Harsh Economic Realities Could Restrain Birthrate
Inflation period expenditures confronting people appear to have pulled the breaks on high population growth in parts of the world, Ghana very much a part of this picture.
High cost of living has nudged many to the avoidance of additional commitments likely to aggravate an already bad situation. Flowing out of this are curbs directed toward contraceptive sex to limit family sizes. Granted all items on expenditure list are at full play, the one which cannot easily be compromised is child upkeep. Either that child is well maintained or left in serious distress and maybe, eventually to die. Additional mouths in terms of new births are now unwelcomed to sections of the population. It is a drain on pockets.
Recently, at Amasaman, a suburb of Ghana’s capital Accra, a newly born baby was dumped on a huge garbage pile but fortunately rescued from jaws of death. This is not first of its kind in the litany of baby abandonment, obviously due to unplanned pregnancies. The collective example symbolize rejection of lifetime responsibility for childcare within austerity.
.Not when household and personal bills are running through the roof. Eavesdropping on conversations in public squares in Accra, it was found out that some persons in cohabitation have locked themselves to a maximum of two kids. Africa’s cultural ideals that settle on average of four kids in consummated marriages is neutralized by harsh economic realities. Previous practice and expectations rested on the perception that having many children was insurance for aging parents or provided additional hands for family businesses. The practice is now viewed as burden, following serious erosion of incomes. The option being toed by people like these is steering conjugality along the path of family planning.
There is another section of society which is completely or pretentiously oblivious of the dire consequences of licentious behaviour in post-COVID milieu. Stroking the opposite cord are female youngsters released as pawns or as self willed in the desperate cause of survival.
The latter is the group which swims pleasure mindless of the pain likely to ensue, hence the phenomenon of teenage pregnancy which turns sour for a great deal of them. The inevitable prospects are baby booms, further strain on national purse for childcare and the grimmer incidence of abandoned newborns.
Commercial sex workers won’t take any of the two extremes. They are in pleasure business for only money. This industry is recent in the news for a bombshell. One of them is allegedly intent on taking legal action against a client for a pregnancy which was not negotiated. A rare flaw in that business.
Whether or not the times cast a leash on childbirths which can potentially slowdown population growth or blow away thinking caps in the paradoxical context of sex for money to weather the economic storm, it would always be gleaned from the unfolding scenarios that sex is a personal tool whose application is only at the discretion of individuals. Governments can only do so much but when the heat in the kitchen is hotter, individuals overwrite official policy and collective position, using that tool to suit themselves.
Baby stealing syndicate reared ugly head to prick conscience of Ghanaians in the very difficult years of the pandemic. In-vitro fertilization in which pregnancy is induced by artificial insemination, is now common with us. It exists along with natural means of conception and delivery. While their operations in the crypt are open to varied interpretations, the complex architecture of the child stealing syndicate, remains shrouded in mystery.
Medically induced pregnancies have produced multiple births, the twins, the triplets, the quadruplets, the quintuplets etc. The busting of the syndicate let the cat out of the bag, and that “animal” is the inordinate quest in women to satisfy the natural instinct of possessing a baby of their own, within biological and sociocultural imperatives. These dimensions of the subject matter have the economic thread running through.