Then There is the Fertility/Childbearing Factor
It's official: modern women who have achieved social parity with men, fully educated, part of the job market, are increasingly rejecting traditional roles of mothering. I'm personally a bit of a dinasaur here in that I believe that women who have children owe to their children their daily presence on an ongoing basis. Which is to say: ladies if you have children be with them, don't farm them out to day care facilities. Children need the near presence of their parents, but I'm not fussy, if the mother is more interested in joining the permanent work force, I'll agree that the father, if so inclined, is capable of fulfilling children's emotional and learning-to-adapt-to-life needs.Personal perceptions of this type aside, it is interesting to note that fully emancipated women who find satisfaction and fulfillment in the world outside the kitchen and nursery are declining in ever-increasing numbers to have children. And those who do have children have fewer than ever before. Not to mention the fact that women are putting off having even those few offspring until they are a little longer in the tooth, to established a career before feeling comfortable enough to spare the time for childbearing.
There it is, educated women fully comfortable as professionals in the workplace are unwilling to reproduce. Western countries are facing a downright paucity of births and ultimately replacement workers. Populations of western countries' homegrown segments have stabilized and even in some instances declined as the birthrate is not even keeping up with a diminished population of workers due to advancing age and death. At one time western countries thought they could overcome this problem by offering financial incentives to women to encourage childbearing, and this did work for a while, post-war. But raising children is an expensive proposition, on the health and vitality and expectations of women, let alone family incomes and home-grown populations have simply continued to decline.
Not so with the families of immigrants. Which is why they are welcomed as potential sources of workers in various industries, with the expectation that their higher birth rates will bump up population growth to a more acceptable level of replaceability. The wheels of commerce and industry, leading to a healthy national GDP must be constantly oiled, and how other to do that than by a secure supply of workers? Traditionally immigrants' offspring would assimilate nicely into the general population, swell the ranks of the future, and gift the country of their choice with cultural and genetic diversity.
Something happened on the way to the future. Newer immigrants, often offered government help as was never done to this same extent in the past, are not so amenable to integration of the most basic kind; accepting the laws of their new land, tolerating customs and mores unfamiliar and even offensive to their cultural sensitivities. Under the all-encompassing umbrella of a demanding religion these new immigrants reject the past passivity which aided integration, and demand full recognition of their differences, including their own versions of justice and laws.
Moreover, their children are being fully indoctrinated not into the customs and conventions of their adopted, often country of birth, but that of their parents' country of origin. Their religion which comforts and guides them throughout their daily lives also hosts precepts and instructions completely at odds in many instances with those of their adopted country. And while the native populations decline, the newly-introduced immigrant populations (including those of several generations' domicile, increases exponentially.
We now have a situation where once ethnic diversity melded into a compatible whole culture, while now that same ethnic, cultural, religious difference remains defiant to integration into the host culture, resulting in resentment, loss of opportunities, discrimination, and ugly civil backlash. The result?cultural-religious solitudes. And the future spectre of western countries being swallowed whole by a totally alien, populous and determined religious community.
Is this the future?
posted by Pieface @ Monday, February 13, 2006
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