Numerousness can be fun?

I have written about many possible explanations of low birth rate in European countries, but I didn't mention one, which is the most significant in my opinion. I believe that low fertility is caused by mentality of our times. Every healthy animal strives for having joey. That's the natural power driving the world. Humans (or some of them) have lost their primal instinct. We don't care about the future of our species. Our philosophers and media convinced us to many new ideas turning tradition values upside-down. Movie below shows it on the example of capitalistic society:

I know it might be hard to accept for many. We are so consuming-addicted that we can find thousands excuses for our way of life. However, I think that capitalism is not the force discouraging people from having families.

Let's look at the east side of the globe. The most terrifying example of demographic catastrophe is Russia.

Actually, we don't suspect common Russians on having too consumptive way of life. If we think about possible reasons on low rate in this country, we would rather consider poverty. But should we really associate poverty with low fertility? Perhaps it's only our consuming -oriented perspective...

The highest birth rate we can observe in the poorest countries. "Poor people, they have no contraception, so they are forced to have so many children" - we think. In fact we don't really know how many of them would really use contraception if they had easy access to it. Nigerians are estimated as one of the most happy nations on the globe (haven't you ever heard that money can't give you happiness?). They probably wouldn't reject their way of life so easily.

Let's come back to Russia and to ideas. If capitalism may be dangerous for fertility, communism can be much more. This system did everything that is possible to destroy families. The traditional roles of family should be overwhelm by state.

http://www.theartofposter.com/RED/33.htm

Women must work, while state will bring up their children to be good Soviet citizens.

On the West and East women got convinced that motherhood is their prison and staying home as a housewife means some kind of lobotomy. I believe that feminist ideology made a lot of harm to women. I don't mean that women shouldn't study or work at all. It's all about accents. Why do women believe that their work at home is so useless and worth less than work away from home? Why should a housewife and a mother of several kids be less-self conscious or complete than a university professor?

People having more than two kids are described as "dziecioroby" and numerousness is identified with pathology. The climate for having more than standard 2 children in Poland is very unfriendly. Numerous couple are suspected as irresponsible and probably knowing nothing about contraception.

As I have proved in previous part of my presentation and as many economic authorities say nowadays, Poland needs more children. If we want to achieve it, we should change way of thinking. Even talking about geriatric bomb we still promote feminist ideas instead of appreciating parenthood. Every change starts in our heads.

What else can we do to encourage people to have babies?

Canadian scientists proved that 25% increase of family benefits increase fertility rate at 0,6 in short term and 0,4 in long term. In Poland at the moment we don't have any real pro-family policy except "becikowe" and little tax reduction, which are predicted to be abolished next year. That's a real pain for families. Pro-family policy should be distinguished from social policy. State shouldn't support only the poorest families as it is not in the state's interest. What's the logic of encouraging only the poorest people to have children? I don't have to write how expensive is rising and educating children in Poland, someone else did it last year :-)

I will write about examples of pro-family policy in other countries instead.

Iceland is one of the countries with the highest birth rate in Europe. Among others it offers full 6 months of parental leave (in Poland it's less than 5). Schools are for free as in Poland, but in fact we pay huge money for books and extras. In Iceland everything is for free, even meals and school trips. They have also high so called "child benefits".

France, birth-rate leader, pays salary for mothers staying home and rising up children. No only schools, but also preschools are also free. Of course they have also tax reduction for parents. When middle-class family give birth to its third child, it doesn't have to pay income tax any more!

In Norway parental leave is almost 10 months and mothers are paid for staying home with children under 3 years old. This is quite popular solution also in other Scandinavian countries (all of them are in the top of birth rate ranking). All of them offer also tax reduction.

Perhaps our government should think about some of these solutions? We can't afford for expensive pro-family policy, but can we afford for having no pro-family policy?

1. Try to answer the question from last paragraph.

2. Do you agree with stereotype of numerous people? What do think about them?

3. Do you plan to have any kids in the future?