Five Dutch healthcare unions have handed MPs a petition of more than 15,000 signatures calling on them to guarantee the future of post-birth maternity care for mother and baby.

The kraamzorg maternity care assistance, which is offered in the eight days after birth in the Netherlands, is under threat due to a severe shortage of labour and inadequate pay, the unions say.

The unions say that last year 500 families did not get a maternity care assistant because there was so much pressure on the system. The FNV cited research suggesting that within 10 years, the shortage could rise to 37,000 families without kraamzorg, a quarter of all births.

The unions want a dedicated ministerial representative and better pay, including for being on standby – which is currently around €11.50 per eight hour shift, before tax.

GroenLinks-PvdA MP and former midwife Elke Slagt-Tichelman received the petition on behalf of MPs and said that the Netherlands has a unique system that helps families to bond after birth.

According to national statistics agency CBS, the environment and social expectations are having an impact on the country’s demography. New mothers and fathers are ever older, and regional house price spikes are reflected in dampened birth rates.

“We see the number of children per woman has dropped since 2010, and this is a development that puzzles a lot of demographers,” said CBS sociologist Tanja Traag. “We see it as a kind of delaying behaviour.”

The shift will have an impact in the future, said Daniël van Wijk from the national demographic research institute Nidi. “If you think about countries where birth rates have already been low for quite a while, such as Italy, Japan, or in South Korea, then you can see what that does for a population,” he said.

Yvette de Vries, spokeswoman for the FNV, said kraamzorg is vital for new parents and memories of how it helped her underweight newborn daughter are still fresh, 18 years later.

“In the Netherlands, a few hours after giving birth you are sent home, with your car seat and your baby, and you just feel unprepared,” she said. “For your confidence, it is essential…And there is no alternative in the Netherlands”