Children are the next generation, they bring light and life to the world. Why then is it that we as a society are hesitant to have them? In a demographic winter video put out by BYUtv they interviewed a group of people from around the world and their views on children. When asked what is a good number of kids to have interveiwees answered one or two, only some thought more than two kids would be ideal. If we looked back 70 years would two children be the most typical response, i wonder how different it would be. In the same interview they asked the question why? Why one or two children is the best number, responses were less unanimous, some said that they are too expensive after two, some said that you don't have enough love to go around, and the other response was you no longer have free time with yourself and your spouse. While these are all things that should be concerns when looking into a family, we must remember that the children we bring into this world are the next generation and that if they don't come know one can grow up and run the world.
The book The Population Bomb, written in 1968 by Paul Ehrlich, has changed the mindset of people around the world. In this book he presents that the world is overpopulated and that we will have massive starvation, because the world can sustain 2 billion people.In 1968 the world population was 3.5 Billion the population today as of May 2018 is 7.6 Billion people. I believe that the starvation that we saw in 1968 and the starvation we are seeing now is not from the earth providing less than we need, but mainly from the political choices of leaders around the world. The idea of overpopulation is becoming false, as times continues we are just barely replacing the last generation. The average fertility rate in the united states today is 2.1 the regular rate that we want as a society to be at a healthy replacement rate is 2.13. So we are close in the united states to the rate we need to be at but then again we are just enough under that we should be concerned. Why has the fertility rate dropped in the first place? There were five main points in our history that have brought us to where we are today.
1. The industrial revolution: This revolution changed the outlook on children after the child labor laws, after the child labor laws were created children lost their economic value. They became someone that you have to take care off and is not contributing anything back to you or the family.
2. The first demographic Revolution : This revolution was a slight one in coming, people slowly started to choose materialistic things over the things that are important to the family.
3. The women's revolution: The women's revolution had many great and beautiful blessings and achievements that came from it, but in the sense that we are discussing the women's revolution had a slight negative effect on the family, because women can focus on their career less women are wanting to stay home with children, they want to be in the career that they built up to.
4. The sexual revolution: Birth control made it possible for women to control their fertility, so now if they wanted to work then they could work and not worry about an unexpected pregnancy.
5. The divorce revolution: then Governor John F. Kennedy passed the no fault divorce laws in California. Before this point you could not divorce unless there was abuse, adultery, alcoholism, or Abandonment in your marriage, so when this law was passed in the state of California the divorce rates sky rocketed.
All these events lead to us as a society further away from a traditional family. hopefully as time goes on we can look to the future with hope that our societies and populations will have healthy and happy people in them.
XOXO, Jenna
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