Babylune

Pushing out another one?

by kate baggott on February 19th, 2006

A strange thing happens when your first baby turns a year old. People start asking when, or if, you plan to have a second. After you have your second baby, people start asking if you’re planning to have any more children almost immediately. One thing is certain. People are really, really nosy.
“UK Baby Shortage will Cost 11 Billion Pounds,” is that title of an article in today’s Guardian that is just another example of the fear-mongering around the de-population of Europe that I’ve been reading a lot about over the past three years. The pressure is on for women to start pushing out more babies to ensure that there will be enough workers to support all the pensioners when we reach retirement.

The problem with the argument, of course, is that giving birth and raising children pulls women out of the workforce and reduces her income for the rest of her life. So, modern mothers like you and I have the choice of two life directions: stay home and have more children to raise in an atmosphere of financial stress, or, work and raise the children we already have in a slightly more financially secure environment albeit in an atmosphere of constant time stress. The cost of our educations to society, our parents and ourselves (I still have 3 or 4 student loan payments to make), also has to be considered. Plus, there’s the fact that women who are mothers also have significant amounts of life experience, focus and intelligence that society — whether business, politics, or other work — desperately needs.
Fears that we aren’t doing enough to keep the world populated is not something new mothers need on top of all the other stresses in our lives. And, I suspect, fears of de-population might actually be total bunk.

First of all, as general health improves and lifespans increase, so do the number of years a person can work. Germany just increased the retirement age to 67 from 65 and Ontario, Canada just abolished mandatory retirement altogether. Many of those pensioners the statisticians are projecting, will actually be spry and capable workers well into what we now consider old age.

Secondly, why do these forecasts seem to demand that women produce more workers to secure the future while no one is doing anything to secure jobs for them to do? Economic globalisation is a force that has already moved much manufacturing to countries where there is no regard for minimum wage as a marker of quality of life standards, human rights, workers rights, etc. And, manufacturing is moving to those countries because their human labour is cheaper than implementing the technology that makes human labour obsolete. If standards in developing countries like China and India improve and workers find themselves earning more than slaves’ wages, the next step in manufacturing will be the wider use of robotics.

It’s a difficult issue, but I have managed to come to one conclusion for the women of the world. The number of children (or single child) you have or want, can love and support wholeheartedly, is the right number for you. No social force or media panic has the right to interfere with what is your decision.

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POSTED IN: Finances