Imagine with me this scenario: your child/family/friend is sick with some sort of flu and you go on the internet in search of home remedies, but when you press the search button, thousands of search results and articles pop out, many of which say differing things than the article or search result next to it. You are left feeling confused and unsure the more you read. Does this sound familiar? Or maybe you search what is the best nutrition for gaining muscle or losing weight to find yet the same differing and contradicting results. What are we to believe? Many times, and I am guilty of this, we align our beliefs with what may be most popular or mainstream, but that may not always be the best decision.

Today, I will tell you some truths about a certain book published in the U.S. many years ago. This book was based on very little research, yet we all have heard of and even believe many of the concepts outlined in this book. U.S. citizens, as well as some other countries, believed so strongly in this book that it has been a basis for many changes in social policy that greatly affects our families and perceptions of families in our modern day. This would be fine if the book was backed by good scientific studies and data, but it wasn’t. Many of us have been told lies, and we are believing them.

The book discussed above is called The Population Bomb by Dr. Ehrlich. It was written in 1968, which was a critical time because it was just after the U.S. Baby Boom era had finished. Ehrlich made large claims, saying that by the mid-70’s, millions of people would be starving to death, the environment would be degraded, and India was going to fizzle out.

What data did Dr. Ehrlich have to support his claims? He went to India and saw much poverty and starvation among the people. He also know that India had a very high birth rate at the time. He then thought of the U.S. and saw that the population had raised due to the Baby Boom. He figured that the U.S. population would continue to grow as exponentially as it did during the Baby Boom era and cause us to suffer starvation and environmental effects. Based on what he saw and figured, he made those large claims. He did not conduct valid or largely studied/experimented research. Despite this fact, his claims were spread to over 90 countries and fear of having a family settled in many people’s hearts. In addition to fear, people concluded that having less kids was the right and ethical thing to do; it was considered selfish to have a big family. This caused many people to have smaller families and the U.S. fertility rate began to decline.

We now see that millions did not die of starvation, India has not fizzled out, and our environment has not (as of now) degraded. Yet people often still have the belief that we need to have small families to save the earth. On the contrary, research tells us that the Americans aren’t having enough children to replace the population. Research shows that to replace the world population, each woman needs to birth 2.13 children in their lifetime. However, recent data tells us that, on average, each U.S.women are only birthing 1.87 children in their lifetime.

Though we could talk more about the need for more births, this isn’t as much of a discussion about encouraging births as it is about encouraging you to know fully what information you are choosing to believe.

Generally Trusted Research Articles have:

• Sites that end with gov., org, or edu.
• Been peer-reviewed
• A methods section
• Rather large research samples
• A comparison or control group as well as an experimental group
• Non-biased studies (such as a double-blind study)
• Many studies and references concerning the same content (can be experimented again and get the same result)

The above bullet points are just a few tips to help you when you are searching for truth. My desire for you all is for you to better align your life with truths, not only about marriage and family, but also about every aspect in your life. I would encourage you to evaluate what you believe is true and seek out the source to determine if it is good and true information or not. And if you are wondering what is true and can’t seem to find it, I would like to remind you that God is the source and author of all truth. I invite you to humbly and sincerely look to God so to understand and learn the truths you seek; He will help you.

References:

Khan Academy. Accessed January 17, 2020. The baby boom. Retrieved from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/postwar-era/a/the-baby-boom

Central Intelligence Agency. (2018). The world factbook. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/356.html

Weltarchiv4. (2014, July).The New Economic Reality Demographic Winter Part 1. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8XQjfG2wYc

Weltarchiv4. (2014, July).The New Economic Reality Demographic Winter Part 2. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw3OQgFsHZI