Newborns vs. Elders

James Dobson, child development specialist and founder of Family Talk radio broadcasts wrote an article on February 19, 2013 titled, “Lowerbirth rate threatens America’s future: Column”. He begins his article by stating that for the for time in history there are fewer American babies being born while the number of senior citizens is growing (Dobson).  He also mentions the drastic measures or consequences that other nations are dealing with regarding their populations decline.

Russia for example now offers incentives for women who choose to have babies (Dobson). China has a dramatic disproportion because they do not have enough females to marry the large amount of males due to their one-child policy, which is just now recently changing (Dobson). And a funny yet preoccupying fact for Japan is that more diapers were bought and used for elderly people than for babies (Dobson).

The problem is not that people are living longer, but rather that the number of births is declining significantly. Many could disagree saying that our cities are in fact overflowing. Others may believe that most families now a day are not able to provide for the economic well being that a child requires throughout their childhood and beyond. America is a nation of immigrants after all and if were not for the families that migrate, Americas population would probably be substantially lower.

I believe there is a fine line between having many children to contribute to the population in numbers with the chance of decreasing the quality of their education because of economic restraints while on the other hand having less children with higher chances of educational progress, but contributing to the nations decline in population. Every family is different with different reasons for having or not having children.

I believe we should provide the best we can for our current generation so that they may be successful leaders when the time comes. It is concerning to think about births declining, but we should target the reasons people have for choosing not to have children rather than encouraging or discouraging them from doing so.  “It's not too late for politicians to begin cherishing and nourishing our families and treating them as our greatest natural resource” (Dobson). I completely agree with this statement because whether we have many or few children in our society, our government leaders should look for the well being of families regardless of the amount.