespread in France, and unique among Europe’s native populations with the exception of gypsy families in Slovakia or Albanians in Kosovo. But to quote these categories in the same breath is to underline the key difference: the French people running the demographic marathon against the Muslims are not white trash. I had dinner last year with a retired general, an ex-colonel and a corporate lawyer in his forties: these three embodiments of the establishment had 22 children between them.