Almost extinct, it would seem. In the United States right now, the average number of children per family is approximately a meager two. Somehow, “stopping at two” seems like a popular idea. Three children almost seems like a big family! Why this lack of children?
For many, having more than two is just “too much,” especially when the wife is working full-time to help pay the debts. How can there be time for a large number of children when the exhausted mother only comes home around five o’clock? Maybe there’s not even time for one child…maybe that’s why 63 percent of the nation’s children under five years old are in some type of child-care arrangement every week…
Baby Emma is almost four months old. She is plump-faced and dimply, and she gurgles when you rub her tummy. Emma has one five-year-old sister, but the older sister is at daycare most of the time, while Emma stays home with the babysitter. The babysitter is kind and attentive, but a little too expensive, so after a while, Emma joins her sister at daycare, where there is one worker for every ten children, and Emma becomes just another part of the job.
Alright, so maybe school loans and housing payments have put Emma’s parents over a hundred thousand dollars in debt. Maybe Emma’s mom just needs to put that hard-earned degree into good use. But I wonder if Emma’s parents have taken into account how much of Emma’s young life will be absorbed by daycare, then preschool, then elementary school, then middle school, then high school, and then college, until little Emma leaves the home to start her new life!
When parents first hold their new child in their arms, the responsibility to that life that they have created should rush over them. Parents must realize that they —whether they want it or not—have the power to shape how that baby will be raised and what that baby will see, think, and feel, until that baby becomes an adult of his or her own.
In a more positive light, parents have been given the amazing opportunity to instill values in their children that the children can carry on to the next generation. They have the ability to send into the world a group of adults who can help to shape the culture when the parents are dead and gone. Are parents too caught up in money and education to remember that they won’t be around in sixty or so years to spend their precious money? Do they realize that the most important thing parents can leave behind in the world is children to carry on the values and goals of their parents? Have they lost sight of the fact that spending time with their children is actually worth doing?
First of all good job on the article. Have you researched all the reasons why a mom would only have two chldren? Overpopulation, older parents, cost of help in having children, adoption expenses, not being able to have any more physically…? I know a few people that stopped at two because they didn’t want to overpopulate the world. I’m not saying I agree with them, just that debt and careers aren’t the only reason to stop at two.
Americans who don’t have more children because they don’t want to overpopulate the world have fallen prey to a common misconception.
The world’s population is certainly growing, but the growth is coming almost entirely in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The population in almost all Western nations will soon be plummeting due to low birth rates. (In Europe the average fertility rate has fallen to 1.4 children, which is way below the replacement level of 2.1).
If the current fertility rates hold, Europe’s population will decline to 207 million by the end of this century. Europe is essentially dying. The same thing is beginning to happen in America, which is beginning to also see record-low birth rates. The only reason our population is still growing at the current rate is because of immigration and the high birth rates of those immigrants—especially Hispanics.
To put things bluntly in more ethnic terms—whites are a dying race right now.
“I’m not saying I agree with them, just that debt and careers aren’t the only reason to stop at two.”
Oh, yes, definitely! I hope it didn’t seem like I was saying those were the only two reasons.
I know there are several other reasons (whether they be right or wrong) why parents would only have two children.