CHILDBIRTH IN ARMENIA: PROMOTE POPULATION, IMPOVERISH FAMILIES
Naira Bulghadaryan

ArmeniaNow.com
04 July, 2008
Armenia

To promote childbirth and encourage large families the Armenian
government has increased the one-time amount paid to families for
the birth of a child. Since 2007 for each child families get for
100,000 drams ($323). When a third child is born to a family, the
state grants the family 300,000 drams ($968) (the government started
the policy in 2006).

However state policy of supporting large families and encouraging
childbirths do not change the social conditions of the families. They
continuously work to survive and turn even poorer.

Statistics show the larger the family becomes, the worse becomes its
social condition. Almost half of the total number of families with
7 and more members in Armenia is poor.

In 2007 123,792 families in Armenia received allowances. According
to statistics the prevailing number of families receiving state
allowances has underage children from 2 to 18 years, who make 75.9
percent of their total number.

Khachatryan family

Families with multiple underage children is the best precondition to
be included in the family allowance system targeted at needy families.

Vanadzor, the third largest town in the republic represents just part
of the total picture of poverty in the country. The Leningradyan
district – one of the small house neighborhoods in Vanadzor – is a
haven mainly to families in need.

The wrecked small houses with the laundry of their residents drying
up in front of them point to the social conditions of their owners.

The large family of the Khachatryans lives in a one-room house.

The small house hosts 10 at night. Even if they had a chance to get
enough beds, the small space of the house wouldn’t let them put it
inside. The Khachatryans hardly manage to have two large and one
smaller bed, a small table, some chairs, baby carriage and a cupboard
in the room.

The two school aged sons of the family have no place to sleep in the
house. Despite the normal mental aptitudes, the boys attend the school
for mentally retarded children in Vanadzor and sleep there. "They
get clothes there, and food," their mother Lena Shestakova explains.

Shestakova, a Russian by descent, is 43. She has delivered 10 children
– 5 boys and 5 girls. Her two sons and the eldest daughter are adult
and have their own families; but only one of the sons lives apart
from the family, in the Russian Federation.

Two of the remaining children also live apart from the family –
in the orphanage of Vanadzor. The rest live in the small house.

Lena’s husband has no permanent job. He used to be a guard last year
but left the place because he only made 16,000 drams ($52) a month.

The family survives on its pension and the allowance that make 50,000
drams ($161) a month. The money does not even reach the family as it
covers the debts for communal expenses and adds to the old ones.

"We hardly manage to buy bread, let alone thinking of any other food,"
says Khachatryan.

The family did not have the policy of large family encouragement
in mind, especially as they have a problem of getting their daily
bread. The husband is asked why they haven’t practiced birth control.

"What condoms are you speaking about? We would buy bread, if we had
the money."

Khachatryan believes the sum given by the state is too little to
support large families especially taking daily increasing prices
into account.

Experts say it is mainly the needy families who take advantage of
the state policy for encouraging births.

"I have rarely seen a socially protected family having a third child,"
says Narek Sargsyan, the head of the department for protection of
children rights at the local administration of Lori province.

Sargsyan says the reason is the educational level of the socially
protected families who realize the hardships of raising and educating
children. Sargsyan thinks the socially unprotected people’s attitude
toward child birth is superficial because of the lack of at least an
average level of education.

"My work experience shows children born to socially unprotected
families, unfortunately, appear in the street sent by the parents
to beg; receiving no education, they become useless to society,"
says Sargsyan. The births of new children in the socially unprotected
families are a result of both misunderstanding of the responsibility
for children and also of not getting timely medical help.(which is
possibly to prevent some diseases)

Aside from the low educational level and unawareness, specialists say,
the birth of new children to socially unprotected children is a result
of the lack of sexual culture – an unawareness of family planning.

Psychologist Zarik Avetisyan has a long experience of working with
socially unprotected families.

"They could at least think they could have two children and raise them
in normal conditions, but they are too far from that way of thinking."