For as long as I can remember, when someone asked me how many kids a family should have, I always answered, "a lot." No question, no doubt about it. It was always about having a lot of "play friends," after all what else mattered? However, now that I look at the significance or meaning in number of kids there's a lot to think about....
In many different cultures, for example, Chinese, the number of kids you had was a sign of welfare, of wealth. On the farm, the more hands you had to help, the better off your family would be living. So exactly how did this affect our society intellectually as a whole? Had we decreased the number of kids we had then, possibly brought the era of technology a couple of decades earlier? After all if we hadn't removed so many children out of education to work on the farm, many kids would be contributing to the science, technology, research, development part of our world. Then, the Great Depression hit the U.S. and we saw a sharp decline in the number of kids in a household. During that time the perspective changed, and saw a large number of kids as a burden. In that situation, if we hadn't increased the number of kids in a family, what would be the result now? We are already spiraling towards a depletion of resources, including drinkable water, what would've happened if we had a baby boom rather than a bust during those years? The truth is that many things could have happened, either we would be that much closer to running out of resources, or we would have proceeded into a new era of technology and discovery. It's difficult to decide whether having a child boom or bust is ever a good or bad thing. For one thing it is quite paradoxical. Take our recession, we are statistically experiencing another bust in the number of kids families have, we see many single-child households, households with no children, and we have yet to fix the economic problem. Economists, Wall street businessmen toss and turn in their sleep waiting for anyone who could fix this problem, and ideally it could be the kid that would have been born had it not been for the high cost for maintaining and caring for a kid.
The question is, is this topic meaningless because there isn't much that can be done to regulate it? Should it be regulated? I feel that if this situation were to move towards law, it would be a violation against our rights as humans, but when mothers are moving towards abortion because they can't afford to have a child, where does the situation lie then? Is there a way to address the paradox, or should it even be addressed? The way I see it, it would be extremely difficult and unreasonable trying to construct a law against/for the number of kids a family should have, but rather we should use the information as data. For example, I believe that by observing the number of kids a family might have it tells us a lot about the time of the society. For example, during the bust of number of kids born could tell us about the economic situation, the political situation, etc. However, the decisions are simply subject to each individual household, and should stay that way. It's just interesting to see it happen in real time and see exactly the extent of how our decisions may affect the future.
From all these different booms and busts, it's safe to say that the number of kids that a family has depends on the conditions of the world, which is beneficial for those living at that moment, but who knows maybe by doing that we may have prohibited another Einstein from being born...
After reading the book Among the Hidden, I agree with your position that limiting the number of children we'd be allowed to have is a violation of human rights.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOops, forgot to post this to your actual blog post. My comment is as follows--
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, your blog really opened up a new aspect of life to me. Before I read your blog, I was well aware of the duality centered around the fact that while lack of money does prevent many couples from having children, in some cultures it is the reason why couples choose to procreate. On one hand, parents don't have children because they don't want to provide a child with a life filled with struggle, but on the other hand many couples in the deepest of poverty try to have as many children as possible so that, upon growing up, these children can be helpful with domestic duties such as gathering food, and so the parents can have someone to care for them in their old age. However, after reading your blog, I became aware of the degree to which the former of your claim I mentioned (lack of money prevents couples from procreating) has very strong implications in society.
Offspring is no longer a sole joy resulting from communicated love between people, however it is purposely sought in order to raise children that will actively engage in society and continue lineage. Much more care is taken to the specifics of how children are raised at home, as there exist thousands of parenting books about how you can establish stronger bonds with your children and raise them to be healthy, happy, and successful adults. For many prospective parents, the increasing complexity of our expectations of our children (as you mentioned with postmodernism) makes them believe that they perhaps are not economically suited to raise a well-rounded child (ie, involved in athletics, music, has access to learning resources), and that is sometimes positive because it avoids having children plunge into a future of struggle and uncertainty. However, it also perhaps causes self-conscious parents to worry about whether they are capable or incapable parents, willing to persevere with the many implications of parenthood but doubtful about whether their child will enjoy the environment they are in, and be happy, and they fear the possibility of that not happening. It's pretty interesting how this is related to post-modernism, because lately there are more financial support programs, parenting classes, books, and psychologists or counselors than there were a couple hundred years ago. We have higher expectations for our children but that is met with increasing gentleness towards those who, because of money issues, learning problems, or a disability can not achieve this ideal image of a child in the 21st century. To sum up, I am on one hand supportive of the trend of our culture and yet I'm a little disappointed that economic problems and doubtfulness undermine the ability of certain families to have offspring.