OUR culture believed having many children was an investment. An assurance of the continuation of a linage as well as a ticket out of poverty.
That was decades ago, before the realization of proper family planning, economics and reproductive health.
A whole generation believed that so they meet forth and multiplied thus, families with 5-6-7-8-9-10-11 to 12 children were seen to blossom in the hopes majority of the offspring will make it big and make the fambam hit the jackpot.
That was a generation ago, now millennials, will look at you with horrified eyes in the mere suggestion of a large family, something unheard of or even shunned by the working yuppies striving to make their mark in the world.
A simple, indiscreet family is the way to go nowadays, both for its economics as well as for the convenience.
The news today is not how many children are born but who is birthing these babies.
A report has revealed Cordillera teens have topped the charts in child birth all over the country, meaning our children are bearing their own.
That is not good, in any standards, not well for the teen mom, who is not physically and emotionally ready to take on the herculean task of motherhood and not for the hapless child who will be maybe taken cared of... a baby cannot be brought into the world with a "maybe."
Why is this happening? Why are we allowing it?
Questions only society can answer for and not the cold statistical report we have received which will be open to interpretations from nimwits to experts.
The jackass will surmise the baby boom in our region is caused by the cold weather, like the nitwits who surmised the baby boom in the rural areas before was due to the lack of electricity of homes.
Well, the nimwit can retort to this. The UN Population Fund says the Philippines is the only country in the Asia Pacific region where the rate of teen pregnancies rose over the last two decades.
It cannot be due to the weather nor the lack of electricity again right?
Let us not be nimwits and jackasses... let us know why our babies are having babies.