It stresses the greater opportunity cost of children and pronounced stratification of fertility by female employment status in Germany, attributable to the high degree of labour market segmentation and weaker support for the work-life balance than in France. In Germany, TFRs in the post re-unification period were lowest in 1994 at 1.24, but edged up thereafter to 1.47 children per women in 2014. The effect may further accrue when Germany expands its provision of early childhood education and care (ECEC). Nevertheless, its TFR is still low in comparison to countries that started to develop their work-life balance support at an earlier stage, such as France, Iceland and Sweden, whose TFRs are close to two children per women.