This week has been a very informative and interesting week. Especially in my Family Relations class. Our topic of study and discussion was on the The New Economic Reality: Demographic Winter, Part 1 and The New Economic Reality: Demographic Winter, Part 2. Now I'm sure you're probably wondering what this has to do with the title that I had posted. The Demographics show how today's societal trends are affecting the family and causing the US, also the world, to go into depopulation. Now many people would say, "Well isn't that a good thing? We're over populating." But actually it's not a good thing.
The societal trends that are affecting the population growth are cohabitation, individualism, and having small families. With cohabitation, there's no reproduction. How I see it, it's basically a friend with benefits. There are no strings attached and you can just leave if you don't like them anymore. With this way of living, children aren't really being born. And if they are, they're not being born into a stable home or a home that has the learning benefits of married parents.
With individualism, there's mainly just me and never we. People tend to put their career and their life first. When they have a great career and everything going, they don't want to give it up to have a family. This only helps the difficulty of children being born and helping repopulate. Many of these people might say, "Well I won't need to worry about it because other people will have kids." This is true but also not. Other people will have kids yes, but them doing it alone will not help sustain the population. In order for us to be able to maintain the population, women need to have a birth rate a 2.13. This is crucial in order for us to not start depopulating.
Also, having small families can aid to depopulation. Having only one or two kids, doesn't help us to reach the needed birth rate. Also, it's better for children to have siblings than to be alone. Children who are the only child can be fine, but by having siblings, they tend to fare better. They learn crucial social skills and other skills that help them to be able to work with other people. They also help provide a much needed support base.
Now to the depopulation. Why isn't it a good thing. Well in the demographic videos, they help us to know why. Many people worry that we're overpopulating and that we don't have enough space for everyone. Our teacher told us that if everyone lived on one acre, the entire worldwide population could all fit in Texas. So we're actually not overpopulating. It just seems like that because of the largely, heavily populated areas like Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, etc. Many people also worry that by having so many people on the earth, we'll run out of resources to be able to support everyone. In reality, we are actually making and producing more food than we have before. The reason for this is because of technology, as well as the fact that by having more people on the earth, we have more people growing produce. Also, in the demographics videos, they talk about the amount of people supporting those who are retired. Right now we have an average of three people supporting every one retired person. Once we start depopulating, it'll go from three to two people supporting every one retired person. This means that those people will have to work even harder to be able to also support themselves.
Here is the spiritual side that I'd like to put on it. With the words of the prophets, we know that we need to have as many as we can, as well as, as many as the Lord intends for us to have. We need to help spirits come into homes and families where they will be able to hear the Gospel and receive the blessings from it. For example, for me, I'm grateful that my parents had me as soon as they did, otherwise, I wouldn't be me. Or I might be somewhere else. My parents weren't sure as to how many kids they were going to have exactly, but through prayer they knew that they were going to have sonS and daughterS. So they knew they would have at least 4. Four of us girls came out and then the two boys. So the Lord will make everything work out so that way you have as many as you can handle and take care of, as well as how many He needs you to be able to have to grow His kingdom.
Now my hope from this post is that everyone as human beings and co citizens on this earth, will be able to realize just how big of a role they play. Even if you may not be religious, I hope that you can at least take something from this post and just see how everyone's actions affect everyone.
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