Birth rates in the European Union are falling fast.
In the first of a series about motherhood and the role of the state in encouraging couples to have more children, the BBC News website's Clare Murphy asks why governments are so concerned about the size of their populations.
William The Conqueror was counting people nearly 1,000 years ago, and his European descendants are still at it. Small, today's politicians contend, isn't beautiful.
No EU country has the 2.1 birthrate needed to keep a population stableEurope's working-age population is shrinking as fertility rates decline. In a fit of gloom, one German minister recently warned of the country "turning the light out" if its birth rate did not pick up.
Efforts to encourage couples to breed have a chequered history and, for many, recall fascist pasts. Mussolini heavily taxed single men in his Battle for Births, Hitler awarded medals to women with large families in his quest for a superior German race.
No-one is yet berating bachelors or mooting medallions for multiple births. But Europe's many governments are scrambling to find a solution.
Who cares?
Demographic decline causes anxiety because it is thought to go hand-in-hand with economic decline.
With fewer, younger workers to pay the health and pension bills of an elderly population, states face an unprecedented fiscal burden.
The dependency ratio of those aged 65 and over to those of working age looks set to double from one-to-four to one-to-two in 2050.
FERTILITY RATE
In Europe 2.1 children per woman is considered to be the population replacement level. These are national averages
Ireland: 1.99
France: 1.90
Norway: 1.81
Sweden 1.75
UK: 1.74
Netherlands: 1.73
Germany: 1.37
Italy: 1.33
Spain: 1.32
Greece: 1.29
Source: Eurostat - 2004 figures
At-a-glance: National policies How can Europe, which increasingly sees itself as a counterweight to US hegemony, claim equal status when it is being outpaced by American population growth?
If current forecasts prove correct, then the US - which currently has 160m fewer people than the EU - will have equalled it by 2050.
Increasing immigration is, in theory, one option for Europe, but most agree it is politically unfeasible in the current climate.
Others stress that it would not in any event solve the problem in the longer term - the migrants would themselves grow old and their own fertility patterns would start to match those of the country which received them.
Another option is to increase the productivity of the working population, drawing more people into the workforce - and more controversially - making them stay there longer. But moves to raise the retirement age tend not to play well with electorates.
That leaves boosting birth rates.
Some analysts believe the fears are exaggerated. It seems richly ironic, they argue, to be worrying about falling numbers of people and, at the same time, to be fretting about the drain on natural resources, and the jostle for living space.
In addition, women's ability to control the number of children they have is a positive development, freeing them from a life of ongoing pregnancies.
Those who want to boost the birth rate do not necessarily disagree on this last point.
But, they wonder, are women restricting the size of families through free choice - or because financial concerns and worries about their position at work prevent them from having as many children as they might like.
Mixed messages
Many European countries already have policies in place - some more explicitly pro-natal than others.
Sweden, stressing gender equality rather than stating directly that it wants to boost birth rates, provides a mixed package of higher pay for women, flexible working for both parents and high quality childcare.
Who will support an ageing populace?France, meanwhile, is positively proud of its avowed pro-natalism, providing a series of tax and cash incentives for those having babies.
Other countries have also started toying with the idea of straight payments. Poland, where the population has fallen by half a million in the last six years, has recently passed legislation that will see women paid for each child they bear.
In Italy, where the population could shrink by as much as one third by 2050, one town has started offering couples 10,000 euros for each newborn baby.
How successful cash is as an incentive is still unclear. One study suggests that, even when cash allowances are boosted by 25%, the fertility rate climbs just marginally - perhaps by as little as 0.6%.
And the impact of generous maternity leave schemes and state-subsidised child care has also yet to be fully established.
Swedish and French birth rates may be higher than in much of Europe, but despite their respective systems, both countries still lag behind the holy grail of 2.1 children per woman needed to keep a population stable.
Europe is still feeling its way in this area, and may, some say, have to come to terms with the fact that there are women remaining childless or having small families by choice.
Recent evidence from Germany suggests that women may actually want fewer children than the two so often seen as the desirable norm - indeed some are happy with none at all.
Are falling birth rates something Europe should be worrying about? Or should countries embrace natural decline? What would persuade you to have more children? Send us your views using the link below.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Sunday, April 26, 2009
TIME TO OFF YOUR TV AND TO THINK UPON
In 2008 April 21–27 was TV Turnoff Week, this year conditioning your finger to not push the illusory magic button, is from April 20 - 26. TV Turnoff Week is an event that aims at reminding the family members who love to sit in front of the TV that there are other things to do in life, like, for example, that they have families to care for! A silly idea? Well, wait and see.
In a longitudinal study by Rowell Huesmann and others, it was found that there exists a direct relation between the behavior of children between 6 and 10 years of age and their behavior in adulthood 15 years later. It was also found that the children perceive the violence on TV as a mirror of real life.
Men who had participated as children in the group named TV High Violence Viewers were, as adults, more likely to push or grab their spouses or to commit a crime than those who had participated in the groups TV Low Violence Viewers and TV Medium Violence Viewers.
Women who had participated as children in the group TV High Violence Viewers were, as adults, more likely to throw something at their spouses than those who had participated in the other two groups. Also, they were more likely to react with physical aggression against anyone who made them mad.
This study was carried out between 1977 and 1992, so one can imagine the results that would come out nowadays. A child can start to watch TV at the age of two. On average, people watch the TV four hours a day. Multiplied by seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, and then averagely 16 years of one's lifetime, this results in a long period of time, during which one is "trained" on how not to behave!Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of real people are suffering somewhere in the world, including your neighborhood, and real lives are being lost. If you are not stuck in front of the TV, that is because you are a mom who is struggling to make a hotel seem like a home.
While your children are sitting in front of the TV, how much do you know about what they think or feel? How much do you know about what they are watching when you are not watching? Instead of becoming desensitized by TV, your children can be actively engaged in real communication with real people, using their imagination and doing activities as members of a family.
While your children are glued to the TV, a number of negative effects take place.
Your 2-year-old's brain, which is in need of real-life communication and challenges that stimulate healthy growth, passively takes in values and patterns of behavior from the TV. In the process, your child develops a consumerist mentality that is not favored in the family. The child then stops to use his or her brain to think, inquire, or work things out.
.
An average American child will see 200,000 acts of violence and 16,000 murders by the time he or she is 18 years of age.
Girls will learn to sexualize their self-image, and boys will learn to see girls as sex objects. All this does not take into account what they will learn from the CDs, DVDs, and videos.
The two-dimensional screen of a TV and the constant flicker of light impair the development of the eyes. A child's eyes continue to develop up until the age of 12 years.
While children are being bombarded with images from the TV, they are not developing their own images essential to the development of their own creativity and imagination, as well as their social and cognitive skills.
If you still do not believe in any of the above, it will do you no harm to switch off the TV for just one week and plan a week of family activities instead. Even if you have a busy week of work and studies, the family spirit is still possible by
Praying together
Eating together at previously set times
Sharing what each one has done during the day
Sharing concerns and stories
Helping with the housework
Helping with the schoolwork
Finding out about the topic being studied for homework
Playing with children
Gathering around a newspaper, with each one taking a turn in sharing something of interest in that newspaper and discussing that piece of news with the others
Visiting relatives together
Going out to a Muslim event together
Planning a summer activity or holiday together
Sharing a lesson, a Qur'anic verse, or a Prophetic hadith
Playing a game together
Going to bed at a reasonable time, so that each one can get up the next day refreshed and ready to take on the world
You never know — you might find your children more willing to listen when the week is up. You might find that there is much less aggression in the home, in sha' Allah.
In a longitudinal study by Rowell Huesmann and others, it was found that there exists a direct relation between the behavior of children between 6 and 10 years of age and their behavior in adulthood 15 years later. It was also found that the children perceive the violence on TV as a mirror of real life.
Men who had participated as children in the group named TV High Violence Viewers were, as adults, more likely to push or grab their spouses or to commit a crime than those who had participated in the groups TV Low Violence Viewers and TV Medium Violence Viewers.
Women who had participated as children in the group TV High Violence Viewers were, as adults, more likely to throw something at their spouses than those who had participated in the other two groups. Also, they were more likely to react with physical aggression against anyone who made them mad.
This study was carried out between 1977 and 1992, so one can imagine the results that would come out nowadays. A child can start to watch TV at the age of two. On average, people watch the TV four hours a day. Multiplied by seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, and then averagely 16 years of one's lifetime, this results in a long period of time, during which one is "trained" on how not to behave!Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of real people are suffering somewhere in the world, including your neighborhood, and real lives are being lost. If you are not stuck in front of the TV, that is because you are a mom who is struggling to make a hotel seem like a home.
While your children are sitting in front of the TV, how much do you know about what they think or feel? How much do you know about what they are watching when you are not watching? Instead of becoming desensitized by TV, your children can be actively engaged in real communication with real people, using their imagination and doing activities as members of a family.
While your children are glued to the TV, a number of negative effects take place.
Your 2-year-old's brain, which is in need of real-life communication and challenges that stimulate healthy growth, passively takes in values and patterns of behavior from the TV. In the process, your child develops a consumerist mentality that is not favored in the family. The child then stops to use his or her brain to think, inquire, or work things out.
.
An average American child will see 200,000 acts of violence and 16,000 murders by the time he or she is 18 years of age.
Girls will learn to sexualize their self-image, and boys will learn to see girls as sex objects. All this does not take into account what they will learn from the CDs, DVDs, and videos.
The two-dimensional screen of a TV and the constant flicker of light impair the development of the eyes. A child's eyes continue to develop up until the age of 12 years.
While children are being bombarded with images from the TV, they are not developing their own images essential to the development of their own creativity and imagination, as well as their social and cognitive skills.
If you still do not believe in any of the above, it will do you no harm to switch off the TV for just one week and plan a week of family activities instead. Even if you have a busy week of work and studies, the family spirit is still possible by
Praying together
Eating together at previously set times
Sharing what each one has done during the day
Sharing concerns and stories
Helping with the housework
Helping with the schoolwork
Finding out about the topic being studied for homework
Playing with children
Gathering around a newspaper, with each one taking a turn in sharing something of interest in that newspaper and discussing that piece of news with the others
Visiting relatives together
Going out to a Muslim event together
Planning a summer activity or holiday together
Sharing a lesson, a Qur'anic verse, or a Prophetic hadith
Playing a game together
Going to bed at a reasonable time, so that each one can get up the next day refreshed and ready to take on the world
You never know — you might find your children more willing to listen when the week is up. You might find that there is much less aggression in the home, in sha' Allah.
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