Oiler;980450 wrote: I didn't dismiss their research but rather wanted to know more about that research. How was the information/data collected and what methods were used. That's why I linked you to sources from the organizations themselves detailing how they compile their data. I don't work for them, so I don't know the specifics of how they collect information (and every organization will do it differently), I only have a general idea of what statistical/quantitative research entails. fdama;980456 wrote: I only have 2 kids Alhamdullilah. Two boys and that is it. I am a Software Consultant, the wife is currently a housewife getting back to work soon. We have a nice house in a nice neighbourhood, a Mercedes for me and recently a VW for the wife. I send the boys to private, fee paying schools. I also pay for private tuition to ensure their success. We go for holidays abroad twice a year,most recently to Malaysia. I buy for them, what they need, but make sure never to spoil them. You may think we are your typical Western family. This is the life. You generally cannot have this lifestyle with 5, 6,7+ children. You'll have to buy a bigger house and put them into state schools. Not to mention the headache of running a large household. For get about the holidays too. It's just a holiday, but it adds to the well-being and the bonding of the family The family will generally be happier and the kids will have more of a chance in life than their counterparts who have numerous siblings. Personally, I detest those men who use their wives as baby-making machines. And worst of all, when they are needed, they are nowhere to be found. And I hate those women who starve their households for the monthly Ayuuto/Hagbad. This is why a lot of Somalis are in the shit here in the UK. Large families, living in inner city ghettos with kids attending some of the worst schools. Its a cruel vicious cycle. Finally, some sense in this thread. Reeyo;980474 wrote: Allah will provide, You all sound like you swallowed a whiteman's family guide book. I grow up in a big family and every day I am thankful. Probably the most abused and distorted Islamic belief by Muslims to justify their irresponsibility, as though it's Islam that tells them that faith alone is enough and that life doesn't require planning and foresight. "Trust in Allah, but tie your camel" - Prophet Muhammad (to a man who left his camel untied and when asked why, said because I trust Allah)

Alpha Blondy;980435 wrote: inabti, you're the one being a smartass. the calabashe is from Sidam, Ethiopia. after king Meneleke II's great southern expedition, it was exported to the South and subsequently to Lake Tukana region and to then eventually north-western Kenya. you found it in a nairobi tourism shop ee naga aamus.

I was wondering how many of them were Somalis when I heard the news yesterday. Sad

Alpha Blondy;980430 wrote: purchased in Nairobi probably but not indigenous to Kenya. Southern Ethiopia, actually. it seems someone ought to do their homework better, ma istidhi? Of course it's indigenous to Kenya, there are many societies that make use of calabashes as containers and instruments. Stop trying to be a smartass :mad: Day 2 of sleeping/getting up early, I was up at 7am, got a workout in and cleaned my entire apartment before 8:30. Like a BOSS

Wadani;980404 wrote: Uff..kaasi cilaawi birkimo qaniin ah buu ahaa. Balse kamuu macaashin oo wuxu ka mid noqday dadkii ugu horayay ee u dhinta cudurka xun. And besides his writing was super dense and almost impenetrable. Who cares? His personal life is irrelevant, it's his work and ideas that matter and there are few theorists who have had the impact of Foucault in the humanities and social sciences.

Haatu;980399 wrote: Schooling is fine but what the hell are you talking about sxb? SomaliPhilosopher reads Michel Foucault (and others)

Wadani;980391 wrote: Saffz this is why you stay up so late. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200911/intelligence-the-evolution-night-owls :D There was also this interesting study that came out the other day, there are actual physical differences in the brains of early birds and night owls. "Chronic jet lag" is such a great term to describe how I feel during the day usually

Day 1 of trying to condition myself out of my extreme night owl ways, I was up at 7am this morning after actually going to bed last night 7am used to be my bedtime. Let's hope this sticks.

Cambuulo!!!

Oiler;980290 wrote: There are many that don't exactly follow what media is telling them and following information they're reading from authority figures. In the future if you're using some authority body to back your arguments, please break it down for the skeptics. Thanks That's not how it works. I have no problem citing figures from UNICEF or the WHO, neither do any of my colleagues or professors. It's not some uncited Wikipedia sentence, it's the United Nations. If you're the one who for some strange reason decides their research is faulty, then the onus is on *you* to show the flaws in the data. Haatu;980309 wrote: I don't understand why Safferz is equating poor maternal healthcare with large families. The former is the result of lack of health services due to state collapse. Simply saying "well they should have less kids if there's no health clinics" doesn't solve the problem, it just delays its impacts. Y'all need to stop reading selectively -- I didn't equate poor maternal health with high birth rate, but there is certainly a correlation.

Alpha Blondy;980333 wrote: one word: rudimentary voyeurism, for the lack of a better term of disgust. :mad: inabti, adigo mudane, please tell us the ethnic names, the intended uses and the symbolic values of the circled items above. i'm quite sure they weren't mean to adorn and enhance the appearance of your somewhat impressive bookshelf. we don't want to hear your reasons for displaying. there's no need to justify why you've bought them or how you came to own or where you purchased these items. we know that. we don't have the time to hear, in one of those classic Frank Gardner moments, the BBC's Security correspondent, and his ethnicised tone of 'been there, done that, bought that.... uppity BS' , particularly, in over-pronouncing local terms, local places in their local dialects, as thought somehow privy, to local activities. do you think you've gained a vantage point in appearing to be more 'cultured' by displaying these items for all to see? are you trying to tell us you've traveled to remote markets in the darkest depth of Africa, where people barter goods for US Dollars, to secure their ownership? quite frankly, it's disgusting. it's not impressive and i think the gallery would agree........ when i say oorad oo isaso aas. bloody voyeur! :mad: That would be a dhiil from Somaliland on the left, and a calabash from Kenya on the right. I have a lot more stuff too that would piss you off, most recently I've added some beautiful wood sculptures from Ethiopia Don't hate because my apartment looks better than your furniture and art-less house :mad:

Coofle posted a thread below, with a radio interview with the mother. Unfortunately true

It's a beautiful day outside, and I'm stuck here at my desk doing work, writing at the speed of what feels like ten words an hour :mad:

Oiler;980266 wrote: Who is yo say I'm not a phd student in chemical engineering? But that's beside the point. Please do tell us how they gathered those stats (specific to those you provided in your previous relpy to Norf) Because a PhD student in chemical engineering knows better than to dismiss statistical data and the integrity of an entire discipline and the many that rely on it for research methods. I don't have time to do your homework for you (some of us aren't just hypothetical PhD students), go read the links I provided from UNICEF, UNESCO and the World Bank on their methodologies and they will tell you exactly how they've compiled and analyzed their data.

Tallaabo;980261 wrote: Made up?? What, you didn't know all those PhD holding statisticians, demographers, economists and epidemiologists who work for the United Nations and the World Bank just make sh*t up?

Oiler;980251 wrote: Hi, I would like to better understand this since I don't buy into stats. Would you happen to know how they gathered those stats, and who were asked? what was the sample? few people or the entire population? Can you be more specific about why you "don't buy into stats"? Do you have the background in theoretical and applied statistics and other quantitative research methods to debunk what people with PhDs in those fields have compiled and analyzed? I'd love to hear more. You can look up how individual NGOs and government agencies conduct research and collect data, but to give you an idea, here's UNICEF, UNESCO and the World Bank on their methodologies.

N.O.R.F;980243 wrote: The discussion was broadly on the economic reasons for family planning (home or abroad) before you threw in the health reasons (granted this more of a concern back home). My argument was focused more on the economic aspects of large families (home or abroad). Culturally, kids are an asset whilst in other countries kids can be portrayed as a burden (even with free schools). It is inevitable things will change for those of us living in the diaspora but more so for adoption of the local culture, lack of support (no village support) reasons rather than economic (the welfare state remains). And my angle was quality of life, of which health, financial resources, education, etc are all interrelated factors. You can't just talk about economics without talking about health, you can't talk about health without talking about education, you can't talk about education without talking about economics. I'm not disagreeing that Somalis value children (as social capital), what I'm disputing is your point that children generate actual economic wealth back home, when all the indicators point to the contrary. There is a correlation between high birth rate and poverty (and the trend is similar for large families in Western countries, though there are exceptions), that's not really up for debate.

Coofle;980237 wrote: Saffarz, I had this argument with wadaada on so many occasions and I came to realize health reasons are the only way you can get them to give you attention... .Never mention poverty ...Just the Horrible infant and maternal mortality figures (we are world champions)...improving such conditions as healthcare usually increases the public awareness to the tremendous damage done by unplanned pregnancies, this has been tried first hand in Somaliland. Read about how only Adna adan training midwives has dropped the figures and yet coupled with them the average children a man could have. ..... ragga mashquuliya, iyagaa idin ka jeesane...my advice to feminists. I don't disagree with you on that Coofle (though I don't agree that financial security shouldn't be factored into family planning, that's your interpretation not something dictated by religion), any attempts to make changes will require cultural sensitivity and pragmatism given the social context. From what I can see, many NGOs seem to already be operating that way, for instance the MSF Ethiopia position I mentioned earlier in the thread on advocating continuous breastfeeding because many Somali men were hostile to other forms of family planning.

N.O.R.F;980240 wrote: Now how is all this related to the economic reasons for family planning in Canada with which you based your original argument? I am following. Will scrutinise the stats later. Most of us are first generation immigrants, so population trends and cultural attitudes towards having children travel to the diaspora with us. But if you go back to the first page, I only spoke of "Somali culture," while you were the first to say "back home" and bring Somalia itself into the discussion and so I responded to that. But as I said, you can't fully separate the two at this point, when it comes to my parents' generation at least.

N.O.R.F;980227 wrote: You haven't provided any stats. One minute you're talking about your surburban life in Canada and how other Somalis are less off because they're part of larger families and the next your talking about obstetric fistula in Ethiopia! My arguments are actually quite well structured and relevant to the topic, I'm sorry you can't follow. But sure, here are some figures -- infant mortality rates by country (CIA, World Bank), maternal mortality rates by country (CIA, WHO, UNICEF), obstetric fistula in Somalia (Fistula Foundation, UNFPA Fistula Campaign), women's literacy rates in Somalia (UNESCO). Some key points and excerpts from the links and reports: - under five mortality rate is 225 per 1,000 live births (placing us in the bottom 3 in the world, in some rankings #1) - one in 10 Somali children die before their first birthday and one in 12 women die from pregnancy related causes (bottom 2 in world) - less than 30 per cent of the country has access to safe water - acute malnutrition afflicts 17 per cent of children - 2.12 million Somalis, more than half of whom are children, were in an Acute Food Security Crisis in 2012 - estimated incidence of obstetric fistula per 1000 deliveries is 3-5 - adult literacy rate: 49.7% of men, 25.8% of women

Provide sources that show my stats are inaccurate if you're going to dismiss them. Always amazing to see people fail to make obvious connections and assume there's no relationship because it makes a flawed argument easier to present (ie. high birth rates which is the topic at hand, and the health complications you seem to think are off topic like high infant and maternal mortality rates), lol.

Blackflash;980221 wrote: If you look at the fertility rates of economically prosperous countries, you'll notice that not even a theocratic nations like Saudi Arabia can stop the negative correlation between development and the number of children a woman has. There's something unsettling to me about those who would advocate natalism or birth control to illiterate Somali women . What do you mean by that? Natalism and birth control/family planning are oppositional concepts. That said, you're making family planning sound like some sort of sterilization project, it's simply having the necessary knowledge and agency to make informed decisions about one's reproductive health, like when and how to conceive and when and how to use contraception or other birth control options like breastfeeding to avoid/delay or space out pregnancies.

Thanks for sharing. I'm not the biggest fan of Skip Gates, but his PBS programs are always interesting to watch and I admire what he's done to bring African American history to a wider audience.

N.O.R.F;980219 wrote: Before one can tell others how to live as a family one needs to have lived in his/her own family. Data or not, I find privileged qurbo joogs telling mothers back home how to live their lives distasteful. Who are they to tell mums not to have another kid or to have 4 instead of 6? Why have kids at all? When she could have that nice big house to herself. 3 children or not, somewhere down the line there was a big family that didn't have much. They grazed the lands and tendered to the camel. The more the merrier to do this. If they were to 'plan', for reasons unknown, its likely you wouldn't be here today. But, because of our culture (more so before the wars), large families were the norm. There are large families doing well in the west. I'm talking about statistics and development indicators, and you're giving romanticized images of nomadic and rural poverty. Do you know how many Somali women back home are illiterate because our culture deems it more important for them to be wives and mothers than to be educated? Or that many of these large 'merry' nomadic families deal with chronic malnutrition? Did you know Somalia has one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the world? That our women deal with birth complications related to female circumcision, and that obstetric fistula - a condition where women are literally ripped open by childbirth and can no longer hold their urine and bowel movements - is a massive problem in Somalia, because our women start having children too young for their bodies to deal with pregnancy and childbirth? And I hope I don't have to explain to you what all of this means for Somali society as a whole, and what economists, political scientists and development analysts have shown about the links between women's health and wellbeing for families and society as a whole. Countries like ours continue to fail so long as that's the reality for women and children. You don't need to be a parent to understand what's at stake here.

N.O.R.F;980217 wrote: Why is this topic usually brought up by people who are adament fewer kids is the way to go but have no offspring themselves? Having many kids is part and parcel of our culture. If it wasn't most of us wouldn't be around today typing into keyboards. lol, so you need to be a parent to have an opinion? These are positions that can be easily substantiated with facts, whether they come from health/medicine, education, economics, or other development indicators. The pro-natalism of Somali culture has had negative consequences for the quality of life of women and children in particular, and for the development of Somali society as a whole. And not all of us are from large families... I'm one of three children, born to parents who were in their 30s with careers and multiple degrees. It's why I grew up middle class in the suburbs, while the vast majority of Somali Canadians live below the poverty line and in high crime, low income neighbourhoods. Education, socioeconomic status, birth rate, etc are all interrelated - and those conditions in turn shape the context within which your children will be raised and the opportunities they'll have in life - to pretend that having many children isn't associated with a host of issues (or worse, that it's some sort of secular/marxist/feminist conspiracy to depopulate Somali society a la Wadani) is disingenuous and ignorant. The data is there.