parentshiftbook Chapter 543: Limited By The Limitations Of The Times, Late Marriage And Late Childbearing Cannot Be
Chapter 543: Limited By The Limitations Of The Times, Late Marriage And Late Childbearing Cannot Be
Yan Changqing looked at Zhu Yuanzhang, Empress Ma, and the princes Zhu Biao, Zhu Xi, Zhu Fan, Zhu Di and other princes and sighed:
"And in addition to the relatively decreasing number of descendants, there is another more important reason, and that is - family labor force!!!"
"When a child reaches the age of five or six, he can already help cut grass, feed the cows, and do other housework within his ability, and he can begin to help relieve some of the pressure at home."
"After you reach the age of eleven or twelve, you will be equivalent to a little adult, and you can start to think about getting married and starting a family.
"At the same time, children of this age will truly become the labor force and the backbone of the family."
"Boys can work in the fields and share the family burden."
"Girls can also weave and sell cloth to help support the family."
"And if Your Highness allows people to marry and have children late like B, it will be equivalent to making B lose one or even several extremely important family labor forces within three generations of A!!!"
"His Royal Highness has also served as a local county magistrate for two years. He should also know what one, or even several, laborers means to a common people's family!!!"
For example, if a woman's childbearing age is too young, it will also lead to difficulty in giving birth to a woman, and even death during childbirth. Didn't Yan Changqing know before?!!
Of course he knew it, but he didn't go out of his way to say it.
Because it’s useless to say it!!!
Some government orders, even in essence, in the long run, and from the original intention, are beneficial to the people.
However, due to the limitations of the times, even if the imperial court directly forcibly issues such a decree, as King Zhu Ping of Qin said, it would not be truly popular among the people.
One of them is to allow people to postpone having children until they are twenty years old.
Because after all, eloquence is the first birthright of this era!!!
Only when people give birth to more people can they have more labor force to cultivate more fields and produce more food.
And food is the foundation of everything in this era!!!
Similarly, only by giving birth to more people can ordinary people enhance their ability to resist external risks and improve their survival rate in society and nature.
For example, in rural areas, the total population of each household is only three or four people.
The total population of other large households is at least eighty or ninety people.
So if there is a shortage of water for watering the fields, then don’t think too much. The family with a small family size will most likely be bullied and will be the last to water the fields. .
Because your family has a small population, it means that your family has a small number of adults. It also means that your family cannot defeat or resist those families with a larger population!!!
So when everyone is fighting for limited water resources, the party with a small family size will naturally be squeezed, suppressed and bullied by the party with a large family size.
However, if your family has the same number of people as other families, with eight, nine, or ten people, will other families still dare to bully you?!!
Don't dare!!!
Because with the same number of adults in your family, you can not only compete with other families, but you may even defeat them!!!
So when faced with this situation, everyone will naturally talk about the corresponding watering rules again, such as first come, first watering and other watering rules.
To put it bluntly, only people whose "strength" is roughly equal to each other are qualified and able to tell the rules.
Therefore, in order to support your own family, you can sit down with other families with a large population and discuss the "rules" to ensure that your family will not be suppressed, excluded and bullied by other families with a large population.
Then the remaining, most simple, convenient and effective choice is to work hard to give birth to a child, and strive to make your family a family with a large population!!!
If we expand this phenomenon a little further, we can find that many people with the same surname will also gather together in the form of clans.
Folks from the same village, township, town, county, or even the same state, prefecture, or province often choose to stick together.
The purpose of these three is actually the same, which is to make their side look "large in population" by holding together to keep warm.
Therefore, they are qualified to negotiate rules with other groups with the same "large population", and then strive for more benefits and interests for themselves or for their own groups.
Similarly, with a large family size, in addition to being able to cope with the risks from crowd society, it can also better resist those risks from nature.
For example, a certain year suddenly encounters a natural disaster such as a severe drought that cannot be changed by current manpower.
If the family has a large population, then your own home can dig canals and divert water faster than others.
Don't think it's just a quick step. In many cases, it depends on whether the crops can be saved and fed!!!
And even if the crops cannot be saved in the end, if the family has a large population, then everyone will go out to work together and they will not be easily bullied.
As long as one of them can find a job, then there is a great possibility that the others can survive.
This greatly enhances the ability of oneself and the family to withstand natural risks.
In addition, the current medical conditions are so poor that a minor illness or pain such as tetanus or bacterial wound infection is enough to kill a person.
In such an environment, if people only have three children, they will probably only be able to support two children in the end, or maybe one child.
Even if there is no child to feed, it is not impossible.
Therefore, even if the people only want to have three children at first, considering the final survival rate of the children, they will try their best to have more than four or five children, and try their best to ensure that the final number of children is more than two to three!
In addition, giving birth to a baby also takes time. Excluding special circumstances such as twins, it takes one year to give birth to a child in ten months, and five years to give birth to five children.
In this era where the average life expectancy is short and people can know their destiny at the age of fifty, excluding the first fifteen years and the last ten years, there are only a total of twenty-five years left for childbearing.
If they choose to marry later and have children later, it will be equivalent to subtracting five years from this basis.
Although these five years will reduce the risk of dystocia for women, it will greatly increase the risk for themselves and their families!!!
Therefore, after careful consideration, the common people decided to choose the lesser of two powers that harm each other, or to consider the interests of the whole.
In the end, even if the common people clearly know that women's childbirth age is too young, it will cause women's fertility difficulties, and even cause dystocia and death of women.
But the final choice they make is that they will continue to choose to have children early in nine cases out of ten.
This is also the fundamental reason why Yan Changqing said before that even if the imperial government issued a decree on delaying marriage and delaying childbirth, if it were implemented, the people would follow it and it would not be truly promoted.
PS1: The serial is hot, and we urgently need all the handsome guys, beauties, and big guys to order and customize! I wish all the big guys who make full orders and customizations to get rich overnight, good health, and all the best.
Good luck! Thank you all! I kneel down to all the bosses!