How a TV Hit Sparked Debate About Having Too Many Babies

Five young sisters and their brother crowded around a small television in their modest cement house, a wriggling, giggling pile of skinny limbs and abandoned homework.Like families across northern Nigeria, the Sani family had been waiting all week for Thursday night to watch the latest episode of their favorite show, a comedy drama called “Gidan Badamasi.”Everyone was talking about the show last year in their suburb of Kano, Nigeria’s second-biggest city, where rows of well-behaved children sit on sidewalks every afternoon, learning the Quran by heart.And almost everyone knew of someone like the show’s feckless protagonist: a wealthy serial divorcé who had had 20 wives and so many children he had lost count — and was too stingy to support them.The show’s theme — the consequences of having many children — has struck a chord in Nigeria.

It is a pressing issue for many in Africa, where a protracted baby boom is fueling the youngest, fastest-growing population on the planet, even as birthrates plummet in richer regions.The scale of this youth boom opens up enormous potential opportunities for global influence and possibly economic growth, but also huge challenges for societies that need to educate and employ all of these people.Many African women have far more children than women on other continents do: Women in Nigeria have an average of over five children, while American and European women have about 1.5, and Chinese women even fewer.

And recent progress in reducing child mortality in Africa means more of them survive into adulthood than ever before....