Every child is a blessing. I believe that wholeheartedly. Every child should be cherished, loved and raised well. This is good for the child and ultimately for the society. But at what point does this saying become untrue. When each child becomes an extra person to care for, another mouth to feed, an expense to worry about, a burden…
There’s a movie called ‘What happened to Monday.’
The movie is about identical septuplets struggling to carve out a living in a one-child world. Each child is named Monday through Sunday, but they also share a name Karen Settman. On their name day, they get a chance to leave their house and experience life. So Monday goes out on Monday, Tuesday on Tuesday and so forth. You can guess which septuplet has the most fun. The rest of the time they are indoors or hiding from the authorities.
Why all this effort? In this world, you are only allowed, one child. Additional children are taken away for ‘processing’. All this because figures had shown that there just wasn’t enough resources to go around. Everything had to be strictly rationed. You might think this far-fetched, but do not forget that China had a one-child policy not too long ago, with stories of forced abortions, in order to keep up with the policy.
It has happened once and could very well happen again. However, I very much doubt it would be in the west where the movie was set nor in China, but probably here in Africa. With Nigeria being prime suspect number one. Our population is growing and shows no signs of slowing down. Our current population stands at 196million and it’s still growing. It is projected that our population could reach 411million by 2050.
The demand for already scarce resources like water, power and food will increase. It’s not like the resources we have now are managed well or shared fairly. Theresa May has just thoughtfully reminded us that Nigeria has the largest population of poor people in the world. With unchecked population growth, I imagine that the situation can only get worse.
Think on it a world where only the firstborn survives. Would you be here? As a first born it would be a quieter boring world without the 2nd, 3rd and 4th that followed after me. So what can we do:
Family planning – please don’t have more children than you can feed or provide for. Who do you expect to raise your children if you can not
Resource efficiency – Start managing what you have. Reduce wastage, so more would go around
Education – studies have shown that raising the education levels in a country can lead to a reduction in the birth rate.
Adoption – raising and caring for a child that may otherwise be neglected could also be an option.
I don’t have the solutions to this issue only suggestions. If you have any thoughts on this matter let us know