Garth Rattray | Inhibitions to being fruitful and multiply – Part 2

The greatest contributing factors to our falling total fertility rate (TFR) are economic hardship and little or no expectation / hope for a better future.

There is a biological principle that people, particularly poor people, tend to produce more children during challenging times. This instinct to produce many (children) when there is less (available resources) is a response to the high mortality of children and their failure to succeed during hard times – quantity versus quality. Therefore, our falling TFR is paradoxical only because this biological principle does not hold true when things become extraordinarily hard.

For a long time, women were producing as many children as possible so that “di pickney dem wih mind mi in mi ole age”. Not only did women expect that the children would take care of them later in life, but some also wanted the boys to become community ‘soldiers’ to protect them. In those very depressed communities, it often meant that the boys would join a gang and that the gang would become their protectors.

But now, in these extremely difficult times, they find that they are having to mind their picknies and their pickney’s picknies into their old age. This overrides the instinct to produce more children as a socio-economic buffer, and they end up producing less children.

So, we know what happens on the poor end of the spectrum. However, don’t count on the rich people to produce more children. Rich people are instinctively good investors. They choose quality over quantity. They invest heavily to get the best returns out of few progeny. The cost of a good education, extracurricular activities, setting up generational business and wealth, is significant, even for the rich among us. Consequently, as a general rule, rich people have fewer children.

REMAIN AFLOAT

The middle class is so busy trying to remain afloat that they put childbearing on the back burner. Staying afloat means educating themselves, securing themselves financially, and preparing for the future. By the time they tick all those goals, they are in their late twenties to mid-thirties or even older. In any event, many middle-class citizens are unable to remain afloat, and they can feel themselves slowly, inexorably sinking under the rising bills and weighty debts.

Despite the politically motivated propaganda of pervasive ‘prosperity’ among Jamaicans, the fact is that only a very few of our citizens are prosperous. Most Jamaicans are finding it extremely difficult to make ends meet. The consequences are – the increasing use of readily accessible birth control methods, delaying pregnancies until there is job and income security, the reduced male involvement in child caring and child rearing, and the inability of grandparents to take over rearing their children’s children because of economic hardships. Added to all that is the temporary or permanent relocation in pursuit of swapping a bitter life for a better life for themselves and their family.

And so we have the modified ‘flight or fight’ situation. In this case, it is ‘flight to fight’. Many Jamaicans realise that they can never win their fight against poverty if they remain here. They run away to live to fight another day in another place. A very bright family friend once quipped that there is the [migratory] Jamaican diaspora and there is the [local] Jamaican die-as-poor-yah.

Temporally or permanently resettling abroad negatively impacts our TFR in two ways. Firstly, people leave in droves if and when opportunities present themselves. And, secondly, teachers and nurses are among the largest demography flying away. These groups are predominantly women; and, more importantly, many are of childbearing age.

FRUSTRATED

Many young-to-middle-age women are frustrated and scared. After educating themselves and sacrificing for years, they find that they are unable to buy a car, let alone a home. So, they can’t save for their future or pay for [private] medical care. They [reluctantly] go overseas to earn to buy a home to raise their children. They go overseas to earn to educate their children. They go overseas to earn to support their family. They go overseas to earn to save for the times when they are unable to work and/or become ill and need medical care or nursing care specifically. They go overseas because they don’t see any long-term security here.

Further, there is a legacy effect from the ‘two is better than too many’ message. This message was so effective that it became part of our cultural landscape and passed on from generation to generation. It’s a case of ‘be careful what you wish for …’. However, despite our current dilemma, reducing the runaway TFR was essential at that time.

Although not spoken about publicly, another reason for our declining TFR was our crime (especially murder) statistics. Women realised that, because of poverty and the lack of father figures, they were losing their ‘bwoy pickney dem’ to the gangs, and to their early deaths from gang violence and police activities. The pain became intolerable and resulted in women choosing to delay or forego childbirth.

Couples who choose not to have children often say that they don’t want to bring a child or children into this [cruel] world to suffer. They feel unable to protect and/or support their own children from the social, economic, and sexual predators so prevalent in our society. A growing number of citizens have capitulated to the ‘system’ because it takes advantage of the weak and helpless.

Next week, we delve more into this subject in Part 3.

Garth Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice, and author of ‘The Long and Short of Thick and Thin’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and garthrattray@gmail.com