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The economic crisis is affecting families all over the world. Governments are struggling to find ways to solve the problems. Each day’s headlines detail a new attempt to boost the struggling economies. The plans have included: bailouts, stimulus packages, mortgage buy-backs, etc. Despite their best efforts there is one significant plan that has not been promoted. In all of the plans the economists and world leaders have suggested, none have suggested using the family to solve the world’s economic crisis.
How can the family be the answer? In the outstanding documentary, Demographic Winter, researchers discuss how the decline in population has caused a severe crisis for the nations of the world. For all of the economic solutions that have been suggested, the one component that is being forgotten is that if you do not have enough people to work in the factories, buy the goods, and purchase the homes, there will be no improvement.
What would happen if the world economies required growth but their countries were shrinking instead? This is a question posed by the documentary. A reduction in population does not equal economic prosperity. Just ask Russia. In Russia, with its population of just 145 million, the government is providing incentives to families to have children.
For every family who has more than one child, they receive the equivalent of $9,200. Why is the government paying people to have more children? With their declining population, Russian officials know that in a few years they will not have the manpower to defend their borders, run their hospitals, or work their shipyards.
The answer to solving our economic crisis is not found in paying people to have more children. The answer is found in changing government policies to strengthen families. Parents will only want to have more children if they know that the government will support those efforts with policies that make childrearing a top priority. Governments need to look for ways to help families provide stable, loving two-parent homes for children.
Today’s world is obsessively focused on the individual. That focus needs to be redirected to the family. As Demographic Winter points out, the women’s rights movement, the gay rights movement, and the environmental movement are all based on the misleading 1970’s theory of the population bomb. They are focused on the needs of the individual.
The reality of today’s world is that rather than having a population explosion, we are, instead, in the middle of a population implosion! We need to focus on families – not individuals. We need to have a family rights movement! We need our leaders to improve the economies of their countries by improving the stability of the family.
We need to understand that the safety and stability of countries in today’s world depend primarily on whether families in those countries feel stable and secure.
Join with United Families International as we work with families all over the world to find ways to strengthen their countries by strengthening their families first.
Beverly Rice, President