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1)
Depopulation that is now in 20 economically developed countries of the
world, will inevitably become a permanent decease of the 21st
century for Europe, USA, and Northern America.
The widespread one child families in the states of market
economy ended an old debate between economists.
A. Smith and D. Ricardo’s belief: a spontaneous
interconnection of the market forces will automatically lead to the
salary high enough to support a big family, was disproved in the 20th
century. Karl Marx’s
hope was that a central capitalist controversy, (related to the
competition of some salaries at the market that negatively affects the
family with children) will inevitably invite socialism.
Such an idea became unrealistic.
Low birthrates, a popular idea of having one-two children in a
family, the increase in cohabitation and divorce rate showed the
inability of the market economy to “automatically” encourage
marriages and children. Such
conditions also showed the helplessness of the governmental efforts to
correct the situation with different limiting measures.
Among the examples of such inability is the feminist
industrialization of the home economy of Sharlotte Hilman and Alva and
Hunnar Murdal’s theory. The
theory suggests a complete socialization of children’s education
that took place in Sweden and at some places in the former socialist
camp.
2)
From another side, just prevention of the market salaries chaos
through establishing of non-governmental
family funds and paying the family salary to working husbands was not
sufficient enough. As
Allan Karlson, an American sociologist
and historian, demonstrated that in the USA a gap between both
parents working and one parent working family has been constantly
increasing for the last several decades.
There are more and more both parents working families today.
In Russia, because of the complete industrialization during the
Soviet period, almost all
families have both working parents.
However, there is an exception: if it is a family of a military
officer, then a wife does not work.
Recruitment of
all women that are capable of work into labor force, where they
receive the same salary as men, decreased men’s salary to the
average level. Thus, an
average salary of an
employee was only meant to support one individual and not a family
with children. At first,
since it was impossible to support even one child with only a
husband’s salary and with family subsidies, women had to go to work
for the sake of the second financial source to preserve social and
cultural norms of marriage as well as to be able to raise 3-4
children. Therefore, the
Soviet government was blocking the need of a family in several
children. As a result,
decreases in a birthrate (1-2 children per family) were inevitable.
The decrease in a birthrate through the governmental control
paradoxically led to the lower salary of an average individual.
Such a decrease in the number of children per family allowed
reformers to preserve the lowest level of the soviet average salary in
the national budget. Therefore,
soviet employees were payed less than they deserved.
It happened because the government excluded from their
consideration the need in financial help to raise children.
It is clear that a new government is responsible for the
refusal to include in its salary the money not only for an individual
support, but also for a family. During
transformation to the market economy the government repealed all
soviet grants that used to compensate for the absence of the family
salary.
Today in Russia we
cannot even compare the value of the labor force in the budget to
increased prices. Even
according to the official criteria the minimum salary of an individual
is several times lower than the living minimum standards in Russia.
Obviously, the new reformers ignored the importance of the
population reproduction factor.
Presently, a new
type of poverty emerged: two working parents are not able to support
even one child. Continuation
of such an anti-family policy in the situation where a family can only
afford one child (when the average birthrate is 1.2 children per
woman) reinforces the weakening of the need in children, while
creating a new family’s need in only one child.
It leads to accelerating of the Russian people depopulation
that began in 1992. This means that there will be the decreases in the Russian
population by 40 million (not including migrations) people by 2025.
This situation
requires the prevention of the national tragedy.
Even if we refuse to fight against the demographic disaster, if
we procrastinate to resolve the biggest social problem, still the
national and local government will have to adjust all branches of its
industry to the population decrease, and, therefore, to production and
consumption decrease.
3)
The
transformation to the social system based on one child family is
possible. However, even
if we did not take into consideration any social consequences of
depopulation, such social and economic policies would not be able to
last longer than 3-4 decades, because the forces that led to one child
family will not stop acting. The
need in one child will disappear just like it happened with the need
in three children in 1960s. Unfortunately, the current social opinion
and sociologists are not ready yet to admit the fact of our life that
a number of sociological and psychological studies from all over the
world support. It is that
men and women do not need children socially, or psychologically.
Social and cultural norms that we inherited from our ancestors
(having several children, as well as norms of a life time marriage
etc.) stopped their influence on our society.
Today we face such innovations as rejection of a legal marriage
and temporal sexual
cohabitation as well as a permanent single life. All these social changes are based on the idea of not having
children at all. Since a
child birth is not a natural instinct, neither is there such a thing
as a parent instinct, since negative
physical consequences in the lives of childless women and men do not
exist, reproduction remains one’s personal choice.
4)
The decrease in the number of children in a family and the crisis of
the family as the social institution at the late stage of capitalism
or postmodernism demonstrates that the market system that improves
living standards, does not necessarily create a new stimulus to get
married or to have several children.
This shows that both, the government and the society need to
make special efforts to create such an incentive.
They could put limits on the market world, use different
factors to come up with the way to create the competition of employees
salaries. The government and the society could transfer to the
nonmarket economy that would be based on the need in having children
and in creating families.
5)
Speaking
of the family, it is possible to change the situation in the
conditions of the market economy. In order to make this change, the market micro level
relations between the individual and the family, that force people to
decrease the number of children in a family, must be complemented
through preserving the market exchange at the macro level relationship
between a family and governmental institutions.
The rationalism of decisions that prefers other goods to
children, describes well considering children as goods in the context
of losses and benefits, incomes and expenditures.
One can explain
the decrease in parents’ demand for children and the decrease in a
birthrate only within the frames of the existing level of the need in
these children. The
consequent implication of the “children-goods” principle requires
the expansion of the interpretation of children not only as “durable
goods” that parents use, but also as the goods that contain within
themselves a future increased value received by future consumers.
The nonequivalent exchange of “durable goods between a family
and a government as the symbolic representatives of the institutions
that are consumers, is the reason of the decrease in the number of
children in a family. The theories that claim the eternal and
unchanged parents’ need in children, hide the fact of the
nonequivalent exchange. According
to these theories it is either a physiological need (“parents
instinct,” since a child is an “inevitable” result of the
sexuality), or a “mystical” need. (people want many children, but
they realize this desire only in favorable financial conditions)
The scientific
discovery of the fact that people do not want children, not even one
child, and that the need in children is only a social and a cultural
phenomenon requires the establishment of special conditions within the
market frames to help people choose the reproductive behavior models
interconnected with childbirth. Investment
in children during their whole life cycle through the family salary
and other expenditures (investment in the preschool and school
education, health protection etc.) is the possible means of the
equivalent market interconnection.
Along with that, the strategical focus is on combining family
and work, and on organizing family production through computerization
of parents and a child labor. According
to modern scientists, these innovations are the most effective ways to
support marriage and families with several children in the conditions
of the market economy and competition.
To
Be or not to Be to Pro Family Economy
The economic
sociology emerges as the studies that combines conflicting interests.
The first one is the sociology interest.
It advertises values and incentives-oriented approach to
traditional for economics areas.
The second one is the economics interest in striving to the
universal interpretation of all the areas of social life
in the spirit of an economic rationalism without any
exceptions. A new micro economics of family and home economy is an
example of the expansion of the economic paradigm. It is an example of the attempts to explain through economics
such family behavior phenomena as marriage and divorce, child birth
etc. However, we can
reproach the suggested theory, mostly presented by G.Bekker’s works,
of the economic sociology in the lack of usage of the latest sociology
achievements and in logically unfinished application of this economic
method.
Modern economics
that analyzes different markets’ orders in a human lifestyle, is not
able to solve the problem related to a childbirth in a family and to
an individual’s salary size that workers of different family status
with a different number of children receive.
Allan Carlson, a historian and a sociologist, notices that
until now the employees with big families are in disadvantage
comparing to the employees with small families.
The whole history of capitalism and the obvious crisis of the
family of the 20th century completely destroyed the belief
of Adam Smith and of his followers in the ability of a progressing
economy to encourage big families. (“. . . the need in people, like
in any other kind of production, will regulate the population
reproduction.”) A broad
expansion of one child
family in the most economically developed countries of the world
demonstrated an obvious failure of the family institution to fulfill
its major role, which is the reproduction role.
The absolute
absence of the families with a different number of children, a stereotypical behavior of married couples is the witness of
the established lifestyle overpowering an individual’s freedom to
choose how many children to have.
A modern complex of cohabitation with few children, a multiple
break up and divorces became common among millions of employees as the
reaction to the absence of the real ability to raise children because
of the cruel market laws that dictate a daily family life.
As the history showed, the creative forces of the market
economy, are not capable of creating a new order, while economically
encouraging legitimate marriage, stable families and several children.
That is why “a new order,” according to the law of cost,
begins to counteract old social and cultural norms of marriage and
having three or more children with time.
The market
environment offers a family only one option: to limit the number of
children that was historically created.
A continuous blocking of the need in children, and, therefore,
social norms of having children, inevitably leads to lowering the need
in children in the next generation.
Thus, the number of children per family is constantly
decreasing.
If the market
capitalism, having changed the external economic policy, received from
this policy the need in families with many children, at the rate of
about seven children per family, then, in approximately 5-6
generations, in about 150-200 years,
the absence of the market mechanism supporting
big families will lead to the constant lack of children. (1-2
children)
Today the similar
situation is in the economically developed Western European states. In
1997, in the European Union, the average number of births per woman
during her whole life was approximately 1.4 children.
According to a number of historians, in the 18-19th century the
market economy caused the population growth.
In the reality such an economy was only exploiting the social
norms of big families and their need in five and more children, while
being reluctant to create new market incentives to the population
growth that are so important to supply and demand.
A market economy
and a differentiation of the social institutions were able to set a
social control over a death rate.
That was the major factor in the world population growth.
However, death rate limits are not eternal. That is why, sooner or later, the population tendencies begin
to depend completely on a birth rate and on the number of children per
family. In such
circumstances a sudden decrease in a birth rate, as well as the
family, marriage, motherhood and fatherhood crisis, points out the
natural inability of the market economy to create incentives for
workers to have bigger families.
Science proved the absence of any physical reasons for the
birth rate decline, such as sterilization and a commonality of
infertility. This shows
that the market economy mechanism became helpless to support a simple
population reproduction. The
market capitalism destroyed the family reproduction and the family
economy, an important
foundation that encouraged generations to accept the importance of the
family reproduction, social and cultural norms of high birth rate and
the need in a big family. Karl
Marx would call it a pitiless exploitation of love toward children,
which is the capital of the most precious heritage of the human
culture.
Temporarily, the
coincidence of the population and capitalism growth was hiding the
real situation. As a
result, a strange fear of birth and a blind ideology teaching about
“birth limits” as well as spreading out the idea of the
“overpopulation threat” were imposed along with the urge to use
contraceptives even for those who have not yet realized their desire
to have a certain number of children.
Usually the family planning theory states, “The higher our
life standards are, the
higher are the parents’ abilities to provide a “high quality”
education. At the same
time there are those in the society, who “multiply poverty,”
because they are poorly educated and ignorant.
Such people do not know how to prevent fertility.
Contrary to the
information about reproductive behavior, sociologists obviously
violate human rights by calling the decision to have a big family
illogical. The
sociologists rejected the need in a big family, while denying such
families the right to have as many children as they want.
The rational behavior of big families and their refusal to use
contraceptives is completely ignored because such rationalism cannot
blend with a popular idea to have fewer children.
The majority of the society seems to have 1-2 children.
As a result, they begin to consider it to be the “only
correct “ social norm. Thus
people that want to have more children become part of
the low social status.
The ideology of
having fewer children considers the majority of Asian, African, and
Latin American countries to be the people that violate the imposed
norms and that they lack greatly good manners.
However, even in 1960s John Caldwell demonstrated in his work
the rationalism of having big families, pointing out its economic and
social advantages in the nations where social and cultural norms of
having a lot of children are still common.
One’s free pursuing of personal desires in those countries
cannot be any less “ethical” and worthy of a human being, than of
the one’s in Western Europe. Here
we are facing the tendency to prefer the system of small families
rather than the one of large families.
However, it is debatable whether the statistical preference of
small families in the “developed” countries calls the very fact of
having few children the sign of “development” and “progress.”
High living
standards in the industrialized nations are associated with small
families. The fact that
people psychologically set their minds on having fewer children and do
not accept large families, should draw sociologists’ attention.
However, is it actually true that such a tendency reflects
“the fundamental historical tendencies” and is serving as a symbol
of the upcoming innovations that the 21st century and the
Third millennium will offer? Can
it be somebody’s effort to justify and to protect his/her ego with
the help of the people that were not able to realize their own will
and make their personal choice?
Is it not possible
to see the forced adaptation of millions people to the situation where
the market laws act and do not act at the family level?
They cross out the advantages of the family lifestyle, while
pointing out the advantages of the bachelor’s lifestyle based on the
sexually-contraceptive revolution.
Maybe it is the absolute inability of the market economy to
offer different sized families causes us to consider small families
and cohabitation to be some kind of perfection and the key to the
universal happiness.
Then what is the
difference between the “small families-based socialism,” that the
capitalistic market environment imposes on the society, and a regular
socialist reconstruction of life, that politicians and parties offer?
The only difference between them is that the commonality of
small families emerges not from manifests, revolutions that abolish
legal marriage and the family as the foundation of the private
property and life. Neither does the increase in small families happen
because of decrees that force all
the women to work for the government under the flag of “the
individual liberation” and the “liberation of love.”
It emerges from the destruction of thousand-year-old norms and
values of the family lifestyle by the market pressure.
It is only capable
of receiving profits from the prepared labor force, rather than
creating the very force through a market, spontaneous incentives to
have several children in the family.
How did it happen,
that the market mechanisms, which encourages individual initiative and
achievements’ competition, inequality and a variety of individual
careers, are now at the stage of a
gloomy reality? How come that these market mechanisms can only
offer small families to the society today?
Either the market is not an eternal engine of progress and
protection of the society, or the market stopped being the market as
soon as it faced childbirth. Indeed, the beauty of the market is because no one knows the
secret of the absolute happiness, neither is there an effort to impose
any kind of idea on another person.
Each individual is free to follow one’s own desires and
needs. Everybody carries
individually the responsibility for one’s own addictions and is
ready to accept any consequences, no matter how devastating can they
be!
In the conditions
of the market capitalism an individual must be economically free to
realize his/her and the family intentions.
If there is no such (this is the case, because families are not
economically free to choose how many children they can have), then
there is no market. Therefore,
we observe a standard, stereotypical behavior instead of pluralism of
the family structures. That
is why, as a result of forcing everyone into the only alternative, we
have small families. Having few children has nothing to do with the pluralism of
the family lifestyle. As
a result, multiple forms of cohabitation that consist of marriage and
sex, only underline the monotony of living without one’s own family.
There are two
explanations to the fact that the “sin” of having fewer children,
occupied all peoples,
countries and continents. It
can be either successful carrying out of the social project that has
the purpose to achieve “high culture,” “high quality” of providing for
children and raising them in small families.
This success can also be the result of the market forces’
controversial break down at the family level.
Since the market
mechanism realized its inability to provide various kinds of families,
depending on the number of children, to prevent the society from
falling down to the depopulation pit, then the continuous decrease in
the number of children per family means either the inadequacy of the
market system in this case, or the need in some correction of the
market structures. The question about
the major opportunity to change the market economy orientation in the
direction of the family interests emerges.
There is also an issue of the possibility of creating economic
freedom to choose any number of children in a family.
Since we
understand the market as the freedom to realize our individual
desires, we should also find out how the market competition can
increase the economic demand birth of several children.
At the same time, the creation of the market incentives to have
more children may lead to the significant limitations from the
government and to the subjugation of the economy to the purposes of
strengthening the family and protecting the society from depopulation.
The answers on
these questions are related to the competency of the economic
sociology that is looking for the effective mechanisms of the economy,
considering labor union, social protection, ecology demands etc.
One of their demands is to provide the population reproduction
conditions that do not allow a higher death rate than the birth rate.
This could prevent the society from too low birth rate and
small families.
Consequently, the
task of the social reorientation of the economy cannot expect a sudden
increase in the number of families with several children.
According to the calculations of the demographer Borisov, for a
basic population reproduction we need approximately 35% of the
families with two children, families and 35% of three children
families; 14% of four children families, 2% of the families with five
and more children; 4% of childless families and 10% of one child
families. The real
situation is that from among all the families with children,
90% of them are 1-2 children families.
It means that the share of one child families should be
decreased by about five times, and the share of the families of three
and more children should increase up to 51%.
Only a systematic and a long term policy of strengthening the
family with children and the family lifestyle will be able to stop
depopulation.
We should pay a
special attention to the market engines that establish social and
cultural norms of having 3-4 children in the family.
The widespread of similar norms will create the need in
3-4 children.
The achievement of this goal is connected with the radical
change of the existing relationships of the family institute with the
government and the other social institutions, with deep reconstruction
of the whole order of life to the direction of families (with
children) interests. From
there it should be clear that reorientation of the market economy to
the system of profits, taxes, credits, that will positively influence
on the actual motherhood and fatherhood is not the only direction of
the pro-family policy. Of course, it is not related to the children and other
family subsidies for which the defenders of the “direct
connection” between the income and the birth speak out.
I am not talking here about “the planning parenthood,” that
is pursuing the goal to decrease of number of children.
The path of
establishing social norms and the need in having 3-4 children is not
only connected with the economy, but it
also suggests the activation of all the other social
institutions. The government should be the first institution to reorientate
to the pro-family policy direction.
The goal to resolve the institutional family crisis and
depopulation problem should become the priority in the society.
First, to achieve this goal, we need to increase the
appreciation of the legitimate marriage, family and children in the
society. The mass media
and other tools that manipulate human behavior should be used to
increase the prestige of the family.
In the Russian
society, where depopulation has been continuing for seven years, it is
time to come to an understanding of the catastrophic tendencies of a
low birthrate and small families.
This problem is not less than any other global issues.
Depopulation is the most acute social problem in Russia.
Since obvious negative influence on the people’s health does
not follow the destruction of the family lifestyle (having 1-2
children serves personal interests of an individual), the government
should have the responsibility of raising the respect to the
importance of families.
If the interest in
the continuation of generations and in the stable population are
absent, then we have to wait for the time when the negative
consequences of depopulation will become so obvious that government
officials and other politicians will have to use extreme measures to
fix the crisis situation. Because of the lack of time, they will remember divorce,
abortions and new taxes to support small families and divorced
individuals. The
government will try to limit women’s (who are capable to have
children) rights to work. The history teaches us that it is very dangerous and
unhealthy for the population to use such measures, because they do not
achieve the intended goal. The
system of many limits cannot be a pro-family policy.
To the contrary, it is forcing certain results of the behavior
when, obviously, the family has no such needs at all. After all it is violation of family and individual rights.
Only the creation
of the real economic freedom of choice of the family with three, four
children and more will mean the transformation to the demographic and
the family policy of the government that is based on the principles of
freedom and social justice. Certainly,
such a policy is not capable to rapidly
increase the number of the families with five or more children,
because of the absence of the social need in it.
This
“quantitative” goal of creating the need in three, four children
will allow to restore a modern lifestyle, while increasing its
“quality” with the help of pluralism, family, and marriage
oriented lifestyles’ boost. This
is the case because the change of the number of children is not only
an arithmetic exercise, but the most accurate measurement of the
integral indicator of the family life.
It is necessary to remind that it is unrealistic to decide on
such a goal as the most important priority in the governmental
policies and as the most important criteria of success of their
actions. It is
unrealistic at this point because social reluctance toward the family
crisis is convenient to the government.
We can see it in the example of depopulation in our country.
However, sooner or
later this problem will become the priority for many countries in the
world. That is why even
today the question of how to provide economically the alternative to
have one, two, or more children deserves the scholars’ attention.
It is important to point out that we talk about achieving this
goal in the conditions of the market and not in the command economy.
The system that encourages more children
per family is possible in the market economy.
Without
diminishing the complexity of the problem one can say that economics
is not even trying to resolve the problem of the current inability of
the market economy to encourage larger families.
By some reluctance the scholars of economics try to hide the
social order (created by capitalism) where the system exploits a
reproductive capability of a family institution.
Today the spread of the economic theory about the family and
the reproductive behavior of parents is very limited.
It shows the fear to actualize the market approach to avoid
ethical and scholarly problems.
The economic
calculations led to their logical ending
would show that the government takes advantage of the
parents’ labor to raise their children.
However, the myth that childbirth is a private matter and that
it is socially and psychologically useful for the family, allows
economical institutions to avoid the problem of raising children.
The problem of raising children becomes an issue during the
transformation to the family and the market economy at the same time.
That is why economists are mostly capable of modeling a
consumption behavior of the family according to G.Bekker who does not
consider the fact that the need in two, three or more children is
disappearing.
Becker’s theory
does not work when the family refuses from the third child. There are
the social norms that are ignored by Becker in the current situation. These norms encourage reproductive conformity.
Sociologists pointed this out to Becker before.
He mistakenly believes in the possibility of the parents’
choice to have any number of children during any moment of the family
life cycle. It is for the sake of keeping the conditions of the
overweight of the “demand on children” over “the limits.”
Unfortunately, the evidence of the norms to have small families
minimizes the possibility to choose to have the third child.
Because families almost always have their first child, the
whole freedom of the agency is limited
to allow or not to allow the second child to be.
At the present time the majority of the population chooses not
to allow the second child to be.
The reason for it is because the cost of having the second
child outweighs the benefits from it.
The mankind is now at the situation when one can see only the
psychological profit for the parents from having one child.
However, this is not going to continue forever if the
tendencies (that got rid of “the profits from having two or more
children”) will persist in action.
To the contrary of
the evidence of a great number of one child family, Becker’s model
uses the idea of the psychological need in children, while the
sociology data that shows the disappearance of the need “in
children” still allows us to talk about the advantage for the
parents to have the only “child.” The major reproach to such a usage of the market approach is
in the intended narrowing of the horizon, in declaring the child to be
“durable goods” that the parents obtain for themselves for the
psychological consumption instead of creating and a long-term raising
child for the goods exchange with the future consumers of the labor
force and of the additional cost.
If we look at the family as an industry branch that creates
something so importantly that the existence of any other industry
branches without it is
impossible, then the market approach does not seem more peculiar than
it is in the reality. Because of that the increase of costs to raise a
child in the family will not decrease the demand on it (the real
market would be better if the increase of prices for eggs forced the
owners of the chicken coop not to increase, but to decrease their
demand on chickens). To
the contrary, it will lead to the reduction of demand on the raised
children in terms of other branches of the economy, and to the
expansion of the amount of the family “hand made objects” in the
market just like the price raise for meat increases the number of
produced cattle.
There is only one
obstacle to such an application of the market approach at the macro
level. It is connected
with the unusual viewing children as goods.
The obstacle has nothing to do with the amorality of educating
children by parents in terms of “sell-and buy” principle, but it
is connected with the
clarification of one condition: who exactly and how much does she or
he have to pay parents, that only need one child.
A lot of parents do not need psychologically children any more.
Since all social institutions take advantage of the family
fruit, as they hire employees or those who implement their social
roles, then salary becomes a touchy issue.
This is when the
discussions about the impossibleness of the understanding of the
actual market and about a vulgar usage of the economic approach to the
family and child bearing come appear. This is when the myths about the
physiological and metaphysical nature of the child bearing motives
emerge. The family is as
if it were growing from within for its own sake.
The family needs more than one child not as the means to
achieve something, but because of purely psychological reasons, as the
final and eternal ultimate values.
It means that “sell-buy” principle is inapplicable to
children. In the
continuously changing post-modern world everything, particularly a
need of a family in children seems to be rigid and deadly frozen.
The idea of the eternal potential of a childbirth just like the
well of living water, becomes a saving power for the real economy.
It is a saving power to the same economy that faced the
deterioration of the environment with its natural resources . . .
The more the economy consumes, the more the environment, along
with the creation of a human life becomes the victim of erosion.
Child bearing is a very unique kind of the society activity.
It cannot be interpreted in terms of the market and the market
exchange between the institutes of the Family and the State. A number
of scholars try to create and serve a profitable illusion as if as
long as the man lived, the family would want to have children.
The spontaneous
development of capitalism did not realize any progress in the family
self-organization. To the
contrary, it showed that the family self-organization, out of control,
together with the piling up of the capital, is detrimental to the
traditional, nuclear, and post-nuclear family as well as to the family
institution as a total. If
one sees the extinction of the family as the negative result, then one
should not consider it to be inevitable.
The state that cleanses the road to the market relations could
take care of the family interests as an institution.
The government could take care of the interests of the very
society, since there have already been the voices of warning.
The government legislated the laws that limited the family
influence on an individual, liberating all the family members from
such an effect and from the family obligations and responsibilities.
Thus, the government used other institutions to implement the
family functions. It is
the government that after having left an individual without a
protection aura of the family, came to the path of the all consuming
subordination of an individual to its own interests.
The state did it for the sake of market, competition,
husbands’ and wives’ salaries.
The mutual insensitivity of the government and of the
individual increased their alienation and terrible falling down to the pit of totalitarism.
Clearly, one can
say that it is difficult to predict consequences of the industrialized
modernization and a constant socialization of the family functions.
This is truly the case. However,
some reasoning claims the results of modernization to be extra
products of the activity that pursues noble goals.
This reasoning claims that as long as the goals of the society
are noble, negative consequences are not relevant to them.
That is why a lot of scholars look for the source of the family
crisis and the society crisis in the techniques of achieving goals
with the help of the capital production instead of the social
production of wealth. The
intellectuals seek the source of the crisis in the production outcomes
instead of its principles and values.
The fundamental
value of the capitalist modernization is the accumulation of power and
riches. All the other
values are subordinate to it. However,
the social production of wealth does not include the welfare of the
family in itself. Focusing
on maximizing the profit excludes optimizing of the population
reproduction and the family processes.
The social
reproduction that is based on the belief of a never endless family
need in children, is forced “to saw the branch” where this
production is “sitting.” The
values system of accumulation of the capital through the market, does
not include the value of
a child, and the value of fatherhood and motherhood.
At the present time the family naturally continues creating new
generations of human and labor resources for the government.
Parents need many children not for themselves, but parents need
these children as goods. Such
a situation causes a number of obstacles.
A low birthrate shows that the salary becomes lower than the
cost of the labor force since the salary does not consider its child
reproduction. Along with
this, the price raise to rear and educate children, even though it
increases the cost of labor force, did not affect the salary raise.
Only the inertia
of the social norms to have children encourages childbirth. At the same time, the very continuation of child bearing
covers its purpose to use children in the areas that involve money.
As a result, the government and the market do not need a child
as a labor force, so during this time period the families need him/her
as the means of their psychological satisfaction.
The family uses
children’s qualities for the sake of which they created a child. That is why a child is the source of a non economic
satisfactions in the process of his/her growth. No one can see a child
as goods except for his/her family.
The relations
between the family and the state are not usually discussed in the
market terms, in the micro or macro levels.
The system of the governmental “paternalism” that declares
the care of children through the educational institutions, orphanages,
schools, is considered to be the input into the development of new
generations. However, in
the reality, this kind of input is the means to additionally involve
mothers and fathers in work. Thus
the government declares itself as the only family leader of a
patriarchical type that produces children in the certain families-work
places. According to the
analogy of pre-capitalist family reproduction, there is no market: the
object or reproduction is as if it had not value since the family is
the only user of their children.
Parents satisfy their needs with the help of children.
That is why children cannot be goods.
However, the
market economy that is oriented on the interests of the family with
children is not only possible, but it is also necessary.
We need not just a simple reformation, but the reorientations
of the whole lifestyle with more focus on the family and on its
welfare. Nevertheless, it
is this reorientation that causes resentment and misunderstanding.
This situation will continue as long as a chaotic development
of events will further decline an already very low birthrate, deepen
depopulation and decrease the source of labor force, while increase
demand on labor force. At
the same time, the productivity will lower the labor force cost,
encouraging poorly qualified people from other countries.
This is the case in Europe, where the families are small.
Yet sooner or later this tendency will stop interrupting a
labor force deficit because of the population aging and even further
decline in the number of children in the society.
Then the states with small families will use unpopular measures
to force childbirth. They
may prohibit abortion and contraceptives.
The government may forbid the youth to leave their country.
However, such methods will not increase the number of children per
family.
To avoid this
“shocking surgery,” the society should continue to achieve pro
family reforms.
The countries with depopulation are aware
of the family policy principles. They
are restoration of the mutual activity of parents and children, work and
studying, leisure and entertainment, and the combination of home and
work within the family business.
Childbirth can and must be profitable.
The economic policy that is focused on encouraging families with
several children would be very appropriate.
One income family (it was eliminated by socialism) with the
relevant family salary should become a real alternative to two parents
working families. One
should not be afraid of the situation where some families will choose a
reproductive specialization as one more alternative of the freedom of
choice. A mother or a
housewife and fatherhood are jobs.
The society should recognize and respect childbearing and
parenthood. If not, then other specialized institutions will take over
the families.
The family
contribution into the production of the society, must and can be
rewarded. We should not see
it as a return to a
patriarchical economy, but a new incentive to revive the whole economy,
to increase the labor force productivity and to the increase of the
organizational effectiveness with the help of the potential in combining
work and home in the harmony in the formal and informal sense.
The family cooperation rather than psychological manipulation of
“human relations”should be present in the organizations of the
market system.
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