Families: Jentry Womack, March 8th 2013

Education is obviously extremely important. I mean, that's why we're all in this class; that's why I'm typing this blog post. What about those who don't have an opportunity to learn? And despite what one might think after reading my first few introductory statements, I am not talking about just the kind of learning you would attain in a nice college like this. What about the fundamental teachings about our bodies? Sure, I think we could figure sex out, but what about the knowledge we've acquired through various sources about contraception? If your mother/father/health book/friend hadn't told you about a condom, and there was no other way to learn for you other than free word of mouth, would you have ever known how to use one? Use one, even less, how about even see one in a store? From an early age I remember seeing the vending machines in gas station bathrooms, sitting in fish bowls at the doctors office with candy-colored packaging, and I remember even the ones I found in my friend's sister's drawers. Did you know that it is more likely that a wealthy woman in a poor, underdeveloped nation, with all the knowledge her country could give her at her disposal, is just as likely to know about contraception, unplanned pregnancies, and even STDs as a poor and uneducated woman in a nation like ours?

In this article, it explained just that: women around the world are not being trained and educated in how to prevent unplanned pregnancies. This results in a much larger amount of children than a woman would've ever asked for (even from sex that she did not want), and more children than anyone could afford. This article also talks about how perhaps, this is the societies' way of pushing for larger families. Making a woman feel incomplete without a lot of children, as opposed to just a few; demonizing contraception; claiming that contraception is a sin that is borderline unforgivable.

Many pledges have been made by government officials around the globe to educate their people, informing couples of ways to minimize their amounts of offspring. However, almost no real attempt has been made to fix it.

As long as people like this exist, people who aren't educated in this manner, how can we say that it's not a global social problem? Families everywhere are too enormous to feed. If the parents didn't have the money for education, for condoms, for an IUD or birth control pill, how could they have money to feed the children?


Link to the article here!