Family ties

Philippine Daily Inquirer

 2share25 22

The family is one of the oldest and most important social institutions on earth. Anthropologist Margaret Mead, based on her research, affirmed the centrality of the nuclear family in human society.  She said: “As far back as our knowledge takes us, human beings have lived in families. We know of no period when this was not so. We know of no people who have succeeded for long in dissolving the family or displacing it… Again and again, in spite of proposals for change and actual experiments, human societies have reaffirmed their dependence on the family as the basic unit of human living—the family of father, mother and children.’’

All over the world, the family is considered the bedrock of a nation, and the Philippines is no exception. Indeed, the Philippines is one country where family ties are the strongest. It is thus fitting that the nation should take some time to reflect on the family and seek to strengthen family unity and relationships by promoting Filipino family values this week, national Family Week.

Michelle Ong, in a paper in 2000, said that the typical Filipino family is “economically disadvantaged’’ (a euphemism for poor), with parents having jobs that cannot provide for all the needs of the family. She also said that the Filipino family is child-centered, with a married couple becoming a family only with the birth of a child. The family is also perceived to be an important aspect of the Filipino’s life as happiness is closely associated with a satisfying and harmonious family situation.

All over the world, the family is being subjected to various stresses and strains, and again, the Philippines is no exception. An East-West paper said that increasing urbanization and industrialization and the high level of poverty have drastically changed Philippine society, and we presume, also the nuclear family. Many children, because of the OFW phenomenon, are growing up under the care of single or surrogate parents.

It is the family that prepares a child for life in the adult world. Here, the child first experiences the love, care and attention that help launch him into a bigger, more complex environment. The parents are the primary influence in molding children’s values, norms, attitudes and standards of right or wrong. Children who spend most of their growing years in an intact family structure generally receive more and better guidance and attention that protect them from engaging in socially unwanted and negative behaviors such as smoking, drug use, drinking or engaging in commercial or premarital sex.

In 2001, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines lamented in a pastoral statement that many social situations are beginning to destroy or deform the family. The CBCP called poverty “the silent killer of families,’’ forcing many spouses to separate for one or both of them to work abroad. Separation causes children to suffer great psychological harm and sometimes leads to the breakup of families.

The OFW phenomenon has its good and bad effects. Among the good: the children of migrants are better off financially and generally get a better education. But the negative: The migrants’ children are described as lonely, materialistic, consumerist, selfish, anxious and resentful. Many of them feel abandoned. Yes, now the OFW parents are able to maintain constant contact with their children through cell phones, e-mail, Skype, videocams and other state-of-the art gadgets, but they cannot take the place and provide the warmth and love of face-to-face interaction between parent and child.

Many economic and social factors are threatening the unity of marriage and the existence of many families. It is thus necessary that the government solve as soon as possible the perennial problems of poverty and lack of gainful employment, so that more and more parents would stay in the Philippines and continue to care for their children.

As the family suffers the strains and stresses of the modern world, the words of anthropologist Paul Bohannan may be reassuring to all of us: “The family is the most adaptable of all human institutions, changing with every social demand. The family does not break in a storm as oak or pine trees do, but bends before the wind like the bamboo tree in Oriental tales and springs up again.’’

Population trends: lessons for RP

By Fr. Gregory D. Gaston, SThD
Philippine Daily Inquirer

“REMEMBER the population bomb? The new threat to the planet is not too many people but too few,” Michael Meyer reports on “Birth Dearth” (in Newsweek, Sept. 27, 2004). He continues: “The world’s population will continue to grow – from today’s 6.4 billion to around 9 billion in 2050. But after that, it will go sharply into decline. Indeed, a phenomenon that we’re destined to learn much more about – depopulation – has already begun in a number of countries.”

In general, a total fertility rate (TFR or children per woman) of 2.1 is necessary to replace a country’s population. The UN Population Division (UNPD) states, “The primary consequence of fertility decline, especially if combined with increases in life expectancy, is population ageing. It adds, “Globally, the number of persons aged 60 years or over is expected almost to triple” between 2005 and 2050.

Population controllers never highlight population ageing and decline. In countries where these phenomena happen today, a huge number of elderly have to be supported by proportionally fewer working people. The pension fund and the social security system are overburdened. The local labor force grow older and less efficient, hence they need immigrants.

Having fewer and older people means a smaller market, especially for certain sectors such as baby food, clothing, vaccines and certain other medicines, sports facilities, office equipment, education, etc. –products and services the elderly employ less. More countries will soon need more coffins than cradles.

Below replacement levels

A population with an above-replacement TFR (that is, with 2.1 or more children per woman) will have a pyramid-shaped “population pyramid.” In this scenario, the economically active persons support their children and a small group of elderly dependents.

If a country’s TFR goes below replacement level, the wide bases of the pyramid are replaced by narrower bases each year, reflecting the fewer children born each year.

Continued below-replacement TFR will lead to a diamond-shaped figure.

By this time the economically active persons will have to support a relatively few children and a rapidly increasing number of elderly.

This condition contributes to the present economic boom of rich countries, since the workers will get to keep a big share of their earnings, instead of spending them for the needs of children and the elderly.

This is the situation that population controllers want us to foresee: They explain that the Philippines will become well-off when it reaches this stage. But they never explain what will happen beyond this stage, which, to say the least, is a disaster.

If the country’s TFR remains below replacement levels, the diamond-shaped population pyramid will become shaped like a toy top.

If the trend continues, the country will end up having an inverted population pyramid, with an extremely aged and shrinking population.

Babies needed

Because of an elderly and forthcoming collapsing population, Dr. Joseph Chamie, former UNPD director, said to the Population Association of America that governments were “adopting polices... to increase their child bearing,” including restricting or limiting contraception [and] abortion, match making, conducting public-relation campaigns for marriage, childbearing and parenthood, and giving out cash bonus for the birth of a child.

They have not succeeded so far. But if ever they do succeed in increasing birthrates, their population “pyramid” will acquire the shape of an hourglass.

In this scenario, their workers will have to care not only for their big population of elderly dependents, but also for the increasingly big batches of children they want to have, the young dependents.

This will mean a double economic burden for them. Hence, these countries will soon be in a serious predicament: Continued economic woes and the nation’s extinction if they don’t produce more children and doubled economic woes if they do.

They hope to return to the scenario they were in 50 years ago: To have many babies who would eventually replace the work force, and in turn care for both the young and the elderly dependents. That is, they seek a normal population pyramid, shaped like a real pyramid, with a wide base and a narrow tip, and not like a diamond, a toy top, an inverted pyramid, or an hourglass.

In short, they want to revert to the type of pyramid that the Philippines still has – a pyramid that it will soon lose, as its TFR continues to decline. Within two decades, our country will fall into the same trap where ageing countries find themselves in and want to escape from right now, a TFR below the 2.1 replacement level.

Lessons

The UNPD figures indicate that it is not an exaggeration to say that as early as now the Philippine TFR is already dangerously low.

Whereas in the early 1970s the average Filipina had six children, today she has around three, and in another 20 years, only two.

Shortly after 2020, the Philippine TFR will sink below its specific replacement level of around 2.29 (higher than the usual 2.1 because of higher infant mortality and other factors).

It will be too late and useless to wait for the TFR to go below replacement level and then try to raise it up again. The only solution would be to try to prevent its further decline today – an effort that will probably not succeed within a few decades, but will hopefully at least lessen the impact of an ageing population. If approved, the bills promoting population control will certainly plunge the Philippine TFR further down.

The Philippine population pyramids of 2000, 2025 and 2050 (from the US Census Bureau website) reflect the TFR’s downward trend.

We can no longer sit back, relax and think of “just crossing the bridge when we get there,” because we have already reached the bridge. At the rate its TFR is declining, the Philippines will, within 20 years, join the other countries that have fallen into the river. It will be a point of no return, or at least, of extremely difficult return. Why go there in the first place?

It has to be stressed that the Philippine TFR will probably reach below replacement levels within two decades even without additional population control efforts.

Filipinos now marry later in life, marital unions have become less stable, emigration to urban centers makes rearing children more difficult, emigration to other countries is on the rise (physically subtracting members from the country, especially those of reproductive age, and reducing the number of children those left behind beget), decisions on how to spend money have left having more children out, and the mass media greatly influence spouses to have few children.

Population control

Countries that were already rich 30 to 40 years ago when their TFRs started to decline and are now ageing encounter extreme difficulty in solving their economic problems.

Their efforts to encourage their citizens to produce more children have not yielded acceptable results after a decade. They depend on immigration to maintain their population growth.

The Philippines is not a rich country and may or may not be rich within 50 years. How will it support its ageing population? Will it also invite workers from other countries to replace its dwindling workforce? Will it also pay mothers for each child born? Impossible.

Even if it becomes rich by then, it will have to face the same problems rich countries face now and will have to tell the people to raise more children.

Graphically speaking, we cannot afford to have in the future a population pyramid like the rich countries’ and then, like them, wish to regain the population pyramid we have now.

Population control has to be ruled out as a quick-fix solution to poverty. This in no way means telling the people to have as many children as they can, to uncontrollably “go forth and multiply” (as some erroneously claim the Church teaches).

Rather, parents should be guided and supported to attain the number of children they can generously and responsibly raise and educate. For some spouses, this means having one child or two and for others, 5, 10, 12, or in some cases, 15 or even more. If they could really manage to properly care for them, why not?

Neither the government nor the Church may compel, instruct or encourage spouses to raise a specified number of children, as what population control programs definitely try to do. Rather, the government and the Church should form and guide the people to reflect on their actual circumstances and to freely, generously and responsibly decide whether or not to have another child for the time being or indefinitely.

Human capital

Any economic, social or political policy proposed to solve poverty should take advantage of, rather than suppress, our abundant human resources. As Dr. Gary Becker, 1992 Nobel Prize winner in economic science, says, “human capital,” which refers to the skills, education, health and training of individuals, comprises around 80 percent of the wealth of advanced countries and hence “can be neglected [only] at a country’s peril.”

Any solution to poverty, furthermore, has to take into account, support and promote our closely knit family ties, the time and dedication parents give to their children, the care children and extended families give to the elderly whom we truly love, the moral principles and holistic training children receive from their parents and all the other values that the Filipino family has until now maintained, in spite of the pressures exerted upon it by secularism.

The contribution to the national economy of these services and values that find their dynamism within the family is impossible to calculate, but they provide a key – the most important one – to good governance in the public and private sectors, a condition sine qua non to attain stability in society, reach economic development and diminish poverty.

(Gregory Gaston is a priest of the Archdiocese of Manila, professor and former dean of the Graduate School of Theology of San Carlos Seminary in Makati. He holds a doctorate in sacred theology. He presented this topic at the Society of Catholic Social Scientists’ annual meeting at the University of Mississippi School of Law on Oct. 31, 2009. This article is excerpted from “Familia et Vita” (2007), the Quarterly Review of the Pontifical Council for the Family [full text at www.safe.ph].)