Interview some of your friends, and ask them how many children they expect to have. Consider what factors may lead to their having fewer children than they expect. Can you foresee any conditions under which your generation may decide to have more children?
From the discussion with my friends of how many children they expect to have, the majority of my friends indicated that they expect to 2-3 children. There are a number of factors that can influence and limit the number of children they may have as compared to their expectations. One of the factors leading to this result may be the increase of women in the work force. According to statistics, there is a huge increase in women’s labour force participation that has occurred in the last 30 years from 42% of women in the paid labour force in 1976 to 58% in 2004. (Chappell, McDonald, & Stones, 2007) Most of my female friends, family friends, or relatives I know are currently either working or in school achieving an education hoping to obtain a job in the future. Working often consumes a fair amount of the individual’s time, making them less available to the family, which may lead to the decision of having fewer children.
Another cause of having fewer children than expected could be financial restraints, as raising children requires a certain amount of financial stability. Financial barriers are an issue in today’s society as merchandises have increased their pricing as compared to previous years. Post-secondary education, housing, transportation etc… may create debts for the individual, thus, pushing them to increase their work time to pay back these debts. This may also lead to people deciding to form a family at an older age as compared to previous generations. Many of my frien...
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Garrison, M. (2008). Nonmarital cohabitation: Social revolution and legal regulation. Family Law Quarterly, 42(3), 309-331. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.lib.ryerson.ca/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/222876499?a ccountid=13631
Huang, P. M., Smock, P. J., Manning, W. D., & Bergstrom-Lynch, C. A. (2012). He says, she says: Gender and cohabitation. J Fam Issues, 32(7), 876-905. doi: 10.1177/0192513X10397601
Heffner, L. J. (2004). Advanced maternal age: How old is too old?. The New England Journal of Medicine,351(19), 1927-1929. Retrieved from http://www.extendfertility.com/downloads/documents/NEJM_AdvancedMaternalAge_H owOldIsTooOld.pdf
Vespa, J. (2012). Union formation in later life: Economic determinants of cohabitation and remarriage among older adults. Demography, 49(3), 1103-25. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0102-3
often had 6-7 children by their 40s (expected to give birth and raise many children at this times)
This primary source raises an important question nowadays we now have access to Birth Control and women still have many children because they get government help but is it really necessary to have more than four children?
explains that the cost of having a child is much more of a burden for the women of the
Tackett, J. L., Lahey, B. B., van Hulle, C., Waldman, I., Krueger, R. F., & Rathouz, P. J. (2013).
Family and Demographic change is a very broad yet understandable and extremely variable topic. Ever since human first landed or should I say spread out to create larger families and to reproduce in order to keep humanity survive and evolve and to create a more sustained and developed civilizations. Through civilizations and generations the population of each generation begins to increase dramatically that’s of course without the deaths of war and hunger or even human demand. In early civilizations the birth rate was reasonably high as well as the death rates, but ever since the rise of human logic and medicine, the death rates tremendously decreased although the birth rate started to increase.
Ottenberg, A. L., Wu, J. T., Poland, G. A., Jacobson, R. M., Koenig , B. A., & Tilburt, J. C.
Kobau, R., Zack, M. M., Manderscheid, R., Palpant, R. G., Morales, D. S., Luncheon, C., et al.
Canadian fertility started its decline early in the 19th century. It dropped about 30% between the years of 1851 and 1891. This long term decline in fertility was offset by the number of young, prolific immigrants arriving in Canada seeking a new and better life. Statistics show average Canadian families had 4.1 children for parents who were born in 1871; whereas parents born in 1911 had an average of 2.9 ...
There were rises and falls in birth rates starting in the late 1920’s. “The birth rates were low in the late 20’s and early 30’s, then became very high in the 1940’s through the early 1960’s. The birth rate growth was only then modest in the late 1970’s through the early 1990’s” (Lerman & Schmidt, n.d.). It was not uncommon for large families in the earlier years from the 1940’s through to the 1960’s. The increase of children could have been cau...
Due to the lack of decency and respect in this generation, society has become very dark. There is poor parenting taking place in this overpopulated world, and it is effecting all the future generations. Teenage parents, are uneducated and unprepared to be to raise a child. They believe they are responsible enough to take on the world and raise a family. Unfortunately, this is false information. Considering they are teenagers, they were unable to get their lives set up for success, and then they make the same parenting mistakes multiple times and end up with a huge family way below the poverty line. For every married couple, two children are all it takes to keep the world’s population at a constant rate. In too many families, there are more than two children, causing to exceed the death rate. In Overpopulation: Causes, Effects and Solutions, Rinkesh Kukreja
First, the lifestyle of the Japanese is very different to that of Americans. Whereas people in America generally spend lots of time with their families, the people of Japan typically only see each other at certain times such as meals or weekends. This is due to a heavy focus on business and work life, especially since seniority at a company determines your wages and potential for promotion (Huen 2). As part of the seniority aspect of work, many women are reluctant to have children as it forces them to take time away from work in order to have a baby and to raise the child. According to Huen, “The Japanese employment system thus offers workers something close to permanent job security if they are patient about advancement, with predictable pay increases, company housing and several kinds of fringe benefits, all in return for workers’ loyalty and commitment to the company”. This system causes many women not to want children until their careers are well on the way to becoming ...
A contributing factor to this, according to Mary Brinton, sociology professor at Harvard University, is that women continue to balance family with the demand of work and being available all the time (Gender Inequality and Women in the Workplace, 2016). As a result, women take on a “second shift” when they get home from work and in choosing to progress professionally many are having less children or waiting longer to have children. There seems to be a correlation between gender equality at home and the workplace with lower birth
This journal was useful for me because it gave me the background details on why women are opting for delayed motherhood by the age of 30 or 40. Accordingly, I was able to build up my points on how it will affect the health conditions of both baby and mother and also the risk of taking that challenge.
Barker, V., Giles, H., Hajek, C., Ota, H., Noels, K., Lim, T-S., & Somera, L. (2008).
The family size has always been a moot point and a hotly-discussed topic in the society. In fact, the Family size has had been of interest to many sociologists (See Doepke, 2003). There are people who feel comfortable to have a small number of children while others want to have large families.