What drives fertility decisions?

What I learned: The discussion opens with talking about what the main determinant of family size is The first factor is social. It is what the community thinks is right, what the country thinks is right, and what their husband thinks is right. The other factor is the cost and benefits of having sex. A majority of fertility decisions are fueled by social learning. A humongous example of the social learning factor that plays into fertility decisions is the "telenovelas" in Brazil. This is a soap opera that became extremely popular on television (first in urban areas, then spread to rural areas as well). Since the soap opera aired, the amount of children being had by women has gone down. Also, a lot of the children being born are named after characters on the show. The show depicts families with less children, that maybe even possibly promote not having so many children, and the effects are significant. An experiment was cast in which school uniforms were purchased for students in a specific country in Africa. The results were that these students, because they were provided with a school uniform, stayed in school longer. Then, sex-ed was implemented. Teachers were very hesitant to speak about sex and STD's. When done, however, the amount of pregnancies declined. How do families decide to have children? Specifically, the mother and father. The decisions are either made by the entire family discussing it as a whole, or one of the family members making the decisions. When it comes down to it, views within the family are almost always going to be different. Men and women have much different views on how many children they want and the benefits that will really come from that. This isn't surprising since women have to bear the children and go through all of the difficult procedures of having the children. Within the family some could be more interested in other things (like education), be more or less patient, or be more interested in furthering their family in something other than the amount of children they have. Of course, income is then discussed and the large role it plays as well.

How it relates: This relates almost identically to the previous blog I wrote about family planning and family size. When possibly in Sudan implementing these changes within the amount of children all of these families are having, it is now much more clear about the thought process behind families and why they have so many children, the huge social aspect, and different views even within a family (that the whole family doesn't decide to ramp up the amount of kids they have). This could all be tremendously helpful information when it possibly came to lessening the amount of children that are conceived in Sudan.