Popular Victorian novelist Jane Austen begins her popular 1813 novel 'Pride and Prejudice' with a classic statement:
IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.
Fortune and marriage !
There are in fact two connected ideas here. First, a man of fortune is supposed to be eager to get married and raise a family. Second, no matter what he thinks, parents of eligible daughters think of him as a suitable match for their daughter.
[The reference to 'property' is ironical here; for, in that period in England, the property of the girl became her husband's on marriage!]
Marriage was, until modern times, universally valued as the very foundation of a stable, civilized society. And parents of girls, more than the boys themselves, were eager to see their daughters married into good families, and settled.
Decline of marriage and family
The spread of education,especially among girls and women, social reform movements, and modern ideas have combined to change the situation rather totally. Not many people think of marriage as an institution fundamental to society any more. Marriage itself is considered a contract of convenience between individuals without reference to society! Not many single men come to inherit or acquire fortunes soon enough, if at all.Many young men cannot think of marriage till they get properly educated ( ie paper- qualified ) and land a job or settle in a career, by which time they are no more young but enter middle life. Financial constraints force many to postpone getting children. The girls too get educated and think of a career independent of men. Parents have little influence on them. It is a sure sign of modernity that marriage has declined as an institution. Churches in the West, and religious leaders in India really have no say in this matter.
Decline in fertility
One result of this has been that here has been alarming decline in fertility and population growth in western societies, with serious social and economic consequences.
A report in The Daily Mail, 10 August 2016 says:
Fertility rates drop to lowest level EVER in America: Fewer than 6 babies per 100 women being born each year
- Women delaying pregnancy means they have more problems conceiving
- Teenage births are down but 30-44-year-old pregnancies are on the up
- There has been a steady decline in birth rates since peak in 2007
- Now 59.8 babies are born per 1,000 women, down from 126.8 in 1909
- CDC [ Centres for Disease Control and Prevention] report coincides with another showing maternal mortality is up.
www.darkgovernment.com
The situation is no better in Europe. According to a report in The Guardian 23 August 2015:
Europe needs many more babies to avert a population disaster
Across Europe birth rates are tumbling. The net effect is a ‘perfect demographic storm’ that will imperil economic growth across the continent
Record numbers of economic migrants and asylum-seekers are seeking to enter the European Union this summer and are risking their lives in the attempt. The paradox is that as police and security forces battle to keep them at bay, a demographic crisis is unfolding across the continent. Europe desperately needs more young people to run its health services, populate its rural areas and look after its elderly because, increasingly, its societies are no longer self-sustaining.
“We have provinces in Spain where for every baby born, more than two people die. And the ratio is moving closer to one to three.
In Portugal, the population has been shrinking since 2010.
Across huge swaths of the European Union, longstanding communities are disappearing and the social burden on the young is becoming unsustainable.
Education the villain?
The situation is really alarming, as the birth rate falls below replacement levels.At the base is the modernist attempt to devalue marriage as a sacred social institution, and the consequent decline in the concept of family and family values including child rearing.
It is seen that this is the trend in all societies with high rates of education where fertility falls. Compared to them, the Arabs and Muslims generally, who are not educated according to western notions and standards, still follow old customs and their fertility rates are high! Yasser Arafat once claimed that their high fertility rates is one of their bombs!
Intelligent or not, educated people certainly tend to limit their families with fewer children. This trend can be observed to be rising in India too!
Fertile before forty winters!
Shakespeare tackles the issue head on! He has devoted 17 of his Sonnets to address this issue : that young men must marry and beget children while they are young! Youth -its energy and looks do not last, and once past do not come back! It therefore behooves them to get married in time and get children to take their place in society!
FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime:
So thou through windows of thine age shall see
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember'd not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
These are the first three Sonnets and how nicely they urge upon the young man to get married and beget children! Shakespeare addresses it to some young man as his duty as an individual; but this is also his duty by society.
Women face the risk!
In the 400 years since Shakespeare wrote, the initiative has passed from the hands of men! It is women who control marriage now, in or out of it! Shakespeare spoke of 40 winters:
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime:
So thou through windows of thine age shall see
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
But if thou live, remember'd not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
Women face the risk!
In the 400 years since Shakespeare wrote, the initiative has passed from the hands of men! It is women who control marriage now, in or out of it! Shakespeare spoke of 40 winters:
When forty winters shall beseige thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:
Now, forty winters ( taken literally ) in the case of women is worse than in the case of men, as most women not only lose much of their natural looks and charm, but cross the age of effective and safe child-bearing by then! It is reported in the US that as pregnancies in the 30-40 age group among women increase, so does maternal mortality!
Overall, the number of births in women aged between 15 and 29 plummeted.
However, later pregnancies are on the up.
Huge increases were seen in women aged between 30 and 44.
The biggest spike was seen in 30- to 34-year-olds..
The US now sees as many deaths during childbirth as medics do in Ukraine and Iran
[The Daily Mail ]
I really wish someone now addresses a sonnet to women, even if they cannot write as well as Shakespeare!
In the meantime, let us sing and celebrate the wisdom contained in these Shakespearean lines.
UPDATE: The Hindustan Times reports on 7 April 2017:
UPDATE: The Hindustan Times reports on 7 April 2017:
While the number of births among Muslims and Christians, the world’s two largest religious groups, are projected to increase over the next decades, an “especially dramatic” drop is expected for Hindus, according to a new study by Pew Research Center.
Hindus are projected to see 33 million fewer births between 2055 and 2060 compared to the 2010-2015 period, due “in large part to declining fertility in India”, which is home to 94% of the world’s Hindus.
This will not bring down the number of Hindus worldwide though. The number of Hindus is projected to rise by 27%, from 1.1 billion to 1.4 billion, according to the study, but the increase will trail the pace of overall population growth.
The fertility rate among Hindus (as well as for Jews) was 2.3 children per woman, on an average, which is below the global average of 2.4. The rate is 2.9 for Muslims and 2.6 for Christians.
Procession of characters from Shakespeare's plays.
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