Population reports don’t usually hold many surprises. But the news about Brazil’s plummeting fertility rate is astounding. A few decades ago, the rate was 5.3 children per woman; today, it is about 1.9. Experts predict the rate will be 1.5 children per woman by 2030.
How did this happen? There is no one reason. Instead, a combination of causes has led women of all social classes to challenge tradition and limit the size of their families. Brazil’s booming economy is key to this development. Women have more opportunities for careers in the growing cities, where families don’t need numerous children to work as farmhands. Improved health care assures women they don’t need to have more babies to replace those that die. Advances in Brazil’s pension system assures parents they don’t have to depend on additional children to support them in their old age. Brazil’s women also have plenty of role models to inspire them to move away from the traditional role of motherhood and toward more independence. Brazil’s newly elected president is a woman, there are high-ranking female officers in the military, and special police stations are run for and by women.
One particularly interesting cause is called the “soap opera effect.” On a typical Brazilian soap opera, called a telenovella, 90 percent of the female characters have only one child or none. The women in the telenovellas lead more glamorous lives than their working- or middle-class viewers, who may equate such lifestyles with having fewer children. Script writers for these wildly popular dramas weren’t intentionally discouraging large families. Rather, they were criticizing the traditional values endorsed by the dictatorship that ruled Brazil until 1985. In the process, they may have helped empower Brazilian women, and the women are not looking back.
Image credit: © Blend Images/SuperStock
Related Links
- Brazil’s Girl Power
Read the causes and results of the dip in Brazil’s fertility rate.
(Source: National Geographic, September 2011) - Brazil’s Fertility Falls Below Two-Child Average
Research the Web site of the Population Reference Bureau to learn the historical context for the fertility rate data; includes access to The World at 7 Billion, the 2011 World Population Data Sheet (with interactive map).
(Source: Population Reference Bureau; accessed September 30, 2011) - Fertility Rate; Total (Births per Woman) in Brazil
Follow the links to the charts for charts and graphs on Brazil’s falling fertility rate and other economic indicators for South America’s largest country.
(Source: World Bank; accessed September 30, 2011)
Dont have enough information!!!!!
i really like your dress
your son looks just like my lil cousin alot. { :
Hmmmmmm… need more info please.
Interesting article.
thats sad to loose a child in any time of day reply
take care of yo kids
great article
i think it need alot more info it didn’t tell why they had to have one or none kids
hi
Yah yah
sweet
so sad i feel for you girly
rgrtgrgrbbb koollllll bro
I personaly think that this women is right becuase a stay at home mom isn’t in style anymore … we also like to feel like we have some power… this world was once run by men but now it should be ran by womaen
heehee
this is stupid
anything is possible but this woman is so crazy
I think this article needs quite a bit more information. I dont see why people are being role models to others & telling them to move away from the role of motherhood. We need ALOT more woman PLAYING THERE ROLE AS A MOTHER !
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She is right because we did have a lot of men but now the women are taken over
wow
Woww Ahh Feww Decadess Agoo Wass Verryy Largwee Butt IhT Kindof Slowedd Downn !
Didn’t have enough information!!!!
This website totally copies off of National Geographic.
needs more info haha
Needs more info and statistics to make sense!
I like this article……