ENI – A proposal by Germany's family minister to triple the number of day care spots for young children by 2013 has led to disagreement between Protestant and Roman Catholic bishops. German day cares, known as crèches, are mostly run by churches or local authorities. There are few child-care facilities for children under three.
The Catholic bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, condemned the plans to provide financial incentives for more creches as reducing women to the status of “child-bearing machines.” He called the minister's policies “hostile to children and blinded by ideology” which favoured working women.
But Wolfgang Huber, Germany's top Protestant bishop, said his church supported the proposals and would create more places in the creches that it administers. “It's not appropriate to label women who want to use these places as being child-bearing machines,” he told a news service.
