ELI5- Why do people in poorer countries have more children than those in developed countries?
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Lack of sexual education is a big factor in mothers starting young. Also, on top of the other cultural reasons that have been shared, in many lower-resource households, kids are seen as a bkessing specially by women who can’t amount to anything else due to having to take care ofbthe house and the other children.
Hot Take here..
When you are poor and have no resources for leisure activities, the one thing you can do is get it on.
Combine that with lack of family planning aides, you get children.
Alot if it comes down to sexual education, traditions, public health….things like that. You got to remember than even just 100 years ago we used to keep fairly large families here in the United states too. That was actually kind of common because of higher child mortality rates, and larger families were needed just to assist with family farms and whatever else. Also sex ed wasn’t really a thing back then for us. Theres also been a few social movements too that have aided in us not having as many kids starting in the 60s with the sexual revelation and women getting more rights and more autonomy over our own bodies. And then there are also things like total abortion bans as of recent years that are scaring some women from wanting to have any children at all.
That is all to pretty much say. Those other countries just really haven’t gone through those all of that yet. Will they? Maybe. I guess we will have to see.
Heard a comment from a person who referred to himself as ‘the surviving child out of 16’. Death and disease are everyday realities in poorer countries, more kids just better the odds of at least one surviving.
Children are free labor. More children u have, more free workers u have to help around the house.
My grandparents had 13 kids, my mom had 5.
When you have that many, you just get in a mindset of “making it work” and when everyone around you is having a ton of kids, it normalizes being extra poor for the sake of having many kids. The parents aren’t even parenting at that point, the older kids take care of and are responsible for the younger kids, from reducing the labor of the parents overall in the home. There’s also a lot more support within poorer communities, paying someone to watch your kids is unheard of, grandparents step up or your friend watches your kids or during the day when they’re old enough, they’ll disperse amongst their other friend’s families. In wealthier communities, most of the time both parents work and there’s just not enough time or people available to rely on to watch the kids.
Kids in poverty are also essentially a retirement scheme for their parents. In my community, in the US, you’re expected to financially support your parents into old age. In my husband’s wealthier family, it’s unheard of for parents to accept anything but gifts from their children. More kids means a better retirement if they inherit the obligation.
People are mentioning stuff like people in poorer countries having more kids as a form of having more labour, that’s not been true for the vast majority of the world, including poorer countries, for a long time now too.
More often than not, poorer countries have more children because contraceptives are harder to get, for logistic and cultural reasons. The gap is closing fast, though, with a lot more people having access to contraceptives and thus fertility rates getting lower even in poor countries.
We have state sponsored/free family planning and contraception in our country.
For some, it’s cultural, the more kids you have, the more prosperous since daughters can be married off with the groom paying a hefty dowry, and boys can earn money for the family or work the fields/cattle when old enough.
Also, if you’re unemployed or low income earner, the state provides social security for each child… this is often how these families survive.
In addition to what everyone else has been saying, if you live in a rich, industrialized country and you want your children to have a good future, you’ll need to pay for a nice house and healthy food and a good education for them. If you don’t, other people’s kids will get those things and have a competitive advantage.
So how many children can you support at that level? When push comes to shove, probably just one. If you have two children who share a bedroom and each get half a college fund, you might have two unsuccessful children, and you’d rather have one child with the most opportunity.
Most of the poorer countries are agriculture or manufacturing based economies.
So in these people’s minds it goes like this; more people= more hands to work on field/factories
They don’t consider one important factor; more people= more mouths to feed+ more clothes to buy + more expenses of health, etc
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