Child poverty

[karrie]

Poverty as a indicator of family size - just a couple of issues I thought about...

One thing people aren't mentioning here is large families seem to make more large families and the children of these grow up without any sense of consequence or responsibility for their actions. Having babies seems part of life - with little decision-making or planning involved.

If one is trying to survive and just keep the family fed and clothed - there is not much room for teaching the societal ramifications of love, lust, and pregnancy. These are accepted as natural as finishing school, getting a job, and having babies - and worse now it doesn't even seem to include marriage as a requisite.

Our first teachers are our parent(s) and extended family members and if they tend to have large families, some of the children will follow that pattern.

I don't know that I can agree with that entirely. Within three generations our family size has shrunk... 14 children by my great grandma, 8 children by my grandma, 3 by my mom, 2 by me. Not one of my aunts or uncles has had more than three kids either, and the only set of cousins to exceed 2 kids, did so merely due to lucking into twins with their last pregnancy. Each generation was richer sooner, and more educated than the last. While their parents struggled to make ends meet, public school also gave each new generation better access to education, and each has seemed to develop its own social standing and views, independent of the way the last generation did things.

I can't argue that our parents bear a large impact on much of our behavior, but it doesn't seem to be such a huge impact in family size, in my mere experience.

 

[Curiosity]

I think I was unclear Karrie - I was referring to families in poverty which I thought was the topic.

Families generations back were faced with hardships we cannot imagine and women rarely had any choice as to family size - It is what I mean by the consequences and lack of education. Children who were born into large families often replicated that by having many children themselves.

Things are different these days and children are being educated, even if mother and father are unable to pass along positive messages, there are other mentors available in children's lives to give them choice.

Families are getting smaller - even a three child family seems plenty these days - but there is some decision-making allowed now and I think that wise because most families would like to have children in the number they can care for.....

Still poverty exists - far more than it should in so many wealthy nations.

 

[karrie]

I think I was unclear Karrie - I was referring to families in poverty which I thought was the topic.

Families generations back were faced with hardships we cannot imagine and women rarely had any choice as to family size - It is what I mean by the consequences and lack of education. Children who were born into large families often replicated that by having many children themselves.

Things are different these days and children are being educated, even if mother and father are unable to pass along positive messages, there are other mentors available in children's lives to give them choice.

Families are getting smaller - even a three child family seems plenty these days - but there is some decision-making allowed now and I think that wise because most families would like to have children in the number they can care for.....

Still poverty exists - far more than it should in so many wealthy nations.

Bah, I'm having a brain foggy day and not getting across well what I'm saying.

Society has changed, but I grew up poor. Poverty IS what I grew up with. My parents had more luxuries than their parents, who had more luxuries than their parents... but all were still poor. My siblings and I are the first generation not struggling to find grocery money for our kids.

 

[SVMc]

SVMc, had a look at one of your charts, noticed that teen pregnancies peeked while I was in high school. Mine had 1,000 students, that would mean more than 500 were females, problem is, I can count on one hand the number of girls that got pregnant, even if they got married, ( which they always did) the rest of us could still count the months. I must have gone to an exceptional school, or your charts are highly inaccurate.

It's good to see that basic demographics / statistics is still something that escapes most people. There is a large difference between statistical information, and antectodal evidence. The sources provided cover overall census data, covering large portions of the population, while your high school is not a significant sample size. Also, overall demographic information of an entire nation or nations does not imply statistical uniformity.

What this means is that while a suburban high school that had one maybe 2 teenage pregnancies that the majority of the high school population was aware of, this high school is not an exact replica of society at large, a high school in a very different neighbourhood, where the majority of the population is poor would likey have a very different outlook. One reason that marketing people love demographic information is because it breaks down this assumption of statistical uniformity and tells the marketer where to put their dollars, for instance there is a marked difference in the demographic from Yorkvill and from Regent Park, in Toronto.

 

[able]

The reason people had less than 3 children in the 40s and 50s was because they were poor. The difference between then and now is, everyone was poor to one degree or another. Those were the days when people who owned tv sets took them outside and let the non owners watch. I can remember the village I lived in, of some 50 homes, only around 4 had tv sets. My aunt and uncle were rich? they had a tv in 1952. They could only get one channel, but it was honest to God tv, people actually used to sit around and watch a test pattern. In those days, people were actually more responsible, they had to be, because there was no other choice. WW1 to the depression to WW2 to the Korean War, paying off the war debts, one crisis after another, the Cold War, and all the time, it could come to a nuclear showdown that destroyed all life. My sister and brother in law lived in Niagara Falls, and the supermarkets had bomb shelters, didn't stay long, went back up to NORAD where I could be back on the front line. That didn't seem all that safe, imagine, knocking down bombers loaded with nuclear bombs on or near your own position. Remember thinking that there must be a plan to allow them to get south of us before we knocked them down, after all, if we got destroyed, then we would all be defenceless. Now with all that silliness going on, do you really think people could be as irresponsible as they are today.