Number of Children had and quality of life

by Paul Andrew Bourne


Fertility of the woman (Number of children had)


Some people argue from a purely economic perspective that the larger the number of children a female has, the less likely it is that she will be healthier, and this is from the premise of socio-demographic conditions of child rearing and the socio-economic cost of the process. It may appear simplistic from one to believe that associated with childbearing is the reality of psychosocial condition of the state of the child and the family, and accompanying this is the biomedical conditions which are usually accepted as given. On the contrary, some people conceptualize childbearing as a vehicle of social mobility, and some consider their offspring as material resources in their old age. Within the psyche of the poor, poverty alleviation is seen through the investment in child/ren, and this some people see as investing in stocks, bonds, shares or other physical assets.

Studies from the RAND Center for the Study of Aging (1998) confirm some of the epistemological beliefs of people in our society. The institute have carried out research that show "Childbearing has often been thought to have a beneficial effect on a woman's health, primarily because it reduces the risk of breast, endometrial, and ovarian cancer", which concretize some the common sense thoughts of people on well-being and childbearing. A crucial issue that needs mentioning is how the RAND's study highlights the non-socio-demographic benefits of childbearing. Coupled with this is the frequency of medical care to which the new mother is likely to see, thereby ensuring that she seeks health care.

The study appears to be emphasizing the wholesale advantages of childbearing, but researchers at RAND discovered that with ageing, many of those advantages become disbenefits. RAND's findings reveal that "childbearing histories of women aged 50 and older, the research shows that women who bore six or more children are likely to suffer poorer health in later years than those women who had fewer children or no children at all" (RAND, 1998). This study encapsulates the inverse relationship between number of children and well-being in later years of life. The issue of poor health could also be tied to certain condition in fertility (i.e. childbirth). An important finding that arises from RAND's study is how a "women who lost a child during the first year of its life and women who delivered their first child before they reached 18 years of age both had an increased likelihood of poor health at age 50 and beyond".