saquigley@watdaisy.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (01/29/84)
All this talk about food vs birth control seems to ignore one important factor: In very poor countries, children who survive are more a help to their parents than a liability, as they work very early when they can and do manage to help the family survive. This, along with the fact that there is a very strong belief in these countries that children are living proofs of their father's masculinity account for the poor success rate of such programs as the sterilisa- tion program that was started in India some years ago, by Mrs Ghandi's govern- ment. It is only when children become more an economic liability to their parents that parents will decide to restrict the size of their progeniture. This will only happen as the standard of living of the country improves. The improvement of this standard of living is very closely related to health, education and of course.. general wealth of the country. It is a vicious circle. One cannot give just food, or just birth control, or just education. All these are very important and will only work to help the country as a whole become self sufficient if they are given at the same time. Obviously, the first priority is food, since corpses are not much help when it comes to rebuilding a country, but as the "unchristian" (:-)) submitter correctly remarked, food without education and birth control is just useless and only creates more people who will die eventually. The solution is not to give food or to give birth control, but to give food, then birth control and education and tools on how to become self-sufficient. Sophie Quigley watmath!watdaisy!saquigley "If you are looking one year ahead, plant some beans; If you are looking ten years ahead, plant a tree; If you are looking one hundread years ahead, educate the people." Or something like that....