Current Family Trends

 I've been learning a lot about the current route family trends are heading in this day and age and its kind of blown my mind. The data that we have on population growth, fertility rates, and birth rates are pretty shocking! I feel like most people have no idea what is happening with these trends and why they matter so that's why I wanted to share a little bit about them with you know. I was definitely in the dark about this stuff for a long time, but knowing what I know now helps me see my role in the world concerning families.

First things first, lets talk about population growth. Its been a big belief of mine that the population of the world is growing exponentially and there has always been a fear of overpopulation in my mind. In reality, the population is getting ready to start decreasing rapidly. The reason that many of us don't know about this is because the media usually portray the side of overpopulation when that really isn't the reality of the situation. The changes in the family, that I'll talk about next, are the main causes for this trend in the population.

Fertility rates, or the average number of children born to a woman in the world, has decreased from around 5, in the 1960s, to about 2.4 today. This is representative of the world as a whole, but the fertility rates of developed countries like the U.S. are well below 2. This means that there aren't enough children born to replace the people that are dying. This is already causing problems for the current working generation because they are having to provide for all of the older people that are retiring, but there are fewer workers to do so. And the number continues to decrease. 

The reason fertility rates are dropping is because there are changes in the family culture around the world. The traditional nuclear family (father, mother, and children) is being left behind in favor other things. Many people believe 1 or 2 kids is sufficient and any more would be a financial burden. Others are taking other than traditional approaches to marriage, such as cohabiting and same-sex marriage. All of these changes in the world culture show how family has dropped lower on the priority list of most people. Family values have been overpowered by something called individualism, which is prioritizing an individuals needs over a group as a whole. Researchers have suggested that individualism is the leading cause of these changing trends in the family and, consequently, the negative results they have and will continue to bring.

These changes in family trends affect something called Human Capitol, which is a term used to represent the usefulness of a population in the workforce. Human capitol can be measured by population and effectiveness in the workforce. The smaller the population gets, the more efficient we have to be to maintain the same human capitol. The sad truth is that the population is starting to decline and so is our effectiveness in the workforce because research shows that the further we get from the traditional, nuclear family, the less capable children are of being effective in the workforce in the future.

All of this shows me that we are heading in the wring direction when it comes to the family and we are suffering the consequences of that. Family has been the most important social unit in the world for most of history up until our day and were seeing why it has been. Families are so much more important for the benefit of the world than I ever imagined and this makes me want to do my part to reverse these trends by sharing the data with others and trying my best, individually, to start and raise a strong family. I hope you gotten some insights from this post and can take those insights and make a difference in the world, no matter how big or small.