So, I just watched a documentary called "Demographic Winter: the decline of the human family". Wow. What a mind blower. As a man raised in the last few decades of the 20th century, I grew up and have been an adult on a planet in which we are pretty regularly reminded that we live in a overcrowded world. Just last year, I read a national geographic magazine article about how our world is overpopulated, and on its way to overflowing with people.
Imagine my surprise when I learn that the overpopulation problem is really a bugaboo - a ghost, straw man, whatever you want to call it. A mistake born of speculation, or worse - a deliberate lie. Whatever the reason for the misinformation, the point is that we are living in a world with a dangerously low population growth. Fewer and fewer children are being born; many countries have already fallen below "replacement levels" of reproduction. Some european and ex-soviet bloc countries are actually on the verge of failing, falling apart, due to the tremendous shortage of young people.
The movie paints the picture of an "inverted population pyramid", where an aging population is propped up and supported by a smaller group of younger taxpayers; as the population rate drops, the pressure and incentive to have fewer children increases. It is a sobering thought, imagining a world in which the odds are stacked against the human race. Our behaviors have combined and congealed to edit and alter our reproductive behaviors, leading our human race into the trap of negative population growth.
As the population shrinks, economic pressures produced by an aging population will accelerate the shrinkage trend, as people are forced to have fewer children for simple monetary reasons. Fewer children in a family typically results in more resources being available for the child; even in this scenario, these children will receive more attention, as they have fewer siblings. One of the results of devoting more resources and attention to children, is the likelihood that such a child will be inclined to have fewer children herself. One of the proven contributors to a societies negative population growth is education - a rise in mothers education level is accompanied by a drop in her likely number of offspring. It is unclear just how far this process can go, but it has some frightening possibilities, both in potential long term effects on the human race, and as justification for sexist social devolution.
The documentary does a good job of providing facts that can be checked. While I found some of the conclusions presented objectionable, the information they were based on was solid. The documentary identifies the groups that are maintaining replacement level or growing populations, and analyzes the factors that contribute to these groups bucking the shrinkage trend. It is here, in this thread of the movie, that irritated and angered me. Many of these contributing factors are ripe with potential political utility.
The central offending theme was the assertion that families of faith - "traditional families" - are the growing segment of society. From the data they present, they paint a picture in which traditional, mom and pop and 2.5 kids are the only hope of humanity. these traditional families are the only demographic that show a positive population growth. The film handles the issue carefully, diplomatically refraining from scoring points or attacking other family modalities directly. While they do not point any fingers, they provide plenty of ammunition for attacking the idea of non traditional families - gay adoptions & marriages, divorce, single parenting are all indirectly exposed as damaging to children and the population growth rate.
I felt that I got a lot of good, useful and surprising information out of this documentary. However, I also saw in it the potential for much of the information contained in it to be used to attack all nontraditional lifestyles. The documentary does not appear to have a political agenda; but it is clear that it can easily be used by those who do. In that, it is doubly dangerous, as it can be used to "educate the troops" or the already converted, and to effect the opinions of the general population. It does not appear to have a political agenda; but the information in it cannot help but support a conservative right wing agenda.
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