If each country had a two child policy

[Blackcat21]

Just an idea and my opinion, and fully aware I will probably get flamed for this.

The population is rising, not shrinking, and with that is coming ridiculous house prices, global warming, running low on natural resources and foods.

Health services are stretched and school classes are increasingly full.

Wouldn’t an solution to this be only letting per couple or mother/father have two biological children each.

I must admit, it does annoy me when some women go on to have 3rd, 4th child etc just because “they want to” or want a large family, love being with children or love being a mother.

Motherhood is a beautiful thing but it could be restricted to two biological children only.

Overpopulation is impacting the earth too much.

If this couple wanted more children they can adopt.
There are thousands of children in the U.K. and other countries each year wanting to be adopted.

Doing this could possibly tackle overpopulation but increase the adoption of children.

Obviously I’m aware there is problems of how to monitor this, what if a woman gets pregnant against her will, accidental pregnancies etc but not that is the not the point or idea I’m trying to get across right now.

AIBU to think this could be a good approach?

But job losses, ill health and relationship breakdown invariably hit individual households all the time. No family can assume that such a crisis would not affect them at some point in the next 18 years when they decide to have a child

No one is saying otherwise, life can be unexpected. However it’s not hard to foresee that one child vs several would have an impact on finances should things change.

don’t know what would you do?! We can’t carry on as we are can we? Do you really think everything is absolutely fine as it is and we can all have as many children as we may fancy?

As a country, the UK fancies very few children, we aren't producing enough. Like most of Europe. So no, we can't carry on as we are, we need more babies, not less.

Talking about population in a global sense is pointless when you don't understand the basics.

No one is saying otherwise, life can be unexpected. However it’s not hard to foresee that one child vs several would have an impact on finances should things change.

Yes & why the birth rate is declining

Yes that worked brilliant in China, baby girls getting abandoned and murdered for being the wrong gender due to the cap, I’m a mother to 3 children and I’m trying to have a 4 th child just because I love kids and being a mother ! Yabu

Nice in theory but in reality it means women suffering from forced abortions and sterilisations.

Is that really the world you want to live in?

Or what happens if you don’t have kids fall in love with someone who has two, are you still denied the right to have a child?

Plus in reality economics places a cap on most families already

Or what happens if you don’t have kids fall in love with someone who has two, are you still denied the right to have a child? Or you meet someone hot, they tell you they have two kids so you don't date them. It's a bit like the SP posts when they never wanted step kids but "can't control who they fall in love with". Yes, you can and even if you can't, you can control what you do about it.

Also cheaper and easier to steralise the man.

@Mittens030869

As an adoptive mum myself, nothing annoys me more than people advising posters to ‘just adopt’, for whatever reason. I’ll never regret our decision to adopt, and I wouldn’t be without our DDs (13 and 9), but it’s been really hard.

So so with you as an adoptee (and someone who’s hoping to adopt in the future). It’s distasteful, rude and ignorant of people to suggest it and only proves they have no idea about adoption and have never truly looked into it for themselves.

Too right, MagpieSong!

Every human could fit into the state of Texas and there would be enough space for a four person family to have a 66′ x 66′ plot of land.

The issue isn’t over population, its resource usage. A small family in the U.K. or US will use more resources than many entire villages in Asia and Africa. The West has a massive carbon footprint and I say this as a wealthy westerner.

It annoys me when someone with the latest iPhone, wearing fast fashion with more food than they need in the cupboard and a car, points at some poor subsistence farmer in Uganda with 6 kids as being the problem when many of those kids won’t make it to adulthood and if they do will be working with the land not asset stripping it.

@JackieWeaverHandforthCouncil

Every human could fit into the state of Texas and there would be enough space for a four person family to have a 66′ x 66′ plot of land.

The issue isn’t over population, its resource usage. A small family in the U.K. or US will use more resources than many entire villages in Asia and Africa. The West has a massive carbon footprint and I say this as a wealthy westerner.

It annoys me when someone with the latest iPhone, wearing fast fashion with more food than they need in the cupboard and a car, points at some poor subsistence farmer in Uganda with 6 kids as being the problem when many of those kids won’t make it to adulthood and if they do will be working with the land not asset stripping it.

Is that based on the original calculation when the population was 6 billion or the newer one? Either way they fit in without consideration for the areas of the land which are uninhabitable and any kind of infrastructure.

I've had 3 DC but of my grandparents who had 4 and 2 DC there are only 6 grandchildren including me and 5 great grandchildren including my 3 so over a century we have only gone from 4 people to 5. That's not causing a problem for anyone.

As a country, the UK fancies very few children, we aren't producing enough. Like most of Europe. So no, we can't carry on as we are, we need more babies, not less

And concrete over even more of the countryside to build even more of the houses we apparently "need". We do not need more babies just to staff care homes, and there are other ways of sorting out pensions etc

so over a century we have only gone from 4 people to 5. That's not causing a problem for anyone so if everyone has done what you've done, that's 25% more people on the planet that there were a century ago. That seems like a big increase to me.

poppycat10 Fri 09-Apr-21 20:19:18

'...so over a century we have only gone from 4 people to 5.'

Actually, in the last hundred years we have gone 'from one person to 4 persons.'
(World population 1920, 1.9 billion; 2020 7.6 billon).

You need to watch this www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_growth_box_by_box

Essentially, and I haven’t watched it for a while so may be a bit out, most countries are now averaging 2 kids per family. Replacement rate is about 2.1 so we have probably reached the park number of children in the world. Population growth is now down to more kids reaching adulthood, that will then give us peak population- probably in our lifetimes. Some countries are set to decline pretty rapidly and we are already on the course to declining global population. Without immigration most developed countries are already declining.

@notdaddycool

You need to watch this www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_global_population_growth_box_by_box

Essentially, and I haven’t watched it for a while so may be a bit out, most countries are now averaging 2 kids per family. Replacement rate is about 2.1 so we have probably reached the park number of children in the world. Population growth is now down to more kids reaching adulthood, that will then give us peak population- probably in our lifetimes. Some countries are set to decline pretty rapidly and we are already on the course to declining global population. Without immigration most developed countries are already declining.

Well that saved me a lot of typing. Thank you @notdaddycool.

The 2.1 replacement rate seems counter-intuitive but takes into account that A: not all children live long enough to reproduce and B: when they do many of them don't.

OK, a bit of real world personal history:

My wife and I have three kids.

My ex had a child with a new partner before leaving him and moving in with someone else. The child grew to be an adult but died before having any children of her own. My ex is now too old to have children. Her new partner has no children. Her former partner has no other children.

So - me, my wife, my ex, her partner, her ex partner. Five adults. If all of us adults dropped dead tomorrow we would be survived by three children.

For the population to stay stable someone, somewhere would have to have a couple more children than the "only 2 per family" nonsense to make up the shortfall.

The only way that making a 'two children per two parent' set up work would be by making it COMPULSORY to have children whether people wanted them or not - and then having all those kids live long enough to have one child each. What happens if they don't live that long? Are we talking about forcing people to have another child if one of theirs dies before they do have a baby? Not the sort of society I want to live in.

Inspired by this thread I've just done a little data collation on the people I have as Facebook friends. Focused on women only as I'm often friends with both halves of a couple and I didn't want to double count. 200 ish overall. Then counted those who don't have kids and who are of an age (late 30s to early 40s or above, either fast heading into 'will have difficulties conceiving' territory, or, for the most part, have stated that they don't want kids. That's roughly 40 people. Plus about 25 more have only got 1 child and are planning for that child to remain an only.
I don't know how reflective the deomgraphic is of wider society. Possibly not, but interesting that at least 1/3 of my facebook friends are not contributing to a 'replacement population'

Maybe if the op has their way we could sell our allowance to those who want more than two kids????

Fewer people means less war,

Like all those wars that were fought ever since the dawn of recorded history when there were demonstrably fewer people in the world?

This has to be one of the stupider things I have read on this thread.

If anything the growth of population has lead to fewer wars per year than before. They've just become bigger, more destructive, and don't stop for a bit during the harvest season like they used to in the Middle Ages.

There would be far fewer children if men had to pay for existing children and have them 50/50 shared with the mother of his children.
They should be jailed for desertion and non payment.

@Devlesko agreed !

Re China's one-child policy - when I lived in (very rural) China in the 90s EVERY one of my students had multiple siblings.
The one child policy was not enforced strictly outside of the main cities.

@PerspicaciousGreen 😂😂😂😂

A friend of a friend is big into Extinction Rebellion and goes to demos etc. They have five kids. I often wonder how they square that in their head with wanting to save the earth.

'also children waiting for adoption aren't some kind of booby prize - they often have complex needs and difficult backgrounds they aren;t waiting in the wings to be farmed out as a prize'

This. The number of people who have told me and DW we 'should' have adopted rather than selfishly (?) giving birth in a same-sex family is astonishing...