Society Debate: Should families be limited to 3 children?

Let families decide for themselves There are very many methods that different countries apply to control population growth, unfortunately, most of them fail in their attempts; patterns all over the world show that almost each country has an increasing population rate. In the case of Rwanda, population growth is one of the highest in the Sub-Saharan region at an average increase of 2.7% per year. To slow down the rate, there apparently exists a government policy aiming to advise married couples to have utmost three children. However, for very many reasons, I don’t think its right to define the number of children a family should have. Families have different aspirations and capabilities; whereas some don’t have capacity to take care of three, some others can care for ten. Rather than the three-child policy, the best method to preach should be the normal family planning method. Tell people to have few children, ones they can afford to look after. As well, teach people to mind about the increasing need for land. Generally what we should avoid is policies that sound like they are fixed religiously; to me, three is quite a huge number. If anything, I would be advising people to have only two children. But still, somebody else would find fault in that. What I’m driving at is- is there anything so special about the number 3? If population growth multiplies in the future, shall we advise people to have only two or one child? Once there are fixes, people will simply follow them religiously, without fully grasping the whole concept of what the government is trying to drive at. Besides that, a high population is not as bad as demographists want you to believe. An economist will assure that the higher the population, the higher the economic activities and productivity. Therefore, countries with higher populations will likely have better economies than those with smaller populations. This can be explained by China; with over 1.3 billion people, China is the world’s most populace country and second largest economy after U.S.A. many analysts argue that its merely minutes before China overtakes U.S.A as the largest economy. More to that look around you; do you see the amount of space you have? How long will it take before we get really overpopulated? It will take centuries if not millenniums! Although we are made to believe that population is actually bursting out of control, you can travel miles and miles upcountry and count a handful of houses you find along the way. Rwanda has land for its people. If land is overpopulated in a region, naturally, people will move to other areas with low densities. Regardless of what artificial methods we come up with, mother earth has her ways, more effective natural ways to curb population growth. Death is a bad thing because it separates us from our loved ones. However, bad as it is, death has been able to balance population growth with natural resources. People die, others are born and population is naturally checked and resources are not exhausted. In my opinion, let the government concentrate on teaching people the importance of family planning without emphasizing a certain number of children. Such fixed measures can only be advised or imposed when we are facing a population crisis. We are not. mugishaivan@yahoo.com