Family planning, social planning, and human dignity

Dr. Michel E. Abs

Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches

In all components of this world, whether created by the Creator or man-made, the smallest cell determines the largest or final structure.

If the family constitutes the smallest cell in human societies, then its composition and dynamics are what determine the composition and the dynamics of society, taking into consideration, of course, the intermediate structures that play a basic role in most cases, such as institutions, classes, and culturally diverse groups, and all other components of the complex and fabulous social structure for the specialists and analysts, who are concerned with its reality and fate.

Studying the reality of the family and efforts to organize it in the broadest sense, are therefore part of society’s self-awareness through its researchers, despite how much their ideas and propositions were neglected and how much their achievements and aspirations were ignored. Many societies did not do justice to them ignoring their importance in terms of organizing society and improving its conditions.

To try to study the family and put forward some solutions to the problems it suffers from, amounts to the level of a doctor who diagnoses a disease - or an abnormal situation - and proposes solutions to get out of it.

Understanding, probing and capturing the structure of the family and its dynamics in a society is the cornerstone for the rest of the social and urban policies in its various dimensions.

To live in a society which policy makers do not understand anything about the cultural and demographic dynamics of society, and they are not aware that people marry and have children and that the children will grow up and places must be found for them in kindergartens, schools and universities, and that these children who will graduate from universities after a quarter of a century will need to find jobs for them, and they will establish new families like all humankind, so they will buy apartments to host their familes, and the consumption of electricity and water will increase in addition to the need for more comprehensive transportation and communication networks, and at some point they will need medical care and other accompanying services… You are inevitably reaching a situation in which cities are transformed into belts of misery, with overpopulation, human congestion, pollution and an exorbitantly high cost of transportation, housing, etc., in addition to the decline in the quality of the urban fabric throughout the country, which leads to the emergence of new improvised and unplanned residential areas. New centers of urban chaos that have no solution in the foreseeable future.

In brief: Lebanon as a model.

This society, which is not aware of the mechanisms of its growth and progress, does not plan its urban expansion in parallel with its population expansion, and thus falls into an unspeakable chaos, and getting out of it is almost impossible.

As for the society to become aware, through scholars in this field, and then through the state, the institution framing the movement of society, of these facts, then this would facilitate urban and human growth based on population growth, and make the institutions of public affairs keep pace with this growth, so that people would grow up with the awareness that every person has his own place and standing, and he does not have to conduct the struggle of predators in the forest - the struggle for survival - in order to obtain them, but rather he has to cope with the progressive struggle in the field of production, creativity, effectiveness and good performance.

This is how population studies and family planning techniques preserve the dignity of peoples and individuals.

I must mention here the role of major social actors in this field.

First, the researchers in the field of social and population sciences, who have made abundant contributions in this domain of studies, lectures, programs and projects.

Second, we must mention the many creative people of the seventh art who were able to portray this bitter reality in the Arab countries and my homeland. How many films or reports have dealt with these issues and portrayed the reality in all its ugliness, in an attempt to urge those who must do something, to do it, or at least to start drawing some solutions for it.

As a lecturer and researcher in the field of economic sociology, I consider that we are still in the pre-social contract stage, so we witness, from time to time, jungle-like actions that emerge in our daily lives and wreak chaos and corruption in our societies.

Social and demographic studies are wronged in our societies because, even if they happen, their chances of implementing and achieving the desired transformation may be almost non-existent.

The hope is that the economic, social and cultural transformations will accumulate in order to one day constitute a sufficient force of pressure to create a society that follows new rules.