The paradox of parenthood in Colombia: balancing desire, responsibility, and global challenges

I came across this post from the “Silla Vacía” and it got me thinking quite a bit about the topic of having a family and the current reform context in Colombia. The message is that having children is very expensive and becomes more costly over time. But I question the figures they use to measure it a bit, such as the number of children per woman and the cost of raising children. Do they get pregnant alone? Where is the man's responsibility in this? Implicitly, they distance the man from the responsibility of raising children and the distribution of costs as a couple to raise a family.

It is expensive to have children and I believe there are too many people, with this having social and environmental consequences. But it leaves me thinking a lot about how the measurement of this reality implicitly places the burden of childcare on the woman and leaves us men out of it.

If we assume the age of university graduation at 23 years old, it means 28.8 million Colombian pesos (roughly 6000 GBP) per year per child. That is, 2.4 million per month. In a couple, it would be 1.2 million each, splitting it equally.

From this, several things can be implied: If you earn a Colombian minimum wage, do not have children. The minimum wage in Colombia is around 1.3 million Colombian pesos per month (somewhere between 250 and 300 GBP per month) (Castro, 2023), so it is not designed to support a family as a couple, no matter how stable they are. This highlights the importance of financial education to make decisions such as having children, diversifying income, and planning to avoid depending on wages to have a life.

Situating this in major challenges in Colombia such as health and pension reforms (Correa, 2023), there are strong dilemmas that we find ourselves in as the generations of productive age, which also weigh on the decision to start a family. That is, whether to have children cannot simply be reduced to an economic issue.

As for the issue of pensions, since there are not enough Colombians to support a pay-as-you-go system like Colpensiones and the one proposed in the pension reform for most Colombians, I only see two short-term alternatives that I don't know how much they would change the picture:

1. Increase the productivity per Colombian currently of working age: this means higher contributions per average person to the pension system. If the reform passes as proposed with the forced contributions of 2.3 minimum wages per person to Colpensiones (Ministerio del Trabajo, 2024), it means that those who earn more will likely seek to invest the excess in private funds with higher returns. Therefore, the pay-as-you-go system will not necessarily increase its savings base because its return would never equal that of private funds. The idea of increasing the productivity per average Colombian to increase Colpensiones' pay-as-you-go base falls apart, since contributions per person are limited to the ceiling of 2.3 minimum wages and the rest goes to private funds.
2. Increase the number of contributors to the pay-as-you-go system: In the short to medium term, the only way to do this is by increasing formality in Colombia, a never-ending challenge as the informality rate exceeds 50% in the country (DANE, 2024), facilitating the formal hiring of foreigners and promoting investment in Colombia so that there are more jobs. The direct way to achieve any of these options is by reducing transaction costs in Colombia to operate legally, via tax incentives and reducing the number of procedures required to start a business and hire legally in Colombia. I doubt that with the country's history of bureaucracy and the current government's direction, this can be achieved.

Another important factor in the decision to start a family is climate change. The anxiety associated with this reality influences the extent to which it is assumed that bringing a child into the world not only worsens global warming, by having more people each with their carbon footprint but also that we do not want to bring a human being into the world to suffer (Yale Sustainability, 2023).

The basic assumption is that the world was in better condition in the past and with each passing day, the environment deteriorates further. Consequently, it becomes more difficult to have a quality of life that does not come at the expense of nature and does not generate serious social conflicts to maintain it. For example, some authors suggest possible wars over natural resources as basic as access to water (Sandy Milne, 2021), which is why the US decided to categorise climate change as a national security issue (Cho, 2023; World Economic Forum, 2023). Consequently, population growth only increases demand for increasingly scarce vital resources, inevitably leading to confrontation to ensure survival.

In that sense, why bring a human being into the world to suffer and, innocently, worsen the situation by the mere fact of existing? I have seen this reasoning at a personal level in my social circles. It is sensible to want the best for one's children and with the current outlook, I see why the decision to start a family is increasingly postponed or reconsidered.

But do we really have so little capacity to manage our lives for those of us who want to have a family? Are we not one of the most resource-rich and educated generations in human history? Where is the capacity for innovation of one of the largest generations and its ability to solve pressing problems like the few I have raised here?

Humanity has gone through two world wars, the Cuban missile crisis, we have come close to wiping ourselves out with nuclear bombs and survived pandemics, among many other crises that for each generation have meant many reasons to have or not have children. However, here we are, the descendants of those who decided to have a family, with some "accidents" reading these lines I am writing.

We are living in the era with the most technological development and options for social mobility in human history, although it may be difficult to believe. Can this not be reframed as more opportunities to facilitate life and, therefore, the decision to start a family for those of us who want this for our lives?

Naturally, having children or not is a very personal decision and one that requires a lot of analysis. However, I believe that reducing it to an economic factor is reductionist, leads to pessimism, and does not allow for a deeper analysis of other factors that influence this decision.

References:

Castro, S. D. G. (2023, December 29). Salario mínimo 2024: ?en cuánto queda el aporte de salud y pensión de la planilla? El Tiempo. https://www.eltiempo.com/economia/finanzas-personales/salario-minimo-2024-colombia-como-queda-cuota-de-aporte-a-salud-y-pension-840223

Cho, R. (2023, October 11). Why Climate Change Is a National Security Risk – State of the Planet. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/10/11/why-climate-change-is-a-national-security-risk/

Correa, I. D. (2023, February 1). Tres puntos clave para tres reformas en Colombia [Text]. Universidad de los Andes - Colombia - Sitio oficial. https://uniandes.edu.co/es/noticias/gobierno-y-politica/tres-puntos-clave-para-tres-reformas-en-colombia

DANE. (2024). DANE - Empleo informal y seguridad social. https://www.dane.gov.co/index.php/estadisticas-por-tema/mercado-laboral/empleo-informal-y-seguridad-social

Ministerio del Trabajo. (2024, April). Conozca las 10 ventajas de la reforma pensional—Ministerio del trabajo. https://www.mintrabajo.gov.co/comunicados/2024/abril/conozca-las-10-ventajas-de-la-reforma-pensional

Sandy Milne. (2021, August 16). How water shortages are brewing wars. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210816-how-water-shortages-are-brewing-wars

World Economic Forum. (2023, October 17). Climate change is becoming a security issue, says this expert. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/10/climate-change-national-security-defence/

Yale Sustainability. (2023, March 13). Yale Experts Explain Climate Anxiety | Yale Sustainability. https://sustainability.yale.edu/explainers/yale-experts-explain-climate-anxiety