They’re still talking about birth rates like it’s a factory output problem, as if more daycare centers or tax breaks will fix loneliness. The prime minister gave his speech this morning about “reviving vitality,” standing in a suit too stiff for a human body, surrounded by men who’ve never changed a diaper or missed a child’s fever to attend a meeting. My daughter works sixty hours a week and calls me from a capsule hotel because she can’t face the train home — that’s the vitality they want to reward? I taught children for over three decades, and I can tell you this: you don’t raise a generation with policy slogans. You raise them with time, with presence, with the quiet certainty that someone will notice if you’re missing. The ministers talk, but no one listens to the silence between the phone calls mothers don’t make anymore.
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