{"id":677325,"date":"2026-01-06T08:57:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T08:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/677325\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T08:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T08:57:12","slug":"germanys-baby-gap-turns-childcare-shortage-on-its-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/677325\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s baby gap turns childcare shortage on its head"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stay informed with free updates<\/p>\n

Simply sign up to the Social affairs myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

Germany\u2019s falling birth rates and rising rental costs have driven a sharp drop in demand for nursery places in Berlin, once among the city\u2019s most coveted services with waiting lists that could stretch for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been a huge decline,\u201d said Claudia Freist\u00fchler, managing director of Kinderg\u00e4rten City. \u201cThere are just fewer children in total.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state-funded group, which operates 58 day-care centres in the German capital, usually cares for more than 7,000 toddlers. But in 2025, \u201cwe won\u2019t make it over 6,000\u201d, Freist\u00fchler said. She noted that the trend had developed \u201csuddenly\u201d, with families also driven out of central districts by skyrocketing rents. <\/p>\n

Germany still lacks more than 300,000 day-care places for children under three, a shortfall often cited as a key reason why Europe\u2019s largest economy has a comparatively high share of women working part-time.<\/p>\n

But in several major cities \u2014 including Berlin and some parts of Frankfurt and M\u00fcnster \u2014 falling birth rates are now producing the opposite problem: excess capacity. Germany\u2019s fertility rate fell to 1.35 children per woman in 2024, down from 1.38 the previous year. In Berlin alone, 97 nurseries have closed over the past two years, according to the city\u2019s senate department for education, youth and family.<\/p>\n

Martin Bujard, a professor at the Federal Institute for Population Research, said that low birth rates were \u201cdisadvantageous\u201d and \u201ccost a great deal of prosperity\u201d, at a time when the German economy struggles to exit its longest postwar stagnation.<\/p>\n

\"ClaudiaClaudia Freist\u00fchler, managing director of Kinderg\u00e4rten City, acknowledges a \u2018huge decline\u2019 in demand for pre-school places \u00a9 Annette Koroll\/Kinderg\u00e4rten City<\/p>\n

\u201cCrises are poison for family planning,\u201d he said. \u201cThe people were burdened by the Covid-19 pandemic\u2009.\u2009.\u2009. Then there was the war on Ukraine, then there was inflation, economic concerns.\u201d <\/p>\n

Berlin kitas, or preschools, used to have long waiting lists, prompting local authorities to allocate more funding. But the additional facilities and workers came \u201ctoo late\u201d, Freist\u00fchler said. She is now actively reaching out to immigrant families from \u201cdifferent social milieus\u201d and \u201cbackgrounds\u201d to stay afloat.<\/p>\n

Maria Chiara Ferrante is one of them. The 36-year-old data analyst from Milan said that securing a kita place for her daughter was much easier than feared. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe applied to about 10 kitas and got a positive answer from seven to eight,\u201d Ferrante said. <\/p>\n

When the family took some time to make a decision, they received emails from eager kitas asking if they were still interested, she added.<\/p>\n

Vikasni Kannan was similarly surprised by the \u201centhusiasm\u201d that followed her applications and visits. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe first thing that I noticed is that they have this huge wall with flags of all the nationalities of kids in the kita,\u201d said the 31-year-old psychologist, who moved from India with her husband a couple of months ago. \u201cThat is something that they did highlight and make sure that I saw.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"APreschools in Berlin are reaching out to immigrants and seeking to attract families who would not necessarily think of using childcare at all \u00a9 Omer Messinger\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Paulina Woznicki, the manager of one of the Fr\u00f6bel kitas in Berlin, said she was trying to make the day-care centre more attractive for families like the Kannans. The day-care centre had put \u201ca focus on skilled workers who speak a foreign language\u201d to remain competitive, she noted.<\/p>\n

The Fr\u00f6bel group is seeking to attract families who would not necessarily think of using childcare at all by advertising in foreign languages on social media with the help of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Its group chair Stefan Spieker said: \u201cWe experimented with building different avatars that can speak Ukrainian or Arabic and that was really successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group also offers a \u201cparent academy\u201d to help foreign families overcome bureaucratic hurdles, Woznicki said. She noted the contrast to past years when \u201cit used to be the case that we were overrun and we always had a long waiting list\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rising rents in the capital are also a problem. \u201cMore and more families are moving away,\u201d Woznicki said.<\/p>\n

With fewer children, the nurseries need to cut costs because their funding is directly tied to enrolment. \u201cWe only get money for the children that we are looking after,\u201d Freist\u00fchler said.<\/p>\n

The trend is more pronounced in eastern German states, where fertility has fallen to 1.27 children per woman and the overall number of women is lower.<\/p>\n

Waltraud Weegmann, head of the German Nursery Association, said that even in the wealthier western states \u201cwaiting lists are getting shorter\u201d. <\/p>\n

She added: \u201cIt is all happening very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Social affairs myFT Digest — delivered directly to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-677325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115847328274586357","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}