Argument for having multiple children?

[Pag_Hingowa]

Somebody said that in Africa children are seen as a source of free labor and wealth, thus
an argument for having multiple children. He added, “Leaving aside STI risk for the moment just think of how often the average person will have sex for pleasure rather than reproduction. It doesn’t mean that reproduction completely stops does it? Contraceptives prevent unwanted pregnancies, if someone wants to get pregnant they can simply not use them.”

Is it a good argument against contraception, or an argument for having multiple children?
Is there a cultural objection to contraception in Africa?

Any thoughts would be more than welcome.

 

[PJH_74]

Is it a good argument against contraception, or an argument for having multiple children?
Is there a cultural objection to contraception in Africa?

I’m not really sure how it is an argument for or against contraception. The staggering HIV infection rate and lack of afordable treatment for it in many counties might well be a argument for condems. My understanding is that there is a dislike condems in vaious parts of Africa based on it causing a “lack of feel”. But that understanding could be out of date too.

 

[ricofall]

What you really need to do is ask someone from Africa. Many times we push our own ideas and politics down their throat.
Example of this is Melinda Gates. She wants to offer birth control to women in Africa because she feels they need to be empowered. I have yet read an article that states that Africa needs less children to be prosperous in the eyes of Americans.

 

[KP3243]

What you really need to do is ask someone from Africa. Many times we push our own ideas and politics down their throat.
Example of this is Melinda Gates. She wants to offer birth control to women in Africa because she feels they need to be empowered. I have yet read an article that states that Africa needs less children to be prosperous in the eyes of Americans.

Children are celebrated in families and in communities in Africa they are not seen as a burden like they are in the US or how lots of people treat children like they are social debris. A woman is more respected the more children she has. A single woman with lots of money wouldn’t be as respected as a mother of 5 who was poor would be. Catholic Africans are far superior to their western industrialized brothers and sisters in practicing Humane Vitae.

 

[PJH_74]

Children are celebrated in families and in communities in Africa they are not seen as a burden like they are in the US or how lots of people treat children like they are social debris. A woman is more respected the more children she has. A single woman with lots of money wouldn’t be as respected as a mother of 5 who was poor would be. Catholic Africans are far superior to their western industrialized brothers and sisters in practicing Humane Vitae.

Nice sentiment and I love Africa, but that’s far from the universal truth in Africa. You have to look no further than the street children of many major African cities who are treated as social debris. Some have run away, some have lost their parents, and some have been abandoned by their parents. All of them are certainly not being “raised by the village”.

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

Somebody said that in Africa children are seen as a source of free labor and wealth, thus
an argument for having multiple children. He added, “Leaving aside STI risk for the moment just think of how often the average person will have sex for pleasure rather than reproduction. It doesn’t mean that reproduction completely stops does it? Contraceptives prevent unwanted pregnancies, if someone wants to get pregnant they can simply not use them.”

Is it a good argument against contraception, or an argument for having multiple children?
Is there a cultural objection to contraception in Africa?

Any thoughts would be more than welcome.

The STI rate in sub-Saharan Africa is because of people having multiple sexual partners, what they need is to abstain from sex with people who aren’t their spouse.

 

[johnnyjones]

This is a very good topic you’ve brought up. The sex drive in humans , particularly males is staggeringly powerful. Even knowing in a third world country that your child will likely live a miserable hunger starved life, you proceed with sex and the possibility of impregnating a woman.

 

[St_Francis]

Somebody said that in Africa children are seen as a source of free labor and wealth, thus an argument for having multiple children.

It is commonly said that in an agricultural society, parents want to have a lot of children to “help on the farm,” and that as a society becomes industrialized and children become an “expense” or even “economic drain” on the parents, people have fewer children.

However, I am looking at the demographic fall in industrialized areas like Europe, Japan, and the US, where there will shortly be very few people to care for and support a large number of elderly people. In the US, I think they are calculating 2.5 working people contributing to Social Security and Medicare (the programs for supporting the elderly) for each retired person. Considering the very high costs of medical care in the States, I think there will be a huge problem, and I think that the same problem will occur in Europe.

Moreover, part of our problem here with our economy was, imho, associated with this as well. Many who were or are due to retire started buying their retirement houses ahead of time, often in tourist areas, then renting them out so they would pay for themselves. Then when these people started to retire, they wanted to sell their old houses so they could move to the new ones. But having doubled-up in this way, there were too many houses, and the market collapsed.

We are already turning some of our schools, which were built to accommodate the increase in population a few decades ago, into retirement places and nursing homes.

He added, “Leaving aside STI risk for the moment just think of how often the average person will have sex for pleasure rather than reproduction. It doesn’t mean that reproduction completely stops does it? Contraceptives prevent unwanted pregnancies, if someone wants to get pregnant they can simply not use them.”

This is the problem: birth control allows people to think of sex as something we do for pleasure. ABC separates sex from the creation of babies.

The problem (aside from the moral and personal problems involved!) is that abc is not 100% perfect: there are inefficiencies all along the trail. Thus, sometimes women become pregnant when they were not expecting to. Then they have a problem.

If you have read Humanae Vitae, you will remember that the Pope predicted that aboriton would become legal if the use of abc became common, and this is exactly what happened in the US, Europe, etc.

Is it a good argument against contraception, or an argument for having multiple children?
Is there a cultural objection to contraception in Africa?

Any thoughts would be more than welcome.

I would love to see a study done on these issues of demographics and support of the elderly and number of children.

 

[Pag_Hingowa]

He further argued that there is a difference between having children for practical reasons, and having children because you are having unprotected sex with one or multiple partners. **People in Africa can benefit from contraceptives **(Birth control, perhaps, condoms especially) and still have multiple children when they choose to.

Any comment?

 

[St_Francis]

He further argued that there is a difference between having children for practical reasons, and having children because you are having unprotected sex with one or multiple partners. **People in Africa can benefit from contraceptives **(Birth control, perhaps, condoms especially) and still have multiple children when they choose to.

Any comment?

Look at the difference between South Africa, where they had condom programs, and Uganda, where they instituted an A(bstain), B(e faithful), C(ondoms).

Between 1992, Uganda’s HIV rate declined from 18% to 6.7%. South Africa, which may have been under a condom program, did not not experience a decrease, and seems to have experienced an increase.

If you have contracepted sex, you are probably using one method. Condoms are notoriously unreliable, but they offer *some *protection against STDs. Other forms of birth control are more reliable at preventing conception, altho *not *100% effective, but do not protect against STDs.

So while abc may offer some protection against STDs and unplanned pregnancies, they do not offer *reliable *protection. People still have STDs and women still get pregnant. (This is totally aside from the emotional repercussions of having sex with people to whom one is not married.)

And there are some STDs which render a person unable to have children, and there are others which seem to affect a woman’s fertility, along with abc, esp the Pill. So it may not be that easy to stop having sterile sex and start having babies.

the overall problem with what he is saying is that there is no “benefit” to using birth control except for access to non-procreative sex, which in the long run, is not a benefit either to individuals or to society.

 

[KP3243]

Nice sentiment and I love Africa, but that’s far from the universal truth in Africa. You have to look no further than the street children of many major African cities who are treated as social debris. Some have run away, some have lost their parents, and some have been abandoned by their parents. All of them are certainly not being “raised by the village”.

I guess I was speaking more specifically of Catholic Africans and if I gave the impression that they are raised by the village that was not what I meant at all. Catholics in Africa do however tend to live closer to one another and they do celebrate a birth of a child far differently than we do - it is more communal because they live that way . My witness is first hand with the Christian Foundation for the Youth and Aging, CFCA. It is a wonderful organization that allows those of us to whom more has been given to empower our brothers and sisters living in poverty around the world. It respects their human dignity and it isn’t just a handout it allows opportunity for education, health care and opportunties to foster and create a sustainable income to break the cycle of poverty.