Population control as public policy

Colin Steer, Associate Editor - Opinion

THE OLDER teacher in the third-form class circa 1977 looked away from the blackboard, saw one of his younger colleagues in an advanced state of pregnancy - her third in as many academic years - ambling across the campus and erupted: "That teacher is pregnant again? Mmmm, Pearl and Panther are not working!" The class of adolescent boys had a good laugh.

His reference was to the 'Two is better than too many' public-education campaign as part of the then Government's attempts at teaching families and women, in particular, to take greater responsibility for their reproductive health. State-sponsored campaigns to limit family size in Jamaica had been going on for several years, but took on greater visibility in the 1970s with the promotion and sale of Pearl oral contraceptives and the Panther brand of condoms as important steps to reducing or keeping family sizes manageable.

That was a big cultural shift, especially for working-class Jamaicans who held that it was important for "women to have out their lot", that is, until biology determined they could have no more children. While there's still a National Family Planning Board, that campaign has all but disappeared, due in part to fiscal constraints forcing a reduction in public funding for such programmes and perhaps because family size seems not to be as important a matter of social concern. But why is this so?

For one thing, 'Family Life Education' or variations of that theme has been a part of the school curriculum for a few decades, and the incidence of teenage pregnancy, although still disturbingly high, does not seem to be as bad as it once was. Indeed, the greater emphasis today is on stemming the spread of sexually transmitted infections. Also, since the late 1980s, the promotion of the use of condoms as a means of reducing the incidence of HIV/AIDS would also have contributed to there being fewer pregnancies. But there are also other factors.

A few respondents to The Gleaner have occasionally pointed to Europe's ageing population and reduction in its pool of young people, and have placed the blame for this on more liberal abortion policies and some countries embracing gay-rights laws. Of course, that analysis is both simplistic and a careless disregard for facts.

More knowledge, better choices

All over the world, including Jamaica, wherever women have greater access to education and subsequent improvements in their economic circumstances, they tend either to delay starting a family or not to have as many children as did their grandmothers. Even where they may have the desire, the economic realities of raising children within the parameters of what is considered a good life - a good home in a good neighbourhood and the children going to a good school - determine that the second and third generation are less likely to do what their parents did.

Additionally, there is simply the access to information about health and fertility. Generally, women who are educated about the use of contraceptives and are better able to obtain them, and who are less dependent on a man for economic sustenance are less likely to have "a whole heap a pickney".

'Dealing' with it

In my growing up years, there was a prevailing view that ghetto/inner-city girls were "more slack" in their behaviour than uptown girls. And the evidence was there for everybody to see. Downtown girls "breed before dem time"; uptown good girls focused on their education and delayed starting families until they "had something in their heads". Of course, maturity and a broader perspective on life revealed that uptown girls were not necessarily less promiscuous - they just knew better how to avoid getting pregnant. And if they did, a quiet visit to a doctor would take care of that "problem".

But should population policy be left to the vagaries of changing social mores? One educator recently suggested that the Government may need to revisit the 'Two is better than two many campaign' to help reduce population size and, ultimately, overcrowded classrooms.

But is the answer to inadequate funding for education reducing population growth rates or should the push instead be for a realignment of available resources while implementing policies for a bigger economic cake to feed the many mouths? Which is more practical in the short to medium term?

It should be noted that the 1970s campaign was not done in isolation; it was part of a wider social-engineering policy aimed at improving family life with an emphasis on empowering women through education and financial independence. Perhaps Jamaica does not, today, have a runaway population problem, but we may yet need a more holistic national policy to help define population goals and targets, without the state being as intrusive as in some other countries.

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