Active Thinking Topic 63 How Many Children Does A Person, A Country Need?
Saturday 2 August 2023, 1:30 to 3:30 pm
Any replies to the organizer
- thormay@yahoo.com
Venue: Zoom online
Recommended video: Small Circles Forward (12 Apr 2022) "This is Why so Few are having Children Today". Youtube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncZW73QMBt8 [Thor, comment: This is a very professional and insightful presentation]
Talking Points:
1. How are men and women different when it comes to choosing to have children, or even choosing a marriage partner influenced by attitudes to having children? Have these attitudes changed in the last three generations?
2. Are individuals selfish for choosing not to have children (it is a frequent criticism) ? Why might people choose not to have children?
3. Is femaie education a population threat? Worldwide the education of women has correlated with a drastic reduction of the birth rate. Afghanistan's Taliban is doing what it can to prevent the education of women (every country has its cultural Talibans).
4. In pre-modern times life for most people in many places was nasty, brutal & short. Childbirth was often fatal to mother & child. Many infants died before their 5th birthday. How might these realities have affected attitudes and values and laws towards child bearing & child raising?
5. Governments worldwide at different times have tried to discourage people from having children, or even forbidden it forcibly. At other times governments have tried to encourage more children. What are some examples of these interventions? What methods were used? How successful was such government interference?
6. How have the economics of modern states changed official attitudes to children? In pre-modern times children were both a cost and eventual economic benefit for families. Ruling powers (there were not really countries in the modern sense) had little economic interest in the personal families of commoners.
7. Is it better to have an increasing population or a decreasing population? Why?
Replacement fertility rate is 2.1 births per woman. Australia's fertility rate in 2023 is 1.784. China's fertility rate in 2021 was 1.2. By 2100 (on present trends) China's population will be 46% smaller. Australia's population will keep growing through immigration.
8. Most people in every country are hostile to immigration. What are the reasons for their hostility? For a country like Australia the dilemma is "populate or perish". How can democratic governments solve the problem of welcoming immigrants without losing votes?
9. Religions, especially the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) have historically been hostile to birth control. What were the origins of this hostility, and why has it persisted?
10. Animal populations generally tend to go through cycles of rapid growth (even plague proportions), population collapse, then regeneration. Until fairly recently there was a similar pattern amongst humans. What is interfering with this cyclical pattern now? Should it be managed?
Extra Reading & Viewing
Small Circles Forward (12 Apr 2022) "This is Why so Few are having Children Today". Youtube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncZW73QMBt8 [Thor, comment: This is a very professional and insightful presentation. Some things it brings up have barely been discussed in common parlance. e.g. Apparently the introduction of TV with female role models living professional lives has had a major impact on viewers worldwide by changing perceptions of what women can properly do, and this in turn has greatly impacted birthrates regardless of culture or religion (e.g. reference to research on tele-novellas on South American populations)].
Sabine Hossenfelder (2 July 2022) "Is Overpopulation Still a Problem?" Youtube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI1AaZ9OkH8 [20 minutes]
Slidebean (18 May 2023) "Why Millennials Replaced Kids with Pets - Millennials Decoded". Youtube @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIv6RyF3Ets [17 minutes]
China Insights (July 2023) "Why Are We Shunning Marriage?" The new fad among young people worries and annoys the government". China Insights @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbmar5e5mXE
Abul Rizvi (July 17, 2023) "Australia slamming the door on lax immigration - New measures aim to reverse recent net migration blowout and will curb Chinese and other foreign students’ right to work." Asia Times @ https://asiatimes.com/2023/07/australia-slamming-the-door-on-lax-immigration/
Polly Toynbee (19 May 2023) "The great British baby drought has a simple cause. And.it’s not ‘cultural Marxism’". The Guardian @ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/18/british-baby-cultural-marxism-conservatives-parenthood [Quote: "There’s no shortage of people who want more children. But under the Conservatives, parenthood is punished ... Families can’t manage on one income and childcare is astronomically expensive: the OECD says UK parents spend a third of their wages on it, double the average for western economies. The young are worse off than their parents were at baby-producing age, with higher rents and, lower incomes and burdened with debt. Very few under-35s can buy homes, unless they have parents to help. ... In a decade, the birthrate in England and Wales fell from 1.93 in 2011 to 1.61 in 2021 ... But anti-natalist Conservative policy bars benefits to more than two children in a family on universal credit: those families, mostly in work, lose £2,800 for a third child, impoverishing 1.3 million children .. ".]
Angelo Amante and Keith Weir (July 24, 2023) "‘Rome Process’: Georgia Meloni forges grand plan to tackle illegal migration" Brisbane Times @ https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/europe/what-giorgia-meloni-wants-for-italy-and-why-she-infuriates-the-eu-20220927-p5bl8x.html [Quote: "Rome: Nations from the Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa agreed steps on Sunday to try to slow unauthorised migration and to tackle some of the pressures driving people to leave their homes [in Africa] and attempt to reach Europe. Participants from more than 20 countries agreed to make funding available to support development projects in what Meloni said would be a “Rome Process” that would last for several years. conference host Italy is struggling to cope with the number of unauthorised migrants arriving in centres such as its far southern island of Lampedusa. However, it also has an ageing and declining population and needs additional workers to support its economy. Earlier this month, Italy pledged to issue 452,000 new work visas for non-EU nationals from 2023 to 2025, increasing the number of permits available each year to a high of 165,000 in 2025. In 2019, before COVID struck, Italy issued just 30,850 visas".]
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How Many Children Does A Person, A Country Need? (c) Thor May 2023