CHILDREN-ASSETS OR LIABILITIES?

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The issue of family planning and is closely associated to what is often referred to as population explosion. Throughout much of mankind's history, population growth was relatively slow as the number of deaths was about the same as the number of births. Eventually, about the year 1830, the world's population reached one billion.

Then came medical and scientific advances that resulted in fewer deaths from diseases especially childhood disease. By about 1930, the world's population stood at two billion people. By 1960, another billion had been added. By 1987, world's population reached give billion.

Looking at it another way, the number of people on the planet is presently increasing by about 170 people every minute. That adds up to some 250,000 people everyday, enough for a sizable city. This means, too, that each year yields a population increase of over 90million people, equivalent of three Canadas or another Mexico. Over 90percent of this growth is occurring in developing countries, where 75% of the world's population already lives.

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CONCERNED GOVERNMENTS
But why are governments eager to limit population growth through family planning? Dr. Babs Sagoe, Nigeria's National Program Officer for the U.N. population find answers this question with a simple illustration that, he cautions, tends to oversimplify a complex and controversial situation. He explains:'Suppose a farmer owns ten acres of land. If he has ten children and divided the land the land equally among them, each child will have an acre. If each of those children has ten children and divided the land similarly, each of their children will have only one tenth of an acre. Clearly, these children will not be as well off as their grandfather, who had ten acres of land'

This illustration highlights the relationship between a growing number of people and a finite earth with limited resources. As the population grows, many developing countries are struggling to cope with present population level. Consider some of the problems.

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Resources. As the number of people increases, there are greater demands on forests, topsoil, cropland, and freshwater. The result? Popul magazine laments: "Developing countries . . . are often compelled to overexploit national resources on which their development future depends."

Infrastructure. As the population grows, governments find it increasingly difficult to provide adequate housing, schools, sanitation facilities, roads and health services. Saddled with double burden of heavy sent and diminishing resources, the developing nations are hard pressed to cope with the needs of present populations, let alone much larger ones.

Employment. The U.N. Population Fund publication Population and The Environment:The Challenges Ahead states that in many developing countries, 40% of the work force is already unemployed . Throughout the developing world, more than half a billion people are either unemployed or underemployed, a figure nearly equal to the entire workforce in the industrialized world.

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In order to prevent these rates from worsening, developing countries must create over 30 million jobs every year. The people who will need these jobs are alive today - they are todays children. Experts speculated that massive unemployment may lead to civil strife , deepening poverty, and further destruction of natural resources.

Little wonder that more and more developing nations are striving to promote family planning. Commenting on what lies ahead, an editorial in the British medical journal Lancet stated: "The pressure of increase in numbers of people, mainly confined to the poorer countries of the world, compounds enormously the task they face . . . Millions will spend their lives uneducated, unemployed, ill-houses and without access to elementary health, welfare and sanitary service, and unchecked population increase is a major causal factor".

CONCERNED FAMILIES

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Setting goals and instituting family planning programs on the national level is one thing; convincing the public is another . In many societies traditional views favoring large families are still strong. For example, a Nigerian mother responded to her government's encouragement to cut down birthrates by saying:" I am the last of my father's 26children. All my seniors, including males and females, have between eight and twelve children. So, shall I be the one to have few children?"

Nevertheless, such a viewpoint is not as common as it once was, even in Nigeria where the average woman gives birth to six children. Faced with the raising rising prices, millions of people are hard-pressed to feed and clothe their families. Many have learned through
th experience the truth of the Yoruba saying:"Omo beere osi beere (an abundance of children, an abundance of poverty)

Many couples understand the benefits of family planning, get do not practice it. The result? The State of the Worlds Children published by UNCF said that approximately 1 in 3 children born would not only be unplanned for but unwanted.

FAMILY PLANNING SAVED LIVES

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Apart from economic difficulties, a major reason to consider family planning is the heal the of mother and her children. "Pregnancy is a gamble and giving birth is a life and death struggle", says the West African proverb. Every year in the developing world, half a million women die during pregnancy or childbirth, a million children are left motherless, and an additional give million to seven million women become handicapped or crippled because of childbirth related health impairments.

Not all women in developing countries run the same risk. As the accompanying box shows, those most at risk are women who bear too many children too early. too frequently or too late. UN sources estimate that family planning could prevent from a quarter to a third of these fatalities and could prevent millions of disabilities.

But would not the saving of millions of lives only serve to increase population growth? Surprisingly, many experts say no. "it might be thought that if more children survived, population problems would get worse. Quite the reverse. Fertility tends to drop when parents are more confident that their children will survive."

Nevertheless, millions of women, especially in poor societies, continue to give birth frequently. Why? Because their society expects it of them, because having many children increases the likelihood that some will survive, and because they not know about or not have access to family planning services.

Yet, many women who have large families would not have it any other way. They consider each child a blessing from God.

REFERENCE:
THE AWAKE