The French Minister of Solidarity, Personal Independence and Disability, Aurore Bergé, today announced a plan on the challenges of families, which includes the creation of a commission and the option of imposing community work on parents who neglect their responsibility.
In an interview published today in the weekly La Tribune Dimanche, Bergé revealed that he is working with the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, and the head of the Justice portfolio, Éric Dupond-Moretti, on different measures, such as parents having to face costs when their children are guilty of “degradations.”
Likewise, the Government plans to fine parents when they do not appear at court hearings that concern their children. In addition, a scientific commission – made up of experts such as demographers, judges or psychiatrists – will be created to study the challenges of parenthood in France and the so-called CAF (Caisses d’allocations familiales), in charge of distributing aid, will be increased by 30%. to families. This battery of measures is related to the wave of riots that France experienced between the end of June and the beginning of last July, unleashed after the death of a minor of Maghrebi descent at the hands of the police at a roadblock in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris.
In those incidents, in which more than 2,500 buildings were burned or damaged, hundreds of businesses were looted and vandalized and more than 12,000 cars were burned, security forces detained 4,000 people.
A third of those detained were minors and the majority came from single-parent homes, which is why French President Emmanuel Macron then pointed out the responsibility of parents. “It is clear that it is necessary to restore authority and it is not old-fashioned or reactionary to say so. We see that parents may feel overwhelmed and disoriented in the face of new risks, such as a sedentary lifestyle and the increasing importance of screens.
And all social groups are affected,” said Bergé. For the minister, we must return to the social place that corresponds to parents, who cannot be forgotten by public policies. Specifically, Bergé emphasized in single-parent families, in which the father is most often absent.”Parents cannot be reduced to supporting their children. Society has come to accept that women have to assume certain responsibilities regarding children alone. A couple can separate, but the family is still alive: children are not abandoned,” she stressed.