Let me take an unconventional viewpoint. I believe that this simple problem of children and their parents in Switzerland has its origin in their financial situation. Cheap food contains sugar and is often unhealthy.

The ETH, for example, does not support its child care facilities from april 2004 on (definitely not for financial reasons). It is nearly impossible to have one or more kids without being in financial trouble which is directly reflected by the low number of children per adult (especially low in Switzerland). Furthermore, due to this fact, political decisions in favour of the financial situation of children are becoming increasingly unprobable.

Even though I think it is time to think about a fair distribution of resources which also allows, in the end, children to eat healthy food, and which allows their parents to take care of them while finding themselves in an acceptable financial situation. This situation should not suffer from the number of kids.

Here is an example: The costs for a single kid in a child care are between 20'000-30'000 CHF/year. For three kids the reduced amount may be 40'000-70'000 CHF/year. Concerning taxes, you are allowed to remove max. 3'000 CHF/year for each kid, a number, which is neglegible compared with the actual costs. The ETH supports each kid by roughly 3'000 CHF/year.

For several reasons which may be not so obvious the situation is different in other countries. Sometimes, an additional kid does not produce additional costs. Often, the additional efforts undertaken by the parents even pay off. Not much attentions has been paid to this argument when investigating its implications (overweight etc).

martin