MPs and officials are looking for ways to help our women give birth more. One day someone had a bright idea: It turns out that women should start earlier. It is a well-known fact that whoever gets up early, God bless him, but if you drag it out too long, all the fun will be over before you have time to get used to it.
No one remembers who was the first to encourage Russian women to procreate right after school, but now offers like rain in October are falling on us sinners. And therefore, all this is no longer just someone’s funny mistakes, but a confident trend. Where will it take us?
The fact that everything constantly comes down to the idea of premature birth, oh, excuse me, the premature happiness of motherhood, is indicated by a series of bureaucratic initiatives and statements. We have already heard that early children are better quality, while later children can be “defective”. They also told us the calculations for how long it would take to give birth to a chubby, rosy-cheeked baby if you started having babies at 18. They even explained how we can combine this lack of reproductive fatigue with education.
It turns out that you need to use the wonderful method of raising children by the well-known Evgeny Teplyakov. And what? The girl passed the Unified State Exam at the age of 10, graduated from the master’s program at 15, and it is very convenient to move forward to raise the demographics. And so on our way – on Stakhanov’s way. Ridiculous, but the latest initiative to introduce an age limit for receiving maternity capital seems to show that they are serious. Authorities, who regret the introduction of maternity capital for first-born children, are now considering not giving this capital to those who will not give birth until the age of 25-30.
An interesting movie, of course. And it is even more interesting to skip this comedy and see how it all should end, in order to understand “what the author wanted to say” in the end.
Let’s just imagine. The wildest dreams of everyone who cares about the country’s demographics have come true. Various family ties have strengthened, and in these families the conveyor belt has come into play: Every one and a half to two years, reproductive workers give the country a rosy-cheeked toddler. As a result, 4-5-7 children per woman became the new norm. These children’s children are copying themselves like crazy printers. Later, the same music is continued by the children. And now 50 years have passed. The population of Russia has doubled and reached almost 300 million, as Deputy Slutsky promised. Beauty! Just one question: What will all these people do?
No, I understand everything, it is predicted that we will experience an economic recovery, a scientific and technological breakthrough and, in general, rapid development in all spheres of life. They say that despite all these achievements, the only thing missing is people. So not just any person, but experts: specifically engineers, programmers and various scientists. However, the shortage of highly skilled personnel is not a demographic problem, but a socio-economic problem. The question is not quantity, but quality. Quality depends on the level of education and the development of science. Experts are not born. While everyone is complaining about the shortage of personnel, that there is no one to increase production or conduct exploration, more than a million Russians are running around the cities with yellow, green and pink bags on their backs. And by the way, every third courier in Russia has a diploma from a technical university. But these are either diplomas, knowledge and skills do not depend on them, or these diplomas have nowhere to go.
In this sense, the demographic solutions proposed today seem extremely strange. And if they suddenly work (no, but we will make such a fanciful assumption), then most likely the army will be replenished, consisting only of couriers, security guards, taxi drivers and people with professional help. And all this growing mass of new citizens will slow progress even further. Although it seems to be becoming increasingly difficult to contain the onslaught of automation, robotization and other neural networks.
They will say, I think badly about future generations. Not at all. But the future grows from today. Today, where the preferred family model has turned into a kind of house-building where the woman gives birth all the time and the children eventually fill the whole house and sleep in front of the stove, leaves no room for interpretation.
Citizen Teplyakov can assure as much as he wants that excessive love of children is not an obstacle to education and career, but the fact is that the average woman in the modern world who chooses to give birth to 4-5 children, even if she manages to learn something, is a constant whirlwind of bottles and diapers for ten years will lose its quality. And the head of such a family will often be forced to make a choice not in favor of gradual career advancement with good but delayed rewards, but to grab small but quick-paying hack jobs. Of course, no one will starve to death – the state will support. In principle, if you do not rush too much, prolong your pleasure, give birth to no more than one child in three years, you can enjoy benefits for 12-15 years.
Now tell me what life scenario children who watch such a picture will embody? Anyone who grows up in such a large and friendly team will become a hopeless careerist and childless. Children of alcoholics sometimes grow up to become convinced adherents of healthy lifestyles in this way. But let’s say the “contradictory” option is not the most common. Often, children with minor deviations repeat the fate of their parents. And in this context, officials who now talk about human capital still need to have a somewhat clearer idea of what kind of capital they are trying to raise and where it can be invested.
No, it’s not worth wasting what you have. Even if it is a natural process, there is no good in population decline. But, perhaps, it is worth thinking not about how to catch up and surpass conditional Africa (although birth rates are also falling every year), but about how to maintain a balance in the conditions of development of human civilization in general. and not in one case. And these conditions are such that in the current global economy more and more people participate not as creators, but as consumers. And the numerical difference between the first and the second will only grow. The minority will have to feed the majority. So why quantity for quantity’s sake then?
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.