15.1 Families -- by Design or Default?

I. THE SLOWING OF GROWTH

These concluding articles are about the world population explosion. Yet, amidst the alarming statistics is evidence that the world's population is growing more slowly than predicted even a few years ago. Part of the apparent reduction of growth is caused by wars and AIDS in Africa. In the former USSR and Eastern Europe, life expectancy has actually declined.

Also, the spectacular growth of 'megacities' in the Americas has declined. Mexico City was expected to balloon to 27 million by year 2000. Sao Paulo in Brazil was projected to reach 24 million by that year. Much smaller increases are now projected. Population growth in these cities have been fed by massive immigration into urban centers, a world-wide trend in the Third World. In these megacities, millions live in favelas, fetid slums crammed with tin and scrap wood hovels. Clean drinking water is rare. Sewage runs through streets strewn with garbage. Immigration into such conditions is slowing.

The figures on world population growth are, however, daunting. Most of that growth will be in countries with the least facilities to accommodate them. The World Bank predicts that the number of people in poor nations will grow phenomenally by 2.3 billion over the next 30 years, to 6.8 billion by the year 2025. Meanwhile, the population of the industrialized world will increase by a mere 100 million. Some countries, among them Japan and Germany, will loose population.

Why do parents have children who seem destined to a life of tragedy, hunger, poverty or worse? No single answer is possible. The evidence suggests that parents curb their quest for children only when they have hope for a better life and the education to achieve it.

.....

II. INDIA: A FAMILY WITHOUT SONS IS NOT COMPLETE

In this huge and diverse nation, a single desire binds all families, urban and rural, wealthy and poor, well-educated and illiterate: the quest for sons. One woman said, "until you have a son, you are not a complete woman." Culture and religion, economics and education, limited access to safe and reliable birth control, valid fears that disease will kill some offspring, skepticism toward government and aid agencies--help explain why, in absolute numbers, India is growing faster than any nation on Earth.

The cultural preference for males creates far more children of both sexes than most families can support. Girls pay the biggest price for the practice. Some Indian families kill female babies; most condemn them to something that resembles a living death. Indian customs disdain daughters.

Powerful economic reasons persist that make a male heir desirable. A son is unemployment insurance and an old age pension. Many Hindus believe that entry to heaven is impossible unless a son lights the funeral pyre. Most Indian couples want at least two sons.

The chief culprit in the system is dowry, the money and gifts a bride's parents present to the newly married couple and the groom's family. It persists in spite of laws against it. The financial burden can be terrible: dowry has become somewhat of an extortion device that families use to acquire furniture, television sets and even cars. The price of insufficient dowry is often terrible: many women are literally set afire in 'kitchen fires,' where the young bride is literally burned to death.

Girls in many Indian families eat 'last and least,' and are even breast fed for a shorter time than their brothers. Girls receive less medical care than boys. This carries into adulthood: 88 percent of women are anemic during pregnancy, a major reason for birth complications.

Aphorisms convey the Indian attitude: "may you be the mother of a hundred sons" and "bringing up a girl is like watering a tree in a neighbor's garden." Physical action is worse. In Ancient India, unwanted daughters were poisoned, suffocated or drowned moments after birth. The same practices continue today: in some villages, daughters are practically non-existent.

Laws are unlikely to produce change in this nation where dowry, tests to determine the sex of a fetus, and marriage before age 18 are both illegal and commonplace. Abortion is legal, but 90% of abortions are 'unofficial.'

.....

III. CAMBODIA: REBIRTH IN THE KILLING FIELDS

Two decades ago, nearly 2 million people died in this tiny country. Today government officials cheer Cambodia's birth rate, one of the highest in the world. Birth control is nearly non-existent; avoiding pregnancy is a matter of luck. Children sleep in rags on the streets. They roam through piles of garbage competing for survival with pigs. Hunger remains common in a land strewn with land mines.

Families are rarely planned; they are accumulated. This serves the interest of various Cambodian politicians who view birthrate as a patriotic act in a tiny country competing against powerful neighbors. The children pay the price with calloused hands and feet, and their health, for the privilege of surviving.

Birth control is not available. Hospitals, which are supposed to be distribution centers for contraceptives, often have none in supply and don't offer counseling to women who request it. One of the poorest countries in Asia, Cambodia has one of the highest birth rates in the continent. This imbalance has set Cambodia back on its heels as it tries to recover from a quarter century of warfare.

Cambodia can ill afford a rapidly growing population. The children keep coming, feeding a growing underclass and priming many of them and their communities for disaster. Despite the oppresive conditions of everyday life, the men and women continue to have large families. According to the United Nations statistics, the average women has 5.3 children--born into a life of poverty devoid of hope.

.....

IV. FATHER OF 57: 'IT'S TOO MANY'

In Zimbabwe the land is being overwhelmed. There was once the time when children and big families equaled wealth in an Africa of vast resources. The simple economics: More children meant more hands to till the soil, tend the cattle, produce food and care for the aged. People are now growing poorer, however. Africa, a continent that occupies nearly 20 percent of the Earth's surface but is no longer able to feed itself.

In a traditional agrarian society where big families were culturally prized, they were also economically beneficial. When land was plentiful and cheap, wealth accumulated quickly when reckoned in land, cows, wives, and children. A rich man would be one who had many wives to help him farm, and many children to tend his cattle. Because land was communally owned, a bigger family would take on more land and generate more wealth. Wives and bride price paid in cattle were a sort of mutual fund that could produce huge returns over time.

With a few cultural variations, these were the economic realities that prompted large family sizes in all pre-industrial agrarian societies, from Europe to the pioneer families in America.

Now in Zimbabwe, all arable land is taken. In Africa overall, worsening droughts have left Africa unable to feed itself. Improved health care means more children are surviving to adulthood, and adults are living longer. Note: improvements in health care initially cause a population surge, but this subsides in time.

The education of women is considered important in bringing down the birth rate: educated women tend to have smaller families. The birth rate in Zimbabwe is in fact falling, yet Africa remains the only major region of the world that has not yet undergone the 'demographic transition,' the reduction of fertility as societies industrialize and modernize.

In Europe, a sharp drop in fertility followed the rise of a salaried middle class and improvements in living standards, including health and education. Income earners are in a position to save for their retirement and acquire luxuries. In modern industrial societies, children are perceived as an expense instead of an economic asset.

Malthus, the grim prophet of wars, pestilence and disease as limits of population, did not foresee modern industrial societies characterized by low birth rates and low or stable population growth.

.....

V. IRELAND: MOTHERHOOD AND SHIFTING VALUES

Age-old taboos and the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church against birth control and premarital sex are increasingly moot as Irish men and women leave their support of the Church at the bedroom door. Growth in Ireland's birth rate has slowed dramatically, but it is still the highest in Europe.

Now Ireland faces an epidemic of young unwed mothers with children on welfare, a problem common to America. Today, a record one of five babies in Ireland is born out of wedlock, a figure that more than doubled in a decade. There are now some 30,000 unmarried Irish mothers, primarily young women whose children represent the fastest-growing and poorest segment of the nation's population. Such a development arises from Ireland's move from a Catholic Church dominated society to an increasingly urban, secularized nation cast in the European mold.

Some experts think that a feeling of hopelessness fuels the increase in unwed motherhood. Its seems linked to deprivation. Pregnancy provides a role in their lives. Years ago, unmarried pregnant women would have been forced into marriage or secreted away to England. Abortion was illegal and rare. Today, Ireland has a funded system for single parents, but many women do not take advantage of it because of traditional values. Whatever social stigma remains is fading fast as Irish culture changes. This has been propelled in part by clerical sexual scandals in the Church.

In many ways, single women with children are reaching back to what was once the most acceptable role for women: motherhood. It is more than a youthful mistake: it is a response to the economic and moral upheaval around them. Strong taboos and dictums flowing for years from the pulpits have created a chilled attitude for discussions of sexual issues in Ireland.

More often than not, the children born to unmarried mothers in Ireland, much like those in the United States, face a life of poverty and disadvantage from their first heartbeat. Despite the best efforts of their mothers, they often grow up in neighborhoods where drugs, violence and crime are as common as fathers are scarce. In spite of the many problems cited here, the birthrate in Ireland continues to fall.

.....

VI. BRAZIL: UNPLANNED PARENTHOOD

Throughout the world, education has proved the key to helping families have the small families that they desire. But education remains difficult in Brazil, a vast country with a far-flung population and limited fiinancial resources. Money is short, teachers are largely untrained, and people find it hard to access the information and schooling they need to break their cycle of despair.

.....

VIII. GAZA STRIP: SOLDIERS IN A HOLY WAR

More than 2.4 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza, a politically explosive strip of desert six miles wide and 22 miles long. Most live in refugee camps that are some of the most densely populated areas in the world. Traditional Islamic values that discourage birth control, war related stress, boredom, and male domination contribute to the birth rate-births wanted in a pursuit of building an Islamic state.

My comment: Egypt today has a population of about 60 million; Cairo is Africa's largest city at 16 million. When I was in Egypt, our Islamic guide was asked if rapid population growth is a problem, He said, "no problem because we only occupy 4% of the land in Egypt." This, of course, is true. Unfortunately the other 96% is desert. A recent article about the world's endangered river noted that most of the Nile's water held behind the Aswan High Dam is lost to evaporation!)

The choice to have children--or not is a complex problem of biology, ecology, and culture. Other aspects of the population issue are discussed in the next two articles.

..... CJ '99

Resources

Anderson, L. "Motherhood and shifting values" Chicago Tribune January 31, 1996.

Blau, R. "Rebirth in the killing fields" Chicago Tribune January 29, 1996

Brandon, K. "A Family is not complete without sons" Chicago Tribune January 28, 1996.

Goering, L "Expansion of megacities in Latin America wanes" Chicago Tribune January 19, 1996.

Luft and Goering "Unplanned Parenthood" Chicago Tribune February 1, 1996.

Rowley, S. "Soldiers in a holy war" Chicago Tribune February 2, 1996.

Sly, L. "Father of 57:It's too many" Chicago Tribune January 20, 1996.

"Population scare gets less scary" Chicago Tribune November 17, 1996.