The new legislation allows new fathers to take 13 days for paternity leave. Several angry male politicians mocked the prime minister as wanting to mandate male breast-feeding, but figured he couldn't get away with it. All this, they argue, is no way to raise Spain's birthrate, the lowest in Europe, currently at less than one child per couple.
Germany, by comparison, looks at the problem differently. A popular new book, "The Eva Principle" (Das Eva Prinzip), subtitled "Towards a New Femininity," suggests that motherhood is counter-revolutionary. The author, Eva Herman, 49, a former newsreader (as news anchorpersons are called over here), abandoned a glamorous television career 10 years ago when she gave birth to a son. "We women have overburdened ourselves to be too easily seduced by career opportunities," she writes. She fears that Germans will "die out" if they don't change their attitude toward making babies. Angry German feminists accuse her of wanting to take women back to the '50s: "Instead of 'Leave It to Beaver,' she's calling for 'Leave It to Bernhard.'"
Christa Muller disagrees. She's the wife of the left-wing former finance minister Oskar Lafontaine. Five years ago she echoed Hillary Clinton's defiant boast that she didn't intend to stay home to bake cookies. Now Frau Muller urges women to look on motherhood as a career. She's writing a book called "Careful, Housewife Ahead! ("Achtung Hausfrau"), and is campaigning for the government to pay women for domestic work.
Women's issues are country-specific. Angela Merkel, Germany's first woman chancellor, is childless. Ursula von der Leyen, her minister for family affairs, is married and the mother of seven children. Preaching what she practices, she wants to boost the German birthrate, now at 1.3 children per woman, by increasing the number of nursery places for children younger than 3.
Many European women, aware that a majority of American women work outside the home, are puzzled by the attempt to resuscitate the Equal Rights Amendment. "What more could you gain?" one asked me. Said another, a strong, independent Spanish artist: "We've come a long way, senora."