Fertility rate plummets in Brazil - The Washington Post:
By Juan Forero, Published: December 29
BATAN, Brazil — Priscila da Silva once asked her grandmother why she had 12 children, and the answer was simple: “Because I wanted to.”
These days, Silva, like many women in Brazil and the rest of Latin America, has other plans. At 24, she thinks about having one child, if that.
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(Juan Forero/ The Washington Post ) - At their new restaurant, Saborearte in the Rio de Janeiro suburb of Batan, Priscila da Silva, left, and Jaqueline Ramos, both 24, are focused on making their business a success. If she ever has children, Silva wants one. And Ramos said, for now, she's happy raising her dog.
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Fertility rates plunging across Latin America
“The situation today is different, and raising a child is difficult,” said Silva, slicing tomatoes at a restaurant that she founded with four other women, only one of whom has planned a family of any size. “This is another time, and it’s not the same.”
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5 comments:
The Brazilian women get their ideas about life from soap operas instead of the Bible, so naturally they want a great job and few, if any, children. In the US most of the cartoons, soaps and sitcoms had no children, or one low-maintenance child.
I'm not a big TV watcher but I recall The Flintstones had Bam-Bam, The Dick Van Dyke Show and Lucial Ball shows each had a son that appeared occasionally. Only a few shows had two or more kids, and if the father didn't have a great job, the audience was more laughing at, rather than laughing with, the actor families, for example, Married With Children.
The shows that had three or more kids in happy families all featured a father with a high-powered job, subtly sending the message that only CEOs can afford to have three kids or more and live happily: My Three Son (exec), The Brady Bunch (respected architect with a hair do), The Cosby Show (doctor).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/fertility-rate-plummets-in-brazil/2011/12/23/gIQAsOXWPP_story_1.html
The lives of Brazil’s career women are often reflected in the country’s elaborate soaps, or telenovelas, which numerous U.S. and Brazilian researchers say have been an important factor in the drop in Brazilian fertility. The protagonists may be perpetually anguished about lost love, but they inhabit an appealing, affluent, highflying world, whose distinguishing features include the small family.
Bruce, ironically, the higher the income, the smaller the families...that is a typical trend for countries that are developing (becoming a modern, western-style economy) tend to experience smaller families...that trend tends to just be faster now than in times past. So that goes against the media examples you cited...
Although, there is a small trend among some higher income families of showing their economic status by having larger families (natural born, adopted, or a mix of the two) although this still tends to be a fairly minority stand among the wealthier segments of society.
More than one social commentator has noted that those that CAN afford large families do NOT have them, while those who can NOT afford them (without government assistance) do have them.
Early Americans saw large families as ways to build wealth, according to one observer. A big farm family could do a lot of work. We see that too with extended Asian families running a business with plenty of workers available, some of them just learning English.
Now babies are seen as a cost that will also divide wealth into too many slices. Of course, people are looking at the wrong kind of wealth.
Grumpy, that's a good point. I was sticking to the family-size/watching TV idea since the article mentioned it.
So basically it's a trick: TV shows the poor that only the well-off can have three kids or more and still have a happy existence, and the rich, who don't watch much TV anyway, are time-challenged and are disinclined to have many children, and therefore don't have many children except on an exceptional basis.
It seems that in this present time, many of the younger folks do not want to do what was so easy one or two generations ago. Getting married and being blessed with children seemed so normal and most aspired to do so. The responsibility of raising a family was a natural outgrowth of proper upbringing. Marriage rates are much lower today. The live-in partner almost seems to be the new norm. The commitment in marriage is what God has ordained for us. But, we have been told by experts that every family is dysfunctional. But, there is no drop-in replacement for a so-called traditional family.
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