Two children, two lives

Our third child, and second daughter, was born recently.  This leads me to make two observations: firstly, that three children are a LOT more work than two, and secondly, that life is unfair.

 I’ll explain.  A Pakistani friend of ours also had his third child recently.  Like us he had a boy, then a girl, and now another girl.  Like us he loves his children very much.  Like us he and his wife are devoted parents.  Like us they are delighted to have three healthy children.  But there the similarities end and the differences begin.

 Our kids have Western passports – two each, actually, since they have dual nationality.  For both of those countries the life expectancy is over 80 years.  The literacy rate is effectively 100%.  If we had to return to either of our home countries our kids would benefit from high-quality healthcare at a low cost.  Both of our home governments score highly on transparency ratings, since Western countries have largely eliminated corruption.  If we got into trouble our foreign offices would, in all probability, get us out of it.  While it’s impossible to say that our children will have trouble-free lives, their passports give them a ticket to a life of significant privilege.  They are probably among the most privileged children in the world.

 And our friends’ kids?  Pakistani life expectancy is 65 years, its literacy rate 57%.  Quality healthcare is available here, at a cost.  If you can’t pay for it, you can’t have it.  The average salary is around $3,000 a year, less than a tenth of that in the Western countries whose passports my children possess.  We went to visit our friend recently.  His new daughter, a month older than ours, weighs less now than our daughter did at birth, and she’s growing a lot more slowly.  This is partly due to the fact that she is being fed cow’s milk, since that is what the doctor recommended.  A better doctor would not recommend cow’s milk, but they can’t afford a better doctor, so their daughter’s development is suffering.

 So, to summarise, our daughters were born within a month of each other.  One is statistically likely to live 20% longer, be healthier, earn ten times more money, and is twice as likely to receive an education.

 May God have mercy on a world in which, even at birth, the paths of childrens’ lives are so unjustly laid out.