There is this disease that has been eating on us Africans for a while. That of trying to copy everything the west does. Recently, Nandi Senator Samson Cherargei urged the government to consider limiting families to two children. That is, no family should have more than two children. According to him, it is the solution to rising costs of living and strained resources.
The Atheists in Kenya Society, not to be left behind, have gone even further and called for a one-child policy.
This is a sensitive topic that has the nation torn right in the middle, with others lukewarmly supporting it and others claiming that it feels like an attack on culture and personal freedom. Before we proceed with this thought process, we should first take a look at those before us that took this road and see what the results were for them.
China once pursued an iron-fisted one-child policy that left behind deep demographic scars. And then there is also Japan, which never imposed limits but is now struggling with a different crisis: too few children and too many elderly to support.
I do not know why the good senator thought this is a good idea, what with Kenya’s fertility rate already falling steadily for decades. In the late 1970s, the average Kenyan woman had eight children. Today that number has dropped to around 4.6. Urban families in the big cities are often stopping at two children because of the rising cost of survival. (In my own little survey, almost every female friend I know has one child. So do the neighbours, and it is not even like they are young people anyway. So there is that.)
Policymakers argue that population growth is outpacing resources. Schools are overcrowded and youth unemployment remains stubbornly high. They claim that pressure on land and food supplies is becoming worse. Not to forget climate change, as droughts and erratic rainfall make it harder to feed a growing population.
The National Council for Population and Development (NCPD) has already drafted the Population Policy for National Development, whose aim is to gradually reduce fertility further. Their target is an average of 2.6 children per woman in the coming years.
Senator Cherargei is frantic, suggesting that only firm limits will prevent a crisis.
But one cannot help but wonder if this so-called government intervention is necessary when economic forces are already pushing families toward smaller sizes. Will it make things easier or worse as it already is?
China: The Strict Road
In 1980, China introduced its one-child policy. At that time the government painted a picture of prosperity through population control. According to them, fewer mouths to feed meant more resources to grow the economy.
It did work – if only for a short time.
Fertility rates got to an all time low and the government, happily, was able to redirect resources into education and industrial growth. The icing on the cake is that poverty levels were significantly reduced.
What they never talk about however, is how this policy was enforced. Often harsh, families faced fines and loss of jobs. In extreme cases, forced sterilizations and abortions were carried out (just imagine the cruelty and inhumane acts that went on!)
Millions of children born “out of quota” went unregistered and were thus stripped of basic rights like schooling and healthcare.
What started well, was turning into a monster whose deeper costs of policy became impossible to ignore. The opposite of fewer births is expectedly, a population that ages rapidly. That is exactly what happened in China.
Because of that single policy, today the country faces a shrinking workforce and a ballooning elderly population. This, of course, is a demographic time bomb that threatens its economic future. The policy also skewed the gender balance, as cultural preference for boys led to widespread sex-selective abortions and a generation of missing girls (we will talk about this one day.)
By 2016, Beijing abandoned the one-child limit and first raised it to two, then to three. But the damage was done. The issue was already ingrained in most of the citizens’ brains, and we all know that erasing such things could take decades, if not forever. Social norms had shifted.
The rules were relaxed, yes, but Chinese couples remain reluctant to have more children. They cited high living costs, work pressures and changing aspirations. But the truth is, they had already been indoctrinated to believe that having more than one child is a “sin,” for lack of a better word.
China’s strict road, even with its initial successes showed the dangers of controlling reproduction through force.
Japan: The Opposite Problem
Japan, on the other hand, never imposed limits on how many children families could have.
But it faces a different kind of dilemma. Japan has too few children. For decades their birth rates have been sliding mostly due to urban lifestyles and long work hours.
Today, their fertility rate hovers around 1.3 children per woman. This is way below the 2.1 replacement level needed to sustain a population. The result? A shrinking society where the elderly outnumber the young. Whereas in other societies schools are overburdened by the number of students, schools in some regions in Japan are closing for lack of them. Meanwhile nursing homes are struggling to find enough caregivers. The labor force is shrinking and government budgets are strained by the twin demands of pensions and healthcare.
The Japanese government cannot be accused of not trying to fix the crisis. They have offered cash incentives for new parents and subsidized childcare. The government even offers generous parental leave and – wait for it – local matchmaking programs.
All in vain.
These efforts, as it is, have not barely moved the needle. This is to show that once birth rates dip below replacement and family norms shift, it becomes incredibly difficult to reverse the trend. At this point, maybe the Japan government should just hire African men, those are always too willing to plant seeds wherever they go (just kidding lol. Or maybe not)
If we do not learn lessons from both Japan and China, then we have ourselves to blame. It could be state control gone too far, or it could just be a society that voluntarily stops having children. Whatever the case, declining fertility can be as destabilizing as runaway growth – only in the opposite direction.
The story in Kenya is very different from that of China or Japan. First of all, we have a median age of 19 – one of the youngest countries in the world. While we cannot deny the fact that population growth is rapid, it still is not to the levels of China in the 1980s. Kenya’s fertility is already trending downward because of shifting choices.
Many young couples are deliberately stopping at two children because of school fees and rent. Raising a family especially in this Nairobi and other major towns is not a walk in the park.. The decision is not really about ideology per say – it is about economics: children are expensive and that is a fact. The fewer children one has, the better chance they have at giving each child quality education and stability.
In rural areas as expected, larger families remain the norm, often seen as a form of social security. The more children one has, the more hands for the farm and also more support in old age. And then of course there is that not so small issue of cultural pride in lineage.
And even there, it is not as it used to be, where couples have more than 6 children. Even there the rates have gone down.
Unlike China, Kenya doesn’t face a runaway population crisis. And unlike Japan, it hasn’t reached the cliff of demographic decline. So why is this government bothered? Is it that they do not have better things to do?
It is like I said at the beginning of this article, always wanting to copy even ideas that will never work. Kenya’s flirtation with a two-child policy is simply trying to import solutions that don’t fit local contexts.
China’s one-child rule was born out of fear of famine and overpopulation in the late 1970s. Japan’s push for smaller families was driven by economic modernization and changing gender roles. And look what happened to their society; aging population and shrinking workforces. Not to forget a social safety net under immense strain.
Kenya is not battling a declining population. Its biggest issue – which the government conveniently forgets to mention – is a jobless young population, healthcare (look at all this SHA shenanigans) and education. Copying policies designed for entirely different realities could (and will) backfire.
Plus where is the humanity in forcing or coercing families into limiting births? That is just violating reproductive freedoms. A policy that tells women how many children they should have reduces them to instruments of state planning rather than individuals with agency. As Kenyans, we have worked hard at our freedoms and rights, which is why the government must tread carefully before endorsing any measure that feels authoritarian.
