PARIS -- The sound of squalling children echoing around a sun-soaked park here Thursday underscores France's aggressive response to the crisis of aging populations.

While countries like Canada ramp up immigration to deal with low birth rates, as highlighted in a recent Statistics Canada report, France has seen its fertility rate soar.

Babies are everywhere in France, a country that gives presidential medals to its most prolific parents….

An environmental consultant, Carles gets 80 per cent of her salary while on maternity leave for 16 weeks.

When she returns to work, her son will go into a subsidized child care facility costing as little as $350 Cdn a month.

In a nearby playground, Corinne Seror, a harried mother of three who was about to be told by a Canadian journalist that her T-shirt was inside-out, said the French system is child-friendly.

"I think it's a bit easier here to have children," says Seror, 39, as she nervously watched her youngest, a wobbly-legged toddler, stand precariously at the top of a slide.

Seror, who recently spent five years in Vancouver while her husband taught at the University of British Columbia, said she won't return to her guaranteed high school teaching job until the toddler turns three. At that point she will have been on leave for eight years.

She currently gets the equivalent of about $400 Cdn a month in benefits for her three children.

Statistics Canada reported this week that, for the first time, more Canadian families are made up of couples without children.

The birth rate is far below the 2.1 children per child of child-rearing age required to sustain a population in the absence of more immigration.

Canada's estimated birth rate for this year, according to the U.S. government's World Factbook, will be 1.61 children per woman, which is roughly in line with that of the United Kingdom and Sweden, and ahead of Japan's and Germany's rates of 1.4 children.

France's estimated rate, by contrast, is two children per woman…

Some point to the confidence the French have in the country's child care system, which gets enormous government support.

In Canada, the Harper government cancelled a Liberal daycare program and instead offered parents $100 a month for each child under six.

"Some countries have struck a successful balance between life and work that enables parents to raise children without sacrificing their careers," The Economist concluded.

"If the explanation is right, it does not matter that France doles out presidential medals.

"But it does matter that it has an excellent, state-subsidized system of creches, to which mothers are happy to entrust their offspring."