More than 50% of children born in 2023 are only children. But there are more large families: 700 women in Portugal have 5 children. Even so, the desire to have children outweighs the reality of the children that are born. What can be done?
Portugal is the country in the European Union (EU) with the highest proportion of families with just one child, PORDATA reported in July, on the occasion of World Population Day.
Of Portuguese families, just 27% have children and, among these, almost two thirds have only one childhe pointed out to Lusa.
However, from the National Statistics Institute (INE), they reveal that the number of large families (between 3 and 6 children, in particular) has been increasing.
A The biggest increase, of 41%, was recorded in the fifth child. In 2023, more than 700 families had five children, for the first time in 10 years. Since 2013, there have been 40% more seventh children. 2015, 2019 and 2021 were the years with the most eighth children. (26 families), denotes the .
Regarding the tenth child, only one Portuguese woman has reached this milestone this year (a 41-year-old mother from Loulé), far from the 12 who registered in 2013.
Even so, Portugal still lives up to its nickname “country of only children”and large families represent only 6% of the total number of families with children: of the 85,699 babies born in Portugal last year, more than 50% were first descendants. It was the year in which the most first births were recorded.
However, the problem does not seem to be in the will of the Portuguese, but in the difficulties in having children, as stated by the president of the National Association of Large Families (ANFM), Ana Cid Gonçalves. “The desired number of children is much higher than the actual fertility” he assures, which is why it is necessary to provide “more support to the family”.
The main problem, he tells JN, is the prejudice that “large families are very rich or very poor”, which “does not correspond at all to what the national reality is. Large families are completely transversal. It is a life choice that is particularly difficult in Portugal“.
Large families “experience difficult and demanding realities and have to be very creative to face all the burdens and logistics of everyday life”, says the president to ANFM.
Give a concrete example: “In reducing VAT on electricity, for example, these families cannot have 6.9 kVA of contracted powerdue to the expenses at home. And if it doesn’t have 6.9 kVA, there’s no reduction.”
“If there were policies to give families the freedom to have the children they want, perhaps the demographic issue would begin to be corrected“, he concludes.
