Can Egyptian parents be content with only two children, as a recent report on Egypt's population recommends, asks Enjy El-Naggar When she knew she was pregnant, all hell broke loose. Bursting into tears, Eman Kishk, 27, remembers telling herself, "I didn't plan to have a third baby." Kishk is an upper-middle-class Cairene working wife and now the mother of three kids. However, despite her frustration with the news of a third child, she still recalls how she felt when she took the baby in her arms. "I had mixed feelings -- happy, but at the same time worried about the future," she says. Yet, what's really uncanny is that she confesses that if she had enough time and more money she would have more babies. Kishk's wishes conflict with the government's attempts to decrease birth rates as much as possible. A recent report issued by the Cabinet's Information and Decision Support Centre (IDSC) shows that if the birth rate in Egypt stays at three kids per family, the population will reach 100 million by 2020. However, if parents were satisfied with only two kids, then the population would hit 100 million by 2029 -- a world of difference, even when compared to the 2006 national census of 76 million citizens. Moreover, if parents stuck to what the report seeks, having only two kids per family, then the population would be reduced by 4.8 million in 2017 and 15 million in 2030. This reduction would positively affect education and mean smaller class sizes. Yet, the goals of the IDSC report, highlighting the benefits the country could achieve if families were content with two children, seem unrealistic. Many rural families have a tendency to have many children, for example, like El-Sayed Youssef, a 40-year- old lower-middle-class lawyer in Sharqiya governorate, who loves kids because he believes that having more than two children will help them to have solid ties after his death. "My youngest and third daughter is the source of my happiness, and I think that having a third child is necessary to strike a balance in the relationships between brothers and sisters," he says. Nevertheless, Youssef says that people would stop having more than two kids if the government got rid of subsidies on basic commodities. Despite their different backgrounds and special reasons for having more children, Youssef and Kishk share the same view of having a third child. Meanwhile, recent demographic surveys have shown that the average birth rates in urban areas decreased from 3.5 kids per family in the period from 1986 to 1988, to 2.7 kids from 2002 to 2005. In rural areas, it decreased from 5.4 kids in the period from 1986 to 1988, to 3.4 kids from 2002 to 2005. Despite these decreases in the number of children per family, however, the country's population is still rising, and has jumped dramatically over the last half century. The IDSC report is not the first attempt by the government to stress the importance of decreasing birth rates in Egypt. In 1985, the government initiated a nationwide Family Planning Programme that sent thousands of specialists to all corners of the country to raise people's awareness. The programme has achieved tangible progress over recent years, reducing the national population by 12 million people, which is still rather fewer than hoped for, according to General Mohamed Khalifa, secretary of the National Population Council. According to Soheir Abdel-Moneim, senior expert at the National Centre for Social and Criminal Research (NCSCR), the IDSC report is important, but "it's hard to implement its recommendations because parents can't be controlled or even convinced to have only two kids." The only way to achieve this is by "raising living standards and achieving minimum living standards for low-income families. The NCSCR has issued studies before to try to limit the irrationally high birth rates, but its recommendations have fallen on deaf ears." Ambassador Mushira Khattab, secretary-general of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, concurs. Society can't force parents to have fewer than two kids, but "if parents want to have more than two kids, they should be well educated and fully aware of the right means to raise them, and they should also be well off," Khattab told Al-Ahram Weekly. "However, money is not the only way to bring children up correctly. Parents should also have enough time to give their children enough love and care." Observers say that unemployment, illiteracy and poverty constitute major obstacles to progress in convincing people to have two children. Illiterate families sometimes do not care about educating their children, as they become a helping hand in the daily struggle for a better standard of living -- a reason many experts give for large families. The Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) also indicates that "poor families are more likely to give birth to many children (6.5 children per family), while the rate stands at 3.9 kids in educated families and middle- income families." However, having enough money does not seem to affect family choices alone, since culture also plays a role in making such decisions. Some Egyptian mothers still think that having more than one daughter guarantees a better life when they get older. Madiha Mohamed, 38, and a mother of three, for example, comments that, "I followed the advice of my mother, who told me to give birth to another daughter, so that she could take care of me along with my other daughter when I grow old and need extra care." According to psychologist Mohamed El-Rakhawi, a mother's desire to give birth can be attributed to "a basic instinct that never stops, urging her to have numerous children." "Mothers who have more than two kids consider their children as the main investment in their lives, because they don't have any other goals in life but bringing up their children," he says. "Such mothers have no other business but raising children." El-Rakhawi, father of a son and a daughter, also believes that living conditions have to be transformed in a dramatic way. Being busy all the time, working day and night to secure a future, parents have little time to spend with their kids. "I think parents should not have more than two kids, which would allow them to spend more time with them." He admits that he can't give the time and care to his kids the way his father used to do. Some parents, like Maysoon Mahfouz, 37, do not want to have more babies under difficult economic conditions. Despite her love for children, she's fully aware that living standards are poor, and she says that she does not wish to bring more children into the world in such conditions. As a working mother, Mahfouz knows she will find it difficult to strike a balance between her three kids and her work. "I want to have more babies because I know how to deal with kids and even with teenagers with their different mentalities and non-stop troubles, but I can't," she says. "However, I think that the increase in the birth rate is not the main problem, because there are no fair methods of distributing opportunities among the people on an equal footing." While many families will disregard the recommendations of the IDSC report, opting for more children instead, others are looking at the report more optimistically and believe it offers a rational perspective. Gihan Magdi, 25, for example, a middle-class working wife and mother of a nine-month-old baby, believes that if she had "only two kids, I would give them more time and care and could bring them up in a perfect way." Current financial conditions are not sufficient for most Egyptian families, as many mothers cannot afford to work and have many kids at the same time. Magdi believes that having one child allows her to give her baby the best she can. "I will be able to pay more attention to my only daughter now and secure her life hand-in-hand with my husband." A RECENT opinion poll of Egyptian families on the IDSC report shows that 51 per cent of parents believe that the ideal number of kids is two, and 30 per cent of them support the idea of three. 32.1 per cent of wives who had two kids said in a 2005 population survey that they wanted to have more kids, and 8.5 per cent of them who had three said they wanted more. The survey suggested that the ideal average number of children was 2.9, the same as in the 1980s.
