Why has Els van Doesburg’s call to ‘make babies’ divided Flanders?

In the interview, as reproduced by Het Nieuwsblad and HLN, Van Doesburg described the questions she received after the birth of her son—about exhaustion, sleep and combining work with a baby—as overwhelmingly negative. She acknowledged that parenthood can be demanding and that her own job and circumstances are unusual, but argued that those burdens should not eclipse the joy of having a child. VRT’s De Afspraak subsequently devoted a discussion to whether women complain too much about motherhood, showing that the remark had travelled beyond a passing interview line and become a wider argument about how Flemish society talks about care and family life.

Van Doesburg later indicated on social media that she meant the appeal seriously, according to reporting around the controversy. Yet no accompanying municipal or Flemish policy package was announced. Her words therefore sit somewhere between personal testimony, an optimistic cultural message and a recognisably political soundbite. That ambiguity helps explain why listeners heard very different things in the same sentence.

Supportive readers quoted by HLN treated the statement as a welcome defence of parenthood and an attempt to restore confidence in family life. Parents can reasonably describe raising children as both difficult and profoundly rewarding, and Van Doesburg’s core complaint is that public discussion sometimes leaves too little room for the latter.

Other parents, people without children and women who have experienced infertility heard an instruction about what they should do with their bodies and lives. Responses collected by Het Nieuwsblad included the warning that people should not interfere with another person’s belly. HLN’s reader debate repeatedly raised housing costs, household income and access to childcare, with respondents arguing that an exhortation sounds very different when it comes from someone with financial security and political influence.

Those objections are not simply semantic. Having a child can depend on stable housing, suitable work, a partner or support network, health and timely childcare. Some people actively choose not to become parents; others want children but cannot have them, experience pregnancy loss or cannot make the practical arithmetic work. The dispute consequently became less about whether babies are welcome than about whether an elected official should turn a deeply personal decision into a general civic message.

The controversy also touches a real demographic trend. Statbel’s provisional figures, reported by VRT NWS, recorded 108,680 births in Belgium in 2024, 4.6% below the annual average for 2020–2023. The reduction was estimated at 2.6% in Flanders, compared with steeper falls in Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region. Agentschap Opgroeien maintains the detailed Flemish dashboards and cautions that births and fertility rates are distinct measures: the number of babies reflects both reproductive behaviour and the number and age profile of potential parents.

University of Antwerp demographer Karel Neels told VRT NWS in 2025 that Belgium’s falling births reflected an ageing population structure and the continued postponement of family formation. Starting later can reduce the eventual number of children, but the precise contribution of the different causes still required more research. That is an important restraint on the political argument: a lower birth count cannot be explained solely by pessimistic language, nor can it automatically be reversed by encouraging individuals to reproduce.

The broader European pattern links low fertility to longer education, later partnerships, expensive housing, unequal care burdens and uncertainty about work and the future. Governments can influence some of those conditions, but experience across affluent countries suggests that rhetoric or one-off financial incentives alone cannot reliably produce a durable baby boom. The gap between wanting children and feeling able to have them is usually the more useful policy question.

For expatriate and multilingual households in Vlaanderen, the applicable services depend primarily on residence and employment status rather than on participation in this political debate. Vlaanderen.be directs parents seeking income-related childcare to obtain an attest inkomenstarief through Mijn Kind en Gezin, normally using e-ID or itsme. A gezin that cannot complete the digital procedure because it lacks a Belgian electronic identity card can ask the childcare provider, the local childcare desk or the OCMW for help under the Flemish rules.

Terminology matters. In Dutch-speaking municipalities, search for kinderopvang, Lokaal Loket Kinderopvang, gemeente and dienst Burgerlijke Stand. The equivalent local authority in French is commonly called the commune, with the civil-registry service described as the service de l’état civil. Brussels families may encounter both languages and should check whether a childcare place falls under the Flemish system administered by Opgroeien or the French-speaking system. A child attending recognised Flemish childcare with a fixed, non-income-related price may qualify for the childcare allowance within the Vlaams Groeipakket, subject to the published conditions. Income-related care requires the appropriate tariff certificate. Births must also be registered with the civil-status service of the municipality where the child was born.

These administrative supports do not settle the emotional argument, but they clarify its limits. Van Doesburg can promote a more positive story about motherhood; residents can answer that public optimism should be matched by affordable services and respect for voluntary childlessness. The next meaningful test is whether the episode produces concrete proposals on childcare, housing, leave or work-family balance. Until then, the controversy remains a revealing Flemish conversation about who gets to celebrate parenthood, who carries its costs and where encouragement ends and social pressure begins.