Where did they go wrong?

Aging Italy

Italy is running out of children & the elderly have no one to take care of them.
Accdording to the stats in this article, Italy used to have 5 adult children for every elderly adult, now they say that number has shrunk to 1.5.

It's easy to imagine what that statistic will be when couples are now having only 1 or possibly 2 children per couple.

I wonder what the numbers are when we're talking animals becoming extinct. Because @ this rate...Italians (& other European nationalities) may soon be extinct themselves.

Is this what happens when children are no longer considered a blessing to have as many as possible but a burden we must limit?

Now something else this article briefly mentions is the fact that the current elderly's family don't ahve time for them either. They live alone & their children rarely visit them. What happened? What happened to the families? What happened to taking care of their own elderly parents? To building a family bond strong enough that you visit regularly & you don't let your parent need to depend on paying someone to care for them & keep them company? DId the parents miss the mark somewhere? Did they not visit their own parents? What happened?

I think we see this same trend clearly in America today. Children can be sent away to day care easily while both parents work....well that is pretty much what we can expect when we are old & unable to care for ourselves.....our children will be sending us away into an elderly day care center & can we blame them? I bet we won't like it when the time comes & we are old & lonely, though.