Marriage, Netflix, and babies: Unravelling Jamaica’s declining birth rate
LET ME be clear. My obsession the past few weeks on the matter of Jamaica’s average birth rate and the implications for the country’s socio-economic development is not driven by any hidden or less-than-subtle agenda for us to start having more of the activities that lead to having more children. Let me just put that out there. Let me also remind you that neither am I a development nor sexual and reproductive health expert.
My fascination with this topic was merely triggered by the National Family Planning Board’s and the Statistical Institute’s (STATIN) revelation a few weeks ago, that our women aren’t having enough children to keep our population growth healthy. For me, the news seemed surreal at the time, as I am yet to see any evidence anywhere that fewer children are being born. In fact, prior to the report, I’d probably think that more children are being made, given the large classroom sizes which persist as a common feature of most of our schools.
MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
Without wanting to flog this dead horse any longer, I believe that the point has been clearly made – Jamaica’s declining fertility rate may have significant deleterious effects on our economy, healthcare system, pension plans, education and employment opportunities, not to mention the impact of greater pressure being placed on our young people to care for their ageing and aged relatives. And this is before we even start to talk about the impact on our human capital and our ability to innovate.
Stepping away from those socioeconomic issues for a minute, however, there are a myriad of twists and turns, rabbit holes and spirals, plots and sub-plots to this story. For example, is there any correlation between this falling birth and our declining interest in marriage and the rising incidence of divorce? What about abortions? Contraceptive use? Are these also critical factors? How about COVID? Why didn’t the pandemic spike our birth rate as predicted, given that there was nothing else to do while quarantined at home, than to Netflix and Chill? Clearly, there was more Netflix-ing than chilling going on. And now that I think about it, does the fact that we are having fewer children mean that we are also having less of the activities that bring children? Hmmm.
COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS
On this last one, a rather courageous colleague of mine expressed doubt. After all, as he suggested, marriage and sex become mutually exclusive immediately after the honeymoon. I say courageous, not because of how unorthodox his theory was, but because he actually made the comment in front of his wife. A quick-thinking friend, upon seeing the danger he was in, tried to rescue him by insisting that statistically, he was wrong, as married people do have sex – just not with each other. I’m told that both men are recovering nicely and should be out of the hospital by the weekend.
But all jokes aside, has anyone tried to overlay or map the correlation (if any) between the state of marriage and relationships in Jamaica, with our declining birth rate? Are women having fewer children because they can’t find eligible husbands or baby daddies or men who they can trust to stick around and be good fathers? And are men less interested in marriage and having children because they believe they can get the milk without buying the… uhm… you know what, let me stop right there before I end up joining my two friends on a hospital ward.
Clearly, this issue is so multifaceted, controversial and complicated, that you need to be a very brave man indeed to have some of these discussions around fertility rates and the intersections with race, class, sex, demographics and religion.
EMBRACING CHILDLESSNESS
But it may not be all doom and gloom. One of the positive aspects of our declining birth rate is a drop in teenage and perhaps unintended pregnancies. Many women may very well be delaying childbearing until later on when they can better afford it. Others may simply feel that having children now would do nothing but sacrifice their newfound social and economic independence, and giving birth is no longer the ultimate sign of womanhood. If the latter is indeed the case, that women are taking more control over their fertility, then this is wonderful news. But if the real reasons have more to do with economics and being unable to afford children, then I see problems ahead.
And lest we forget, it’s not only the women who are affecting these dynamics. Many Jamaican men are also eschewing children and embracing their“gelding-ness” more openly. I haven’t seen the data but I would love to see STATIN do some work to help shed light on our declining fertility rate from the perspective of our men.
UNCONVINCED
Now full disclosure, I’m not completely sold on the idea that the solution to our birth rate quandary is to have better prenatal and maternity care, more generous parental leave, and better school, preschool or childcare facilities. I mean, I want to believe that there are logical, progressive solutions to the problem, despite obvious difficulties in their implementation. But because we’ve never had to reverse a situation like this before, these fixes are largely theoretical and unproven.
Look at Finland, for instance. Two decades ago, the birth rate was rising even as women were accessing high-paying jobs and lofty careers, due largely to that country’s progressive models of child and maternity care and generous support for parents. Today, Finnish women have closed off the baby-making spring well, with a total fertility rate that is even lower than Jamaica’s. Over in South Korea, the country with the lowest birth rate in the world, the government has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the problem. From cash incentives to greatly subsidised housing, nothing has worked and in 2023, their birth rate fell by another eight per cent to .72 children per woman.
As I said, the issue is puzzling, complicated and extremely multifaceted. And perhaps no one person or no one thing can explain it. Maybe the simple truth is that, like the act that gives rise to it, having children is not primarily driven by economics, social development or government policy, but rather by culture, psychology, biology and how a woman’s mind works.
And as we all know, that last one is infinitely more complex, more mind-boggling and most nearly impossible to understand.
Major Basil Jarrett is a communications strategist and CEO of Artemis Consulting, a communications consulting firm specialising in crisis communications and reputation management. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Threads @IamBasilJarrett and linkedin.com/in/basiljarrett. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com