via CNS:

Starting a family and having children has become a kind of herculean task when instead it should be valued and supported by everyone, Pope Francis said at a meeting in Rome on Italy’s severe decline in population growth.

Today’s culture “is unfriendly, if not hostile, to the family, centered as it is on the needs of the individual, where individual rights are continually claimed and the rights of the family are not discussed,” the pope said at the meeting May 12.

Women face “almost insurmountable constraints,” he said, especially as they are often forced to choose between having a career and being a mother or caring for family members who are frail or need special care.

“Women are slaves to this norm of selective employment, which also hinders them from motherhood,” he said….

In his talk, Pope Francis said that bringing children into the world is often seen as a task the family should be dealing with on its own.

“This, unfortunately, influences the mentality of the younger generations, who grow up in uncertainty, if not disillusionment and fear,” he said. “They experience a social climate in which starting a family has turned into a titanic effort, instead of being a shared value that everyone recognizes and supports.”

“Feeling alone and forced to rely solely on one’s own strength is dangerous: it means slowly eroding living as a community and resigning oneself to a lonely existence in which everyone has to go it alone,” he said.

The consequence of that, he said, is “only the wealthiest can afford, thanks to their resources, greater freedom in choosing how to shape their lives. And this is unfair, as well as humiliating.”