Established more than fifteen years ago, the Degroof Petercam Foundation champions a vision of a sustainable and inclusive society where everyone has the opportunity to thrive through employment. It endorses those who propose innovative approaches to address employment-related challenges.

In 2023, we established a "Social Innovation Lab" with a focus on employment issues in Belgium. Through our research, we have identified "Parenthood and employment" as a critically overlooked, urgent, and complex issue within the Belgian context. To address this, we are allocating resources to investigate potential solutions to improve the reconciliation of parenthood and employment.

Recognizing the magnitude of this challenge, we understand that we cannot tackle it alone. Therefore, we are calling upon civil society, citizens, and non-profit organizations to join us in addressing this multifaceted problem.

WHY it MATTERS

Throughout history and across cultures, most adults become parents.

However, societal shifts, including increased female workforce participation, changing family structures, declining birth rates, increasing individualism in Western society replacing collective responsibility, have reshaped the landscape of parenthood and employment.

Despite Belgium's ambition for achieving 80% employment by 2030, there is room for improvement, particularly in reconciling employment with parenthood.

WHY do we ACT

Taking action to better reconcile parenthood and work means taking an interest in:

• Gender equality, both economical and social
• Public health, concerning both parents and children
• An economic reality with practical impacts on growth and our social system
• Public policies that affect our fellow citizens on a daily basis
• A societal choice that will have a lasting impact on the country we aspire to become

This CONSULTATION is AIMED AT:

• mothers, fathers and future parents who work, want to work or have worked
• concerned grandparents
• employees, employers, managers and entrepreneurs
• associations active in the fields of childhood, work, family, health and women's issues
• any citizen wishing to contribute to this conversation, because "it takes a village to raise a child"