Birth |||
Family Health Begins
with Family Planning
It may seem counter-intuitive, but the
best way to assure a healthy family is to
postpone having a family at all, until such
time as circumstances are favorable. In
an ideal world, all babies would enter
the world surrounded by a loving family,
would be nurtured by attentive parents
and an extended family united in their
commitment to protecting, educating
and supporting a child to maturity.
Sometimes this perfect scenario is a
reality, but in too many instances, family
circumstances are far from ideal.
Many babies are born into situations
which make effective parenting a near
impossibility. When the parents are still
children themselves, have not completed
their educations, and do not have secure
employment, the demands of raising
healthy children can be overwhelming.
Even with a supportive extended family,
such a situation stacks the cards against
parents and children.
12 ||| www.bermudaparentmagazine.com
by Cheryl E. Peek-Ball
When a child is born into a situation
where resources are limited and parents
are stressed, the risk of poor outcomes in
health, education and adult success rises
sharply. There is an abundance of data
in both the health and social disciplines
which verify this fact. The Children’s
Defense Fund, a private, non-profit
organization based in Washington, DC,
advocates on behalf of children, especially
the most vulnerable children. In their
moving report, Portrait of Inequality
2011, Black Children in America
(www.childrensdefense.org), startling
statistics are shared to make the points.
Children born to school-aged parents,
born into single-parent households, or
born to unemployed or inadequately
educated parents, are at considerable
risk for newborn or early childhood death,
low birth weight, multiple health problems
as well as learning and behavior
problems. Their rates of school failure
or drop-out, unemployment, lifelong
poverty, and even incarceration are two
to three times higher than other children.
Disproportionately, these poor outcomes
affect black or minority children in the US
and in Bermuda.
However, these correlations relate to all
children. Poorly timed and unplanned
pregnancies are correlated to poor
outcomes for children and families of all
races. When pregnancies are unplanned,
and circumstances not supportive for
parenting, children are not as healthy
and do not perform as well in school or
in life. So, knowing this, what can we
all do about it? We can practice family
planning.
Family planning is simply the act of
preventing pregnancy through reliable
methods until one wants to become
a parent. For young and mature
couples alike, this requires conscious