The Myths About Families We Didn't Realize

Hello everyone! Thank you so much for taking a look at my blog today- the topic of this post is something I found very interesting, and I am currently learning about it at University, so my hope is that you learn something new about it as well!

So a little bit of background for everyone- I am currently a junior working on my Bachelor's degree for Psychology, and will be continuing my studies through to my PhD. I know, big ambitions right? But I am choosing this path for two reasons. The first is because I truly do believe that we can change the world one person at a time by helping those people to see their value and help them lead better lifestyles. The second is much more selfish- I like to know "Why?". Why do they act the way they do? Why did they make that decision? Why did they preform that act of bravery/cowardice/etc.? My emphasis will, one day, be couples counseling and Individual Adult counseling. Because those will be my focus, I am taking a family relations class to help me understand the workings of relationships and families. This week's topic was about the family in general and how it effects the world as a whole.

So I am sure at this point you are thinking "that is great and all Summer, but I am reading this blog about the Myths and what they are." Well, I mean, that's fair. So let me tell you about them: Myth- The world is over populated and people need to stop having children so that we as a human race can survive (aka: the Population Bomb). Myth- Your choice to have children/ how many children to have, only effects you and your immediate family. Myth- Waiting until you're older to get married and start having kids is the best option for you.

I am sure some of you reading this post are going to get up-in-arms about some of these Myths and want to express your point of view about it. I encourage you to do a few things: First, read through the explanations of these myths and double check the resources I used for them to make sure they are valid, and then leave a comment about the post (I ask that you keep it respectful) about why you agree, or why you do not agree. I love talking to others about their point of view and walk away more educated on both sides- but again, only if it is a respectful conversation. I am not going to get involved in arguments and name calling and things of that nature- and I would hope that you wouldn't want that either! The goal is for all of us to learn from one another! So lets get started.

Myth Number 1: The World is Over populated and we need to stop having Kids so we can get it back under control. Now I have to admit to yall that I certainly believed this one for most of my life- I grew up hearing that there wont be enough space or food or water to sustain the human population if it keeps growing at its current rate. I always planned on having children in my future though, so I thought to myself "Two is the maximum number of kids I will have, so that I don't negatively impact society." and that was that, right? Well, my professor today explained the origins of this myth. It all started with a book written in 1968 called The Population Bomb written by Paul R. Ehrlich. To give you a brief synopsis, He studied a specific area in the world (India) and saw that there was a large concentration of people who lived in a city, and he saw starvation and homelessness and claimed that it was going to happen to the rest of the world if we didn't start some forms of population control. One of his biggest predictions was that the global death rate would increase dramatically between the 70's and 80's by starvation and over population. So lets take a look at this really quick, and start with overpopulation. You can find all of this, and more in his book.

Did you know that the world's population today is about 7.2 Billion people? Now please keep in mind, for this example specifically, we are only talking about physical space (not resources of food and water). That being said: if we gave each person 1000 sq. ft. of space, we can fit the entire world's population in Texas. Yep, you read that right. And here is the math to go along with it: 1 square mile = 5280 x 5280 square feet = 27,878,400 square feet, in other words, 1 square mile=27,878,400 square feet. So, if Texas is 268,581 square miles, that would equal 7,487,608,550,400 (27,878,400 square feet x 268,581 square miles, and for simplicity we will call the total number of square feet:7.5 x 10^12). Now you divide 7.5x10^12 and divided that by 7 x 10^9 (about the number of people on earth) is just a little over 1000 square feet per person. Here is a site that did the math as well and came to the same conclusion. Again, about the physical space only, is what we are referring to in this recourse, you can feel free to read the rest of it, just keep in mind we are talking only about about physical space per person, not the actual ability to have the whole world being sustained by living in Texas (we couldn't do that it would be impossible and impractical to even think so): http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/thoc/texas.html

Now, moving on to sustaining the world with food and water. When Ehrlich claimed we would run out of food and water- he, again, was only looking at India (who, by the way, was going through an industrial revolution at the time and were starting to really gain momentum after World War II). But by 2017 according to the Global Hunger Index, hunger has decreased by 27% since 2000, globally. I do not mean to say that there isn't still hunger in the world, but to say that the population will die off due to not having enough food and water is false. https://scroll.in/article/854073/worse-than-iraq-bangladesh-and-even-north-korea-these-charts-show-how-hunger-haunts-india

Now I am going to put my personal plug in here very briefly (as this is not the topic of my blog). I believe that we live in an entitled world today where we think everything should just be handed to us and that we only need to worry about ourselves and others should mind there own business. That is a sad and cold way of life, and that selfishness is why there is still hunger and suffering in the world. I believe we should recycle more and waste less (waste less trash, food, everything). IF we pay more attention to our environment, I really think we could drastically improve our planet (because we only have one and should respect it) and have less starvation in countries around the world.

Myth 2: Your choice to have children, and how many children you have, will only affect your immediate family. So this one really shocked me- at first I was offended, but when I looked at it from this new point of view, it actually made a lot of sense. So stay with me on this one. In order to better understand this myth a little better- we are going to need to know the definitions of a few key terms. The first is population. Population is defined as: a particular section, group, or type of people or animals living in an area or country. The next is Birth Rate: the number of live births per thousand of population per year. And the final definition is Fertility Rate: number of live births per 1000 women between the ages of 15 and 44 years. So why are these definitions important? Well, it all ties back to how having children can affect the population. So lets take my personal scenario again right? I only wanted to have two children, but lets even just move that down to only having one. So I have one kid, and lets say my parents only had me and my sister, and my sister didn't have any kids, and both of my parents are single kids right? Well, at first glance, my child is going to thrive isn't he? He will have access to anything he wants, he will be able to get our full attention so he wont feel neglected,and he will never have need of anything significant because we can much more easily supply for one child than we can for two right? I mean, some of those facts are nice, and I can PROMISE y'all that there have been multiple times in my life where I have wished to be an only child..... but actually it does more harm than good.

There is another word we need to know, and it is called Human capital: the skills, knowledge, and experience possessed by an individual or population, viewed in terms of their value or cost to an organization or country. So if my son is handed everything he wants, where does he gain human capital? Let's use a classic scenario: Stealing cookies from the cookie jar. Anyone who has a sibling knows that there is always the instigator and the brains of the operation- there is one who creates the idea to steal the cookies, and the other who figures out how to do it. Well. When the two kids get together, they can bounce ideas off of one another and figure out how to climb onto the counter and then reach the top shelf of the cabinet and get the cookies- whereas, an only child might come up with the idea to take the cookies, but if they exhaust all of their ideas on how to reach it and cant do it- they give up, and just have to rely on asking for the cookie. Real life very much has the expectation of competition to succeed in life, those with a better drive to do the work get the job, or better education, or better skills, etc. So already, having more than one child can infinitetly help your children to learn and compete with one another which will increase their human capital, and they can influence the community in a big way.

Another big thing we don't realize is what it means for us as adults to only have one child, or not have any children. So two real-life examples for this. First is social security. In today's society, we all are working so that we can retire comfortably right? Because unfortunately one day all of us will get old and will have to rely on Social Security (if someone finds that youth serum let me know!). Well, where does the money come from that the government provides for those that don't quite make the monthly payment? From taxes. There is a small 28 page book on the internet that explains social security if you are interested in reading bout it, but a small excerpt from that book explains "But Social Security was never meant to be the only source of income for people when they retire. Social Security replaces about 40 percent of an average wage earner’s income after retiring, and most financial advisers say retirees will need 70 percent or more of pre-retirement earnings to live comfortably." (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10024.pdf) however, that is not how the world runs today. Back in the 1940s, the ratio of workers to retiree was 159 workers to 4 retirees (https://www.ssa.gov/history/ratios.html). Meaning we could cover those that didn't quite make the payments. The ratio of workers to retirees in 2013 was 2 workers to 8 retirees: let me show you what that looks like in real life. Well, I only had one child right? and my sister didn't have any kids. So when my sister and I retire, it is on the next generation to keep the Social Security full right? when my parents retired, both my sister and I were on a 1/1 ration taking care of our parent's social security, but my son? He will be at a 1/2 ratio to take care of my sister and I. He is going to have to work twice as hard. Now, I am not saying that we should all have 7 kids so make sure we live comfortably, there are many more decisions that go into having a child....but what I am saying is, if I decide to only have one kid, and my sister doesn't have one, and my neighbor has one kid, and my other neighbor has none, then it is two kids having to struggle to provide, not only for their own livelihood, but also the livelihood of 8 people (all the couples in this situation who will retire).....it isn't selfish at all to say that having more kids can benefit everyone, in cases like this it is looking out more for our kids than ourselves anyways.

Myth Number 3: Waiting until you are older to get married and have children is the best option. So the world today definitely has us believe that the longer we wait to get married, the better off we will be in knowing exactly what we want, we will be more financially stable individually, and we will be wiser about the decision to marry and have a family. Well.... not all of that is exactly true. First and foremost I just want to clarify that I am not condoning young marriages if it is a dangerous situation, if one or both of the participants are minors, or getting married for reasons like "we are young and only live once" or "why not?". Marriage, at least for me personally (and I would hope for others as well) is a life long commitment. and because of that, it is a weighty decision. However, there are many benefits to marrying earlier instead of later. One of which is that it gives you more time, with less stress/pressure to decide if you want to have children. The longer you wait to get married, the harder it becomes for women to have children, and if you decide to get married and have children at age 35, and later decide you want to have a big family, by age 40 it becomes more dangerous for mom and baby if the wife wanted to get pregnant again. So marrying younger gives you more time to look at your situation as a couple and decide if you want kids, and if so, how many you want.

The second reason to get married earlier, is that, it is actually much healthier for a relationship if you both grow up together and go through trials together. There is an article by the Huffington post that claims "While delaying marriage has advantages — a lower divorce rate, higher income for women and fewer and less intense arguments between spouses — studies show there also may be benefits to tying the knot before age 30. (However, there is such a thing as marrying too young. Research shows that marriages beginning when a woman is 18 are twice as likely to end in divorce as those beginning when she is 22.)" you can find it here (https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/14/married-young_n_4227924.html) and just to throw in one more reference that can be considered a bit more trust worthy is http://www.uscatholic.org/dontwait . This article talks about the pros and cons f marrying in your early 20's.

So i know this post is kind of long, and they all will be when I go over the lessons I learned in class for the week- but I learn more when I write these for y'all and also, I hope that it has at least opened your eyes to another point of view- I am never here to try and convince anyone or make them change their beliefs, but I am here to speak out for the other side- the point of view that isn't always as popular or isn't always as well-known. I love learning, and growing in my understanding both temporally and spiritually, and university is definitely a good place for that- it helps me to understand things in a new way, and helps me to understand myself as I am trying to find out who Summer really is.