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果冻影院 in the News: Urban families getting smaller
12 February 2008
Tom Spears, 'The Ottawa Citizen' The world's city-dwellers are fast evolving into a species with a lower and lower birth rate, says a British anthropologist who believes this cycle of "runaway" evolution is changing humanity worldwide.
It used to be that people worried about infant mortality and had large batches of children, Professor Ruth Mace [果冻影院 Anthropology] argues. Now that infant mortality isn't a big threat, we are shifting toward very small families for the first time in history, driven by urban conditions - expensive housing, crowding and the need for costly education. 鈥�
She teaches evolutionary anthropology at 果冻影院 and her essay in the current issue of Science, a major research journal, warns that city people have started a cycle in which fewer children drain more and more resources from their parents.
It doesn't pay for urban families to have six semi-educated children who can do farm work. City parents believe it's much better to have one child who's a success - in poor cities and rich ones alike. (She records that rural families in Ethiopia average four more children than families in the capital of Addis Ababa). 鈥�
Mace says this intensified nurturing of one or two children just drives the competition harder. "Ever-escalating levels of investment per child are necessary in order for them to compete," she said in an interview. 鈥�
听"The whole cost-benefit has changed. When people lived on farms, children were actually quite helpful" in producing food and feeding the family, she said. Now children have become a drain on resources. The more children, the greater the drain. 鈥�