INTERVIEW
Large families feel unloved. According to a survey published by the National Union of Family Associations (UNAF), 62% of large families feel that they suffer from a negative image. Among the complaints that parents of more than three children claim to hear: a certain educational neglect, a tendency to benefit from social benefits, but also, at a time when ecology has become a public health issue, a propensity to overconsumption. Large families would therefore be, according to their detractors, a brake on sustainable development.
And yet, "we have more reasons to be green when we have more children," notes the microphone of Matthieu Belliard, in The big evening newspaper on Europe 1, Jean-Philippe Vallat, director of policies and family actions and head of studies at UNAF. The motivations would be moral - "We say we are more committed to the future of the planet when we have three or four children" - but also financial.
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Financial pressure that makes it necessary to adapt
"Having a large family is not necessarily antinomic with a green behavior, on the contrary," says the manager. And for good reason: the economic constraints that may weigh on a family of more than three children often force parents to adopt a mode of consumption based on moderation and reuse. "When we have a large family, we often make choices to the economy, we have a standard of living that is reduced, we make collaborative consumption choices, we refile the clothes between children", enumerates Jean-Philippe Vallat .
"We are perhaps the greenest we can find, because we must work on the economy," abounds at the microphone of Europe 1 Francis, a father of seven children. "We do not spoil, we teach children to sort, store their things, put things right, and it works well like that." Thus, "large families make choices that can be sustainable development choices," says Jean-Philippe Vallat. A way of life that they also tend to transmit to their offspring. "It can be learned, with an effort of solidarity between children that is very important for these families."