Investing “monsters” for the future

MY DEAREST friend, Irene, once told me that she would never give birth to “another monster to this world.”

What she meant by another monster is: a baby, a child, girl or boy, who consumes water, air, electricity, uses tissues, chops trees, pollutes air and drinks gas from its tanks. “If I really want one, someday, I think I will just adopt him/her. Earth cannot bear for another monster,” she said.

By any reasons, environmental, psychological, or financial, women such as Irene — a 29 year-old single lady who doesn’t really think of kids, marriage, and family — is growing in this developing country of Indonesia. Intelligent women today [raised with good education], mostly those in big cities, do not want to surrender their twenties to some husbands. They want to pursue careers, enjoy lives, and explore the world.

Do you find him/her cute? Cut this from Babies trailer on youtube

And in this country, pending marriages is the same as postponing pregnancies.

My mother got married when she was 18 year old, to my father who was ten years older than her. She gave birth to me, a year later. Now, her daughter, me, at her 27 is still single and sure that she is not ready for a marriage, yet.

I notice that this “don’t want to get married and have a baby too soon” trend is growing in my country. Although I couldn’t provide an accurate figure to support this, but I am quite sure that many many girls today are still single in their late twenties, a contradictory picture of their mothers some decades ago — when they might have been pregnant with their second child.

Are you ready to become a daddy? Still from Babies trailer

Some might say this is good, because it somehow will help the government curbing the population growth.

According to a report by the Jakarta Globe, the country’s National Coordinating Agency for Family Planning estimated that the country’s population, which stood at 222 million in 2009, could reach 260 million in 2015. A projection by the Central Bureau of Statistic puts the 2015 population at 247.5 million, and 273 million by 2025.

The government is not happy with these figures and tell people to get back to family planning program, in which you are being asked to only have two kids.

But reading Fareed Zakaria’s The Post American World And the Rise of the Rest makes me ponder, and I am not quite sure whether this “not too soon” trend is good.

It is very interesting to read The Post American World And the Rise of the Rest, including finding out what he wrote about demography [I know that he wrote the book before the global crisis, but many many points of his are still very relevant and worth to be anticipated].

This is Fareed Zakaria (2007) photo taken from Wikipedia. I am obsessed with his writings.

“America’s advantages might seem obvious when compared with Asia, which is still a continent of mostly developing countries. Against Europe, the margin is slimmer than many Americans believe,” Zakaria wrote in the America’s Secret Weapon section, page 195.

He continued.

“But Europe has one crucial disadvantages. Or, to put it more accurately, the United States has one crucial advantage over Europe and most of the developed world. The United States is demographically vibrant. Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, estimates that the U.S. population will increase by 65 million by 2030, while Europe will remain “virtually stagnant.” Europe, Eberstadt notes, “will by that time have more than twice as many seniors older than 65 than children under 15, with drastic implication for future aging.”

He emphasized: “(Fewer children now means fewer workers later).” And then continued.

“Surprisingly, many Asian countries — with the exception of India — are in the demographic situations similar to or even worse than Europe’s. The fertility rates in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, and China are well bellow the replacement level of 2.1 births per female, and estimates indicate that major East Asian nations will face a sizable reduction in their working-age population over the next half century.”

Jakarta Globe photo/Afriadi Hikmal. A glimpse of picture of busy-crowded Jakarta.

He did not mention Indonesia, does it mean that we are safe? [to me it means me and Irene are innocent, that we won't contribute problems to the country by pending our pregnancies, because Indonesia will still be "reproductively stable" according to the projection].

Let the working-age population reduction threaten China and Japan. But let us underline this one important point: More children now means more workers later. I think it is significant to keep an ideal figure of a country’s working-age population, including or especially Indonesia.

But I think, once you’ve become parents, you should be the super ones.

How? I think it’s closely connected with the “not too soon” trend, that the trend will somehow shape the future of our working-age population. I suggest the country to seriously look at mothers or families, who on average give birth to more children.

With this trend of intelligent career women and men [with good salaries, in short: financially secured people] postponing marriages and raising children, I think they no longer belong to the “productive” element of the country — in term of reproduction.

Because they tend to only have one or two children. While in opposite of them, women and men at villages [with not really good salaries, in short: financially insecured people], they keep reproducing babies, they could have more than three children [a friend, a single 27 year old teacher teaching in a remote area in East Java, told me that her fifth grader student leaving school for a marriage].

This thesis doesn’t sound good, does it? Because the ones who have more opportunities to send their kids to colleges and give them good education and later on building up this country are those kids with the financially secured families. Less children from financially secured families means less qualified working-age population for the country, means: not good.

Met this little boy in Jambi, Sumatra. He helped his parents selling roasted corns.

Imagine that the country have this comparison of 1 million elementary or junior high school graduated workers : 50,000 or even less bachelors? Indonesia will stay as a labor market, where we only attract foreign investors for our cheap labor’s wages.

I understand that we can still put hopes on the middle class families, who I believe will work hard to send their children to schools, like what my father did. But as long as poverty and corruptions are still the main issues in Indonesia, I am losing hopes [tell the government they could curb poverty when their top officials keep behaving corruptly, and that children I met in Jambi still do not have proper classrooms and toilets].

Classrooms in Jambi. They were using it for local election polling stations.

Reading Zakaria makes me believe that a huge population might actually be a “secret weapon” as long as we know the best formula. So Indonesia is actually having a shot. But what more important than knowing the formula is to have the best people in the formula.

And now, when the country is still neglecting education for the poor [while in fact their numbers are keep growing] why don’t we [those who don't seem to get married/pregnant in their late twenties/thirties so on and so forth] consider what my dearest friend, Irene, suggested? Yes, adopt a monster. Oh, well, or we don’t have to use an exact diction as she did.

Yes, adopting or “adopting” children, helping them with their school fees. I think more wealthy people and environmentalists like Irene [who still shamelessly smokes] and anyone decides to not have children should help Indonesia’s next working-age population.

People should see this [the adoptions] as a long good term investment. If the investment is not monetary OK, at least it is still environmentally good!