Alright everyone this is the first official blog post,
posted by family gainz blog! I hope during this blog I can reflect on family
trends throughout the world today, and what some call the population problem. Again,
we are focusing on the family and ultimately how we can discuss these issues
and evaluate and strengthen our families.
Wow, Population Bomb, fertility rate, and individualism! What are we going
to cover? Well if you have ever heard of these terms before or payed attention
to the top paragraph, you’d learn that we are going to cover one of the hottest
topics today. Let’s begin with this idea of individualism. The Webster’s
dictionary defines individualism as, “the belief that the needs of
each person are more important than the needs of the whole society or group.”
Essentially focusing on oneself. There is danger in the idea of just focusing
on your needs. My intention is not to
proclaim moral truth here, however my intention is to point out the correlation
between modern family trends and individualism. I just watched a video this
week on street discussions in Europe. Random people were asked this question, “What
is the ideal number of kids in one family?” Most, if not all of the people said
anywhere between 1-2 kids per family. I find that fascinating! There was a
follow up question asked, “why?” Why are those numbers ideal for a family? I
saw that some people said that its to much money to have a big family, or that
the more kids you have the more problems you have, and some said that one or two
kids can get more out of life instead of having to compete with more. I myself
come from a family of 6 kids so I’m naturally competitive, so I say bring on
the kids! So, the question I pose is why is it that we see fewer and fewer people
having bigger families? To cut to the core of the issue it falls to that strong,
hard to hear definition, INDIVIDUALISM. Just to go back to what these people
said we can see that its focused on how hard its going to be as a parent. It’s
to much money, to many problems, and less competition. I would add that it is
valuable to consider the trial’s that may come with having children, and I’m
not trying to degrade or look down on anyone’s opinion, however it concerns me
that a lot of these concerns seem to point toward individualism. Well why is that
so bad?
In
1969 there was a book written and published titled “ Population Bomb.” This
book warns of mass starvation due to over population, and encourages action to
decrease population growth. To be frank the book was very inaccurate in the predictions
it stated. It was a huge hit and many people believed that zero population was
the key. It also doesn’t help that during this same time the birth control pill
came out. How did this affect families? Well if I read a book that said that
having a large family is killing people throughout the world due to an excess
of resource intake, or that I’m being selfish because I want to be selfless and
raise a large family, become a good father and teach the rising generation good
principles of good living and how that will lead to the end the world, I would
probably not have a large family. I would probably reconsider marriage. If I
believed these accusations than I would become a monk! As you can predict, we saw
a decrease in marriages and a decrease in fertility rates. People believed in
peace, pot, and micro-dot! Instead of getting married people cohabitated, which
also affected marriage rates. Well if I could take a pill and stop me from
having a baby than great! Lets just live together and do what married people do
without getting married. Oh, to add to this I can now get divorced over whatever
I want to. What did we see, yup, an increase in divorce rates. Also, feminism.
Woman were now able to go to college and receive higher education. We saw more
women in the working world. What did this do to kids at home? Baby sitters, day
care. How did this affect the family? How did this affect society? Now, let me make
something very clear. All of those things started with good, in fact great intentions.
But where did we go wrong? Did we over do it? Did we choose to focus more on
our own personal gain than the gain of our families, society, and the world?I feel we did.
Individualism occurs when we become prosperous.
What family trends are we seeing today? How
does society look at family now? How is my family affected by these trends? Why
are we looking at these trends? Does this matter? Are we degrading the family today
due to decisions made in the past? Are we ready and able to take action for the
choices that were made in the past?
Let’s motivate one another, be positive, and lets get these
family gainz!
