This is what having a family is all about and the continuation of the family tree is a prized aspiration.
Most people who have been bought up in this culture cannot understand others who wish to remain childless and they are not really aware of probably interested in the growing global population and the impact it will have eventually.
Is there a real threat of overpopulation? How will this affect our way of life? The global problem of overpopulation seems to be the plague of our century.
This becomes obvious when we look at the policies that have been adopted by the Chinese government as well as the failed population policies that were started in India.
The real population problem is not so much the surplus in number it generates, but the reactions it causes, such as poverty, famine, disease, depletion of natural resources, violence and infanticide.
This problem is blatant and despite the efforts and social engineering projects governments have planned and implemented, the controlling of family planning has failed dramatically.
The main reasons for these failures are because family planning and engineering are simply not policies that can be dictated by politicians.
No government should have the right to decide and legislate what people should do with their bodies and infringe the reproductive rights of individuals, let alone implement policies that are aggressive on the population, such as female sterilization.
Not only is this a violence it is also a great waste of government funds, as most women who were sterilized in India during the last 20 years were already past their childbearing age. This money could have been better spent on improving economic growth.
The problem lies fundamentally because women have not enough education in many places in the world.
Illiteracy and lack of education are a big problem, for if there were better housing conditions, nutrition, care, and work opportunities, women would start working too and have less time for childbearing, so the problem of too many babies would take care of itself.
If we take the example of the western world, it is clear that those women who are out in the world working as men do are less concerned with making babies and being housewives all their lives.
The more developed nations have fewer problems as far as overpopulation is concerned, and if analyzed in-depth, those cultural groups that do have more babies are the immigrants that have come from less developed countries.
China and their one-child policy is a violence to human and reproductive rights, as maternity should not be punished, on the contrary, this policy has produced problems such as abortions, infanticide, forced sterilization and has taken women’s liberty and indeed womanhood from them.
Although contraception is a way to curb the overpopulation problem, there are pros and cons in supporting this method as a solution for population control, as there are cultural and religious obstacles concerned.
