The meeting was organized and chaired by Prof. Marek Andrzejewski, PhD, INP PAN.
The talk was given by Prof. UAM Dr. Michalski from the Institute of Cultural Studies, Department of Anthropology and Cultural Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan.
Professor Michał Michalski is the author of numerous publications on the subject of the family, and in recognition of his achievements, he was awarded the Meritis pro-Familia badge in 2020.
The event is part of the scientific project entitled „Law and Demography” carried out by the Ferenc Mádl Institute of Comparative Law in Budapest and the Central European Academy, as part of the Central European Professors’ Network. Professor Marek Andrzejewski has been a member of the research network for the past three years and has prepared a report titled: Law and the Demographic Situation of Poland in 2023.
Before the meeting began, participants were informed that the meeting was being recorded and that participation in the meeting entailed implicit consent to the use of their image. This was accepted with understanding.
II. The meeting was a continuation of the event organized on November 21, 2023, entitled „Demographic Yearbook – the saddest Polish book, or challenges for pedagogy.” During this event, the perspective of a lawyer was confronted with those of pedagogues. This relationship was highlighted by Edward Rosset in his book Divorces, and the theses of the book were presented by the host of the meeting.
The event’s theme was chosen to emphasize Poland’s difficult demographic situation and point out the consequences involved. Poland’s low fertility rate has been less than 1.5 since the mid-1990s, sometimes lower than 1.4 children per woman of childbearing age. In turn, generational replacement is ensured only by a rate of 2.1, and the last time this was achieved in Poland was about 35 years ago. Presently, it is unattainable both for any European country and for any other of the highly economically developed countries (for example, in Korea it is 0.7). This has long caused huge social problems in these countries and has led to situations that trigger social unrest. The unrest is caused also by the poverty of Africa and parts of Asia, which pushes a massive influx into Europe of people with different cultures, who see the Old Continent as their only chance for a good life.
The consequences of this demographic collapse in Poland are the following:
– inefficiency of the pension system financed by the pay-as-you-go-rule, which requires high contributions from people, and – as these amounts are not sufficient anyway – also subsidies of pension benefits from the budget;
– the aging of the population, which requires the development of services (social, health) to support seniors, as well as huge budgetary outlays to ensure the payment of pensions (in Poland, for several years, pensioners have been receiving strictly budgetary social benefits erroneously called 13th or 14th pensions);
– the need to guarantee women the opportunity to reconcile professional work with motherhood (nurseries, kindergartens, remote work, „flexible” working hours), as today this is the most effective argument convincing women to take the trouble of combining professional development with motherhood;
– the need for the education system and the higher education system to adapt to the declining number of children and students (there are still almost 400 thousand places in higher education institutions and 330-350 thousand children have been born for the last 30 years annually;
– labor shortage in many professions and the resulting need to accept immigrants.
Debates on the demographic situation and its immediate and far-reaching consequences do not take place only among demographers, economists, social politicians, and politicians. They also arouse keen interest among, for example,
– sociologists (among others, the analysis of changes in social structure as exemplified by the numerous housing estates in cities, which used to be populated by young families and are now often communities of senior citizens, including many widows and widowers),
– psychologists (among others, the syndrome of the only child as a typical formula for spending childhood without siblings, the problem of coping with lonely old age due to lack of contact with grandchildren, or in general young people, among others),
– educators (among other things, the need to develop methods of working with only children, often addicted to electronic media, and unable to establish face-to-face relationships),
– lawyers (development of laws concerning the rights of the elderly, protection of people whose physical, as well as intellectual, competencies weaken with age),
-gerontologists, social service workers, doctors, local government officials, etc.
A common feature of Polish debates is their focus on minimizing the inevitable negative consequences of the demographic crisis, which leaves the issue of changing demographic trends outside the frame of reflection. At the moment, no one has presented a project aimed at counteracting the causes rather than the effects. The main guest speaker of the event, Prof. Michalski, took on this task. In his lecture he strongly affirmed family roles, especially those ascribed to women. His approach goes against feminism – the dominant trend in the public space (especially its radical manifestations) and a specifically understood sense of egalitarianism which posits that a woman should rather aim at fulfilling her own goals and thus leave the home and get professional work or get engaged in social activities. Not less effective is also the trend discouraging women from focusing on marriage and motherhood.
There are even numerous examples of how motherhood is mocked both in the media and in society.
Of course, the choice of a life path should be a woman’s decision and not the result of customarily imposed duties. Nowadays, these choices are influenced, among other things, by the lack of elementary knowledge about the role of a woman mother in the development of a child, about the rank of her work in the household, and therefore about the not inconsiderable economic gains of her involvement in the economy. According to widely held beliefs, a woman’s life path is said to be chosen when she takes up a professional job, while if she runs a household, she is just a mother and only provides support for her children; in such a situation it is said that she has succumbed to the dominant patriarchal pattern, is deprived of a right to choose, to take care of herself, etc. Prof. Michalski in his rather philosophically conservative lecture, tried to reverse the dominant narrative about a woman’s life path. He was trying to insert into the narrative deeper layers that would stress the economic, psychological, and also philosophical advantages of a woman in a family. It was indeed a very pro-female lecture. Speaking of the family as a driving force for the development of societies, he particularly emphasized the role of women. It was an outlook that many of those present found surprising, and therefore also inspiring….
The event held on January 16 was a presentation of demographic issues by an anthropologist, philosopher, economist, and researcher who specializes in the sociology of the family, and above all sees the family through the lens of economic processes. Numerous students attending the lecture were faced with the challenge of juxtaposing what they know about the family from their own experience, readings, and classes attended in their pedagogical studies, with the story of the family drawn from the multidisciplinary perspectives by Professor Michał Michalski.
Also present were staff members from the Faculty of Educational Studies at UAM.
The choice of the pedagogical community as the audience at a lecture – whose content affirmed the family as a basic element and foundation of proper economic development of the country, as a place for the realization of life goals AND self-realization of its members – was not accidental. Everyone, whether they want to or not, meets pedagogues on their way. This happens to students, parents, and grandparents. Therefore, it is educationally crucial that teachers and educators in their professional relationships do not repeat any circulated, simplistic opinions, especially on life-important issues. They should rather aim at being an inspiration for children and young people, not yet another tube preaching content of the kind found in many mass media.
The lecture was followed by an interesting discussion. It showed that the audience was interested and prepared to talk about the family. In addition, it revealed that the initial anxiety of the speaker about the communicative nature of his message was excessive.
Professor Michalski is a renowned family researcher who wishes the family well and tries to maintain a sober judgment of the reality it faces. At the same time, while watching the development of the family, he seeks solutions that will help the family. This is not a common attitude among researchers. When inviting him to participate in the event, I did not know that he was also invited by the authorities of the Central European Academy to work on the relationship between law and demography. This proves the accuracy of both my choice of speaker for the organized event and the choice made by the CEA.
Prof. M. Michalski’s lecture was a kind of affirmation of the family as the driving wheel of all economic reforms. The title of the speech and its main thesis: „The Family and Socio-economic Development” was not accidental. After all, families participate in the creation of various goods, but above all they are consumers. The dominant view of the family in contemporary society is that it is a problem (a problem family, a family with one problem or another, a pathological family), while Prof. Michalski was trying to demonstrate that the family is not a problem; rather, the family is the solution to many problems. During the lecture, he presented a range of arguments in favor of the thesis that the family has a significant impact on the socio-economic development of society. According to Prof. Michalski, there are still few economists who claim that the family is the driving wheel of the economy, and they are right. It is thanks to the family that there is a sense of continuity in society – biological continuity, social continuity, and cultural continuity. Prof. Michalski referred to the family as an interface integrating individuals into broader social structures.
The modern cultural context is not favorable to the family; on the contrary, individualism is overexposed, and the importance of communities is belittled. Looking at the family in a demographic context, some scientists claim that population growth is the most telling sign of a society’s prosperity. It can be seen that these modern times – looking through the prism of this criterion – for families are not the most prosperous. On the other hand, economic growth undoubtedly has a positive effect on the economy. The Malthusian view was quickly successfully challenged, although there are still claims that the existence of the planet is threatened due to population growth (everywhere except Europe). Professor Michalski showed many tables and graphs to illustrate the lecture. Perhaps the most interesting data following from his talk is that as the Earth’s population grows, more key ideas (scientific progress, economic development) emerge that propose how to solve social problems. In view of those findings, the predictions of Malthus and his followers were effectively negatively verified.
Of other economic topics, it was somewhat surprising to learn that the work undertaken in the household includes activities and behaviors that can be attributed to about 25 different professions and the average annual cost of all the activities performed in a household is worth more than 20 thousand zlotys (about 4.5 thousand euros).
Another important idea mentioned in the lecture was that the family is a school where social skills are acquired as a result of parental care, trust, maturity, and civic responsibility. They constitute the so-called soft skills that make it possible to live with people. Research shows that children raised in complete families perform better academically, also at the college level, and they also develop better emotionally. Family breakdown negatively affects children’s economic mobility (upward economic functioning).
Referring to the program of economic support for families called 500-plus, the lecturer pointed out that it did not result in an improvement in the demographic situation of Poland, but it became an important stimulator of economic prosperity for the individuals and the country. This was because the funds were mainly channeled at consumption, which improved the standard of living, and this in turn triggered the production of goods and services, which affected the country’s economy. Professor Michalski stressed that for families, parental love is the main motive for saving, which again positively affects the economy. This motive is not known to single people.
At the closing of the meeting, the chairman of the meeting, Prof. M. Andrzejewski, thanked Prof. M. Michalski for his extremely pro-family lecture, whose message is very different from what one usually hears about the family. He then encouraged the audience to ask questions.
The audience asked several diverse questions: they were interested in the working concept of the family, the optimal approach to dysfunctional families, the assignment of guaranteed benefits to those who have reached a certain age, and many others.
