The German minister for families has proposed shorter working hours for parents with young children.
Manuela Schwesig said Germany should subsidise couples 300 Euro a month so they can work shorter hours and neither couple has to give up their career to look after their kids.
Under Manuela’s proposal, parents would only work 32 hours a week if they had children under the age of eight.
Speaking to German publication Bild, Manuela said that parents in the country want to split childcare, house work and careers equally, and this way they can.
“I want to make young parents an offer than enables them both to commit themselves with the same intensity to childcare and to their careers,” she said.
Germans have some of the shortest working hours in the world, clocking up just 36 hours a week on average.
Despite this, they are famed for their high levels of productivity and are known to be rigorously disciplined.
In a recent census, it showed that in the majority of families the father still works full time, while the mother only works part time. If Manuela’s proposals are taken on board by the government it could lead to a dramatic shift in this statistic.
