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Geopolitics

Birth Rate Boost? Iranians Get Housing To Have More Children

An Iranian health official has echoed the Supreme Leader's repeated calls to rejuvenate the country's population, and ditch 'Western style' family planning.

Many Iranian families are disinclined to have children given the socio-economic situation
Many Iranian families are disinclined to have children given the socio-economic situation

TEHRAN — An adviser to the Iranian Health Ministry recently said every Iranian woman should have four children, to counter "damaging" birth control policies he says have been imposed on Iran. Mohammad Esma'il Akbari, head of the country's Medical Education Association, recently told the local Mizan news agency "destructive population policies' had been imposed "from outside," and were intended to "damage the population structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran."

The state, Akbari said, must rectify its overall population policy and pursue "specific goals," like "a woman having three to four children." The aim, he explained, was not just to boost demographic growth but also to "restructure" the population by making it younger.

Since the 1979 revolution, Islamic Iran has intermittently followed family planning programs, often with the help of counseling from the UN. However, religious conservatives have regularly denounced them, considering a growing population to be a sign of strength, dismissing family planning as culturally invasive.

The state would provide families with incentives like a home after a third child, cash, land or other benefits.

Akbari, a lecturer in medicine at Tehran's Shahid Beheshti University, said the debate on the desirability of population growth has now been settled in Iran, notably with the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's support. But the state must engineer this growth with clear policies, he said. Family planners, he urged, "must set four children as their goal" to "restructure" the population.

"All Europeans and Americans' are aiming for that number, he asserted without citing sources or evidence. He rejects the idea that a bigger population would lead to lower living standards.

A family in Eram Zoological Garden in Tehran — Photo: Rouzbeh Fouladi/ZUMA

In Iran today, many families are disinclined to have any children, never mind three or four, given the country's current socio-economic conditions. In mid-March, Health Ministry spokesman Alireza Ra'isi said families were now having less than two children, "which means a falling birth rate. Children will have no close relatives in the near future." He said there was nothing "classy" about having one child, who might suffer loneliness or even depression.

Iran's Statistics Center found in March that in 25 of Iran's 31 provinces, people were having less than two children, with an average national rate of 1.7. Figures indicate that the population (of a little over 80 million) grew more slowly in the 1990s, with the rate of decline becoming sharper in recent years.

A population of 80 million means dignity for a country.

Parliament recently passed a Youthful Population and Family Support law, designed to reshape the population over the coming 7 years. If approved by the Guardian Council, a body of jurists that certifies laws, the state would provide families with incentives like a home after a third child, cash, land or other benefits. This would happen regardless of the present economic predicament where families with a single child struggle to make ends meet.

The increasing number of couples having no children at all is becoming a reality that clashes with Khamenei's calls to boost the population of Muslims. The Supreme Leader said in a speech in March 2019 that having children was God's will. A year earlier, he said a "population of 80 million ... means dignity for that country."

In this potentially blossoming population, the Islamic Republic's rulers see a future army to help export their Islamic revolution, or at least bodies to act as cannon fodder. But it seems most of those born after 1979 disagree with the regime, which does mean they are at a greater risk of early death in custody.

Akbari said debates around abortion and underage marriages were also "confusing" this pivotal population issue.

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Society

What's Spoiling The Kids: The Big Tech v. Bad Parenting Debate

Without an extended family network, modern parents have sought to raise happy kids in a "hostile" world. It's a tall order, when youngsters absorb the fears (and devices) around them like a sponge.

Image of a kid wearing a blue striped sweater, using an ipad.

Children exposed to technology at a very young age are prominent today.

Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — A 2021 report from the United States (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) found that 42% of the country's high-school students persistently felt sad and 22% had thought about suicide. In other words, almost half of the country's young people are living in despair and a fifth of them have thought about killing themselves.

Such chilling figures are unprecedented in history. Many have suggested that this might be the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sadly, we can see depression has deeper causes, and the pandemic merely illustrated its complexity.

I have written before on possible links between severe depression and the time young people spend on social media. But this is just one aspect of the problem. Today, young people suffer frequent and intense emotional crises, and not just for all the hours spent staring at a screen. Another, possibly more important cause may lie in changes to the family composition and authority patterns at home.

Firstly: Families today have fewer members, who communicate less among themselves.

Young people marry at a later age, have fewer children and many opt for personal projects and pets instead of having children. Families are more diverse and flexible. In many countries, the number of children per woman is close to or less than one (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong among others).

In Colombia, women have on average 1.9 children, compared to 7.6 in 1970. Worldwide, women aged 15 to 49 years have on average 2.4 children, or half the average figure for 1970. The changes are much more pronounced in cities and among middle and upper-income groups.

Of further concern today is the decline in communication time at home, notably between parents and children. This is difficult to quantify, but reasons may include fewer household members, pervasive use of screens, mothers going to work, microwave ovens that have eliminated family cooking and meals and, thanks to new technologies, an increase in time spent on work, even at home. Our society is addicted to work and devotes little time to minors.

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