'Rent-a-granny': German pensioners answer the call

BERLIN, Germany -- German pensioners are hiring themselves out to stressed single mothers to look after their children for a few hours a week.

The "Rent-a-Granny" scheme illustrates Germany's demographic dilemma -- too few children are being born to finance the pensions of the post-war baby boomers.

"I don't have any grandchildren myself and it is good to have contact with the next generation," said a 65-year-old who gave her first name as Norgard, showing off photographs of her "borrowed grandchildren" to pensioners at a coffee morning.

"My grandchildren don't need me anymore and after my mother died, I had time to do something," chips in Waltraut Rosenberg, 73, who has helped a single mother keep her job in a bank by looking after her 10-year-old son after school.

Social worker Roswita Winterstein, who runs the "Grandparents Service" project in Berlin that brings elderly people together with single parents, says Germany does not do enough to encourage women to have children.

"We are really unfriendly to children," she said.

"I wouldn't want to be a young mother today -- they are under so much pressure to offer their children everything. They are completely overtaxed."

Winterstein, whose scheme has a waiting list of about 700 single parents, bemoans the shortage of state-funded child care, particularly compared to the generous support that communist East Germany used to offer mothers.

"In the old East we used to get child support and kindergartens at work. Now kindergartens close at 2 or 3 p.m. It's mad. They should stay open much later," she said.

While the German birth rate has stagnated at around 1.4 children per woman -- well below the 2.1 needed to maintain a steady population -- fertility plummeted as low as 0.7 children per woman in the former East after unification a decade ago.

One German nappy factory announced recently that the low birthrate was forcing it to lay off dozens of staff.

Demographers predict that without immigration the German population will shrink by up to 15 million by 2050 from its current 82 million, with the average age gradually increasing from 40 now to 48 in five decades.

The traditional population pyramid -- where youngsters far outnumber older people -- has been upended into an unstable "mushroom" in Germany.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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