Why the Poor Can’t Bear Fewer Children?

Population control has been a serious problem in developing countries. If a comparatively efficient government plans to fulfil the needs of a population in a country in five years they come to know only after 5 years that the rapid increase in population has failed their plans and now even more people are without facilities. On the one hand, this is said that less population and more resources guarantee the prosperity of a country but on the other hand this is very difficult to convince the general public that they should bear fewer children.

There are multiple narratives and multiple reasons why don’t let the poor bear fewer children. If we discuss Pakistan as a case study we can determine that the most important narrative is that of religion.

The lower middle class and the lower class believe that the sustenance of children is in the hands of God Almighty that’s why they should not worry about their lives. It’s God Almighty Who creates His creatures and takes care of His creatures and it’s He Who is responsible for the standards of their lives; so humans should only increase the creature of God almighty so that there may be more and more people praising and admiring The Almighty.

The second major reason is social norms. There is a lot of societal pressure on couples to bear children, especially sons. Consequently, couples keep on producing girls until they get one male issue, and then they have the pressure to complete the pair of sons, and thus the story continues.

The third reason can be the personal choice of the people. people want to have children as their desires but these desires are formed on the grounds of societal norms and religious obligations. There are only a few people only who want to have children for the sake of having children.

Then comes the government and its poor role in all this fiasco. Governments don’t play their role in changing the minds and narratives of the poor because governments are afraid of being stamped anti-religion. they are also afraid of religious clerics because they believe that if the clerics start up a campaign against the government, the government may be toppled by the public.

Governments don’t even work on the correction or development of societal norms which is also due to inefficiency confusion and fear.

There are many people among the poor who at one stage or another other realize that they should stop having children but they get no help from the government or the institutions. Abortion is illegal. If the couples want to abort children, first they are met with religious constraints. Clerics term abortion as anti-Islamic and these are the clerics who have street power and who rule the public. As abortion is illegal, lady doctors do not cooperate with the couples which leaves them with only two options, either to complete the pregnancy or to go to the inexperienced lady workers who abort the pregnancy. Thus, many of them go for the first option.

The poor can’t even adopt good safety measures as they do not have access to good contraceptives and condoms. Either They get free condoms from the population department of hospitals, which erupt easily and cause pregnancy and adverse effects on the health of women, or to get substandard condoms from bazaars, which also prove similar hazards for them.

If a nation wants to prosper it must control its population. Control of the population is impossible without counting narratives and without providing safety measures to the public. Government at least should show the availability of international standard contraceptives and condoms. Failing which, it can be consumed that governments are serious neither about population control nor about prosperity.