One plus one equals three; 12; It's Everybody's Baby

One plus one you equals three for. Any gun you. Oh I wanted to know when it was made. Meaning being in you. I now know the feeling. 1 1 9. 9 0 1. 1 1 on 1. It is estimated that in 16 50 there were 400 and 70 billion people in the world. It took two centuries for that figure to double. It took only one century to double again. Today there are well over three and a half billion of us sharing this planet. Demographers tell us that by the year 2000 the world population will swell to almost 7 billion. This series of programs is about this problem

about what happens because one plus one can equal praise for. It. The problem of population is a worldwide problem. It touches every nation in one way or another. At the same time it is a very personal problem involving one of the most private aspects of our lives. For most of us tend to think of population growth but abstract terms most the problem and its solution hinge on the individual decisions of you. Maybe our friends and neighbors and every other power and potential power in the world. The population problem is everybody's baby including yours. How large are American families today. Are they typically larger or smaller than they used to be. We put these questions to Dr. Philip Haas or director of the Population Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Post what about him and his band of the largest number of children now to be found in the families of the poor and the families of the rich. It's the one in between the middle class that restricts children the most. Now do you see in the coming years I changed my views. We have. Even as fortunate as my own parents large families were good families. If a husband and a wife didn't have a child very shortly after they were married me assume that you and your husband had no relations using. Is this changing. Very definitely and especially among the younger and higher educated population of the present time. The evidence is becoming increasingly clear that value is a small family norm is not only accepted but almost fiercely fiercely accepted. However if you're talking about the population as a whole the surveys we've been making indicate that the norm in this country is still the ideal family size We've got about three

children and three's too many. In fact in the United States excessive population growth now is not really being contributed very much by the poor or the rich who have the highest birth rates the highest excessive population growth is being contributed by the middle class which constitutes the vast majority in having that third and especially of the fourth child. To decrease our growth rates it is much more important to decrease the fourth child and the third child and middle class families that a decrease in many multiple children that is 5 or more children and poor families or rich families is they don't make up that much of Rigel proportion. I have the total burgers but the values are very definitely changing. And this is I think one of the good effects of the increased attention being paid to the problems of the population explosion and environmental pollution. This is one justification perhaps for overdrawing the thing and for the propaganda that are making people conscious of the

problem. As I say though I hope that people become not only conscious of the problem but realize it's not going to be solved by one big Earth Day catharsis this is going to require continuous intention for an indefinite period of time and its adoption of either way to have those for that fourth child or third child. Very definitely. And where there is evidence that there are increasing numbers of the younger generation determined to have children but through adoption rather than through the birth of their own family situation as not to fill a house or noted American values are changing. Dr. Michael Spock Konski family counselor kind of system professor of family relationships at the University of Illinois in about a champagne. I think the sexual revolution is a figment of somebodies imagination. I think it's probably better you can label the sexual evolution in terms of the data we have. There seems to be little and terms of new

behaviors it's probably more than anything people are willing to talk about them today. I was interested in reading an article about the old. Crone Sun quotes Puritan practice which went much farther back than the Puritans of bundling and history where the courting couple in this was in rural America just after it was founded would get together and since frequently they were. Living five or ten miles away the young man might stay the night and the couple would be bundled in the bed supposedly with a boy and a bundling board between them. They were fully clothed and they could spend the night together in a sense communicating on a verbal level. Well I always thought it was interesting that they couldn't cross over the border but I'm sure some people went around the board in order to get involved and I'm sure other people found that clothing didn't necessarily hamper their sexual activities if that's what they were really interested in. Certainly in looking at the Kinsey data dated 20 years prior to that and more recent data by Vance Packard in the sexual wilderness

we've seen a change I don't know if it's a revolution and it's prime been primarily in terms of the female the male hasn't changed his habits as much as the female and I think what has happened is the. So-called double standard has been deteriorating in terms of sexual behavior as regarding the sexual revolution so that girls are more likely to be as involved then. As as boys their male counterparts are men and women both and I think this has been the real change if there's been a revolt it's been that women revolting against the whole double standard thing. Now there was it was all right for men but now now the women can't do it. All right I kept wondering why what the who the men were using if it was all right. Well there was a certain select group I'm sure and I don't know where they found them but they were there is there is the availability of birth control a significant factor in this change do you think. I think it is but I don't know how it would be significant that that doesn't help you a bit. Let me mention a couple of things one is the number of out of

wedlock pregnancies doesn't seem to have changed. In fact it's probably increasing this is a population function though. I mean as the population grows there's just more of a chance but a lot of people even though birth control methods are there aren't using them because this instills guilt and this is almost sort of a premeditation kind of thing if you use birth control as means you're going to be immoral therefore you don't use it and you would be immoral anyhow but you but you didn't plan it quite as well I suppose the logic if that's logical. I think probably the birth control methods have or have had the effect of making the sexual revolution a more pleasurable thing. If there was a fear of pregnancy for instance now it is not as vitally a fear anymore it's something to be dealt with but most contraceptive methods are highly effective today if used as directed at cetera. And I think it can lead to more pleasure in the relationship it doesn't have to be worrying about whether conception takes place or not so I think birth control methods have had some effect

but not the major one it hasn't. They haven't led to promiscuity is what I'm trying to say in that sense. Dr. Jacqueline Wexler president of New York's Hunter College. I certainly believe that women the role of women in society is far from developed. On the other hand I'm not at all comfortable with most of the people from the Women's Liberation Front with the kind of the least the ones I've met and I'm certainly not at all sympathetic personally to all the tactics that they use in the kind of frenzy that takes possession of them. I sympathize with their right to feel that way. But I don't feel that way. Though my life has been very tough in many ways and I know what it is to be

opposed strongly and to go through great personal crisis and frustration I in no way resent being a woman. I find the. I certainly have found in this last year of my life. The integration of the roles of a foreign professional woman. And of a wife and a woman in a neighborhood and the. Sharing the Parenthood of my husband's two teenage children. I find those the most satisfying and fulfilling kind of experience and I welcome a kind of a power in my husband that I know I can't manipulate. You know I welcome that very strongly. Because I'm lucky enough also that he supports me just as strongly. In what I'm doing and does not interfere in that and seems to have no need to do that.

You're here to talk at a conference of junior high school principals. The question of course the big controversial question right now is sex education in the public schools. Do you have a comment on that. Well as I know you know I stand on the side that knowledge is is the most healthful thing that man has ever dealt with. I certainly believe that sex education in the public schools is no longer dangerous in any way. My god the kids are exposed to the Grove Press in the Under come under ground kind of magazines. And I think it is much healthier to deal with the natural phenomena in natural ways. I. I sometimes think that we are caught in the whole sex question again between two very polar positions. One the whole Puritan culture

that has been represented by many of our Christian churches and very strongly by my own Roman Catholic Church in the past. And then it's a kind of preoccupation with sex but a negative preoccupation with sex and then we have it what I would call a positive preoccupation with sex in modern advertising in literature in the movies and indeed in the four letter word culture of the kids. That what I would hope man is going to evolve out of this is a kind of natural respect and healthfulness about the whole thing. And but also a certain preservation of intimacy which is. One of the richest of the qualities it seems to me and I think that that has to be the struggle. It is a struggle certainly of its being a bad subject or a dangerous subject in my estimation. It's that I

hope out of this horrible agony that has been caused in my estimation by repression and now obsession. That we will develop a kind of reverence and a light and a sense of humor and all the other things that ought to be characteristic of the finest things in life. Not very Jacqueline much like whether we like it or not. We all are involved with the people around us. Social pressure has a lot to do with our attitudes. What role does a community play in the population problem. Dr. Philip pouncer let me start with a broad consideration up to this point in the US as well as in the western world in general. The major motivation for our restricting family size strictly numbers wise personal information was regarded as better for the good child and better for the parents better for the family with the increasing awareness of society of problems of excessive population

growth and also the environmental problems. To the extent they are related. I think from now on the pressure for small family size will increasingly be community pressure and social pressure. Even if you have a million dollars for every child if you have 10 children they're going to be people looking down upon you because you are producing children that will compete with your children's fresh air your children's space in the national parks or your children's parking space on the street and so on down the line. So in this sense. I think from now on the community pressure is going to operate to restrict the number of children in addition to these familial and personal considerations. Now understand another way in which the community enters and freshness. One of the difficulties for example may have family planning programs in my nature arises from community conflict between a mayonnaise and a Chinese. Each of them but like to see the other practice

birth control. I have a theory that if one of the groups practices birth control and the other doesn't the other become down and out breed the men you see get control. There's been such a competition evident also even in the western world and another between Protestant and Catholic. I doubt where this gets into the case then you get political considerations that well operate out the is lead to the disadvantage of everybody and unfortunately this is one of the facts of life this is the sort of thing that can be dissipated only with education and with understanding. But this is another way in which the community unfortunately operates to maintain high birthrate matter that they are now out of your muck at any city Chicago. It's really a countries of individual communities. We have differentiated 75 such so-called local communities within the city Chicago University Chicago played a hand in designing them back in the

1930s and before that we still can make statistics for each of these communities. Is different from a social economic standpoint and they vary in birth rate and death rate and so on but I think within the urban combat. This I think is a generalization I would certainly hope for the United States in every city in the urban se except for the disadvantaged groups who have still not had the opportunity for getting education and higher government getting the birthrate is controlled and every community is disproportionately out of control. Only about recently and migrants among the poor are about me on educating and may I say blacks are very probably none of the gen are disadvantaged and poor that the evidence is quite clear that it is the blacks and other minority groups get the opportunity to match the education and the income of the whites. The birth rate of the dad just as fast as the whites as Dr. Hauser noted a moment ago.

The problem of minorities and birth control can be difficult. Not a Norman writer Borenstein babbling professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison discussed the issue. I've been associated with this problem to some extent. I went to a meeting in Washington at which it was the central topic of discussion. The meeting was very carefully arranged to have 50 percent white 50 percent black 50 percent male 50 percent female. And. I think that there is a considerable amount of legitimacy to the concerns that blacks have. I don't mean to say by that that there is a policy of genocide of solving the black problem by some kind of final solution like Hitler had for Jews. I think rather it's a question of

the way in which blacks perceive a birth control policy of a government if indeed the government is extremely energetic about inducing blacks to have fewer children but doesn't seem to show much concern at all for people in the white middle class suburbs who are likewise having generous numbers of children and children who are going to be consumers of far more resources than the blacks are. I think the blacks are going to be a little bit sensitive to this and say What are you trying to pull off. I think further there is something intimidating about the introduction of fertility control into the social system of the blacks because what it in fact means is that the government official goes to a woman and says to the woman control your fertility and. This threatens to

drive a wedge between the woman and her husband. Brother Maher. These people want to be told that there is a good way of life for their children not that they shouldn't bring children into the world because there is no good way of life. They do not want exclusive attention on birth control. They want attention to other aspects of the social system which they feel entrapped and. And lastly I think birth control has this unfortunate aspect of being a suggestion that the reason why the people are in their sorry state is their own doing that it is their misbehavior their sexual and reproductive irresponsibility that has led them into such a bad state. And that if only they would buck up and start to behave a little bit more like decent white folk why they wouldn't have the troubles that they have. So I think that the resentment is readily understandable. I would hope to be able to communicate to

the people who are concerned with the future of the blacks some sense of the necessity for maintaining the dignity of these people and giving them and assurance that. This is not some kind of magic proposal which will suddenly make their make their lives better. It is not that and I am therefore I'm not inclined to react negatively to the black protests. I think we have to ask some rather serious questions about what we really mean by it. I have a little bit of a. Fear that it fits into the same category as our orientation toward charity and the poor. We go we go and pat them on the head. We give them a handout and we suggest to them why don't you try to behave a little better and things will turn out for you

in a more reasonable way. The reason people are unemployed according to this thesis is that they're lazy. The reason they are poor is because they have too many children. And I think that the time has passed for us to be propagating such nonsense and I hope that we will not have delusions about. Birth control clinics as the as the elixir for solution of the problems of the black. What about the poor the medically indigent. Didn't you want family planning and birth control information. Yes but they need to know the information is there. Mrs. May Elizabeth recommender executive director of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Champaign Illinois. Most of our patients come preferred by other patients. The second source is proudly the second largest in numbers of patients who would be helping agencies in this community

particularly public health nurses. Do a good job talk to people where we are and. What sort of service we get at the present time. With your state grant from the public. Health department we have been and administered through the champagne Urbana public health district. We have hired three neighborhood aides who are going door to door telling people that is here and helping them know the times of the clinic and that sort of thing and they are knocking on all doors. So anyone who is interested can find out about it. We feel more and more that it takes context sometimes and has to be a nurse a neighborhood aide perhaps a television program maybe a newspaper advertisement and then finally you know the person decides they do want to do this.

It really is a one shot type of thing. March coming for some people it may be I think proudly for the person already has quite a few children. You know I finally found out that I can do something. What kind of people do you serve here. Planned Parenthood now of course your hospital here clinics individual physicians give out quite a bit of birth control information what. Kind of people do you serve and how does this differ from what your physician. Well in this community we serve the medically indigent people. And this means that they can have this service for a very low rate and it is available. For instance our biggest clinic as a Tuesday evening at a time when these

people can get here and meet at the present time with state grant are able to give them a pass free of charge. We do not charge for the doctor's services and the pill was. 50 cents for a month's supply. You are in reaching people. Well we don't feel that we are reaching those who perhaps would use the service or think about it. And that's really the main reason for having tried the neighborhood approach in the United States they figure. Many women who would use family planning if they had it available. And our community is not any different on

the average. Well perhaps 70 patients a week. Some of those will be perhaps as many as 30 of those will be medical visits. The others will be supplied calls and we average between 5 and 10 patients a week. We have a great turnover in this community so that we may see someone only for a year. In the past before the health service gave this service to the girls we did see more girls than we are now we now do serve the wife who was not eligible for service at the university. Graduate student. Also would. Be out. We consider these people a

soft core. And we know that now things are different than they will be in the future but right now when they need help we can get the age range here. Patients how. I think our youngest patient at the present time is you. And. She she is sexually active she was referred by a health agency. And. Our oldest patient probably is the one that I interviewed last night who's 48. That's probably true. What about the attitude of the public are you accepting Now have you always been accepted. Well I think that certainly we've always been accepted by a certain group which is growing by leaps and bounds. And I suppose that

as far as not being accepted I never have that feeling I think there are people who may not agree with what we do but I think in this particular community we are free from a feeling of not being wanted. And you know the countering that I write. No. Whether you're rich or poor or middle class whether you live in the inner city or in a quiet town. Whether you're American or a dinner European the population problem is your problem. It's your baby. Every child is a part of the population and all of us share the responsibility for the number of people who live on this earth for generations to come. Next week at this time we'll be talking about the world our children and grandchildren will be facing. And what population and population control may mean for them. Join us then.

You have been listening to one plus one equals three four. Five. A series of programs about the problems we face because of our growing population. Your host for this program has been Dennis Corrigan special music performed by Rhea Truscott engineering by Edna Haney. I am I want to like to meet with like the many meet many many you know eat eat. And there it would lead. To beat. Me down and beat. One plus one equals three four five was produced and directed by Luis Geissler. But w i l l the radio service of the University of Illinois

in Urbana. This is the national educational radio network.