Mia Mottley

I said to her, one of the things I've been pondering is how much of our advancement has limited the natural progression of what it is to be human.

Because now you have to choose to make a family.

Back in the day, if we think about...

this is only in this century.

People didn't think, they just did.

You just did.

And you couldn't, you know, I mean, obviously there's like old, you know, I've seen like ancient prophylactics and things, but for the most part, people just had kids because they had kids.

Like, how do you begin to think about this idea?

You know, we see people saying, oh, populations are declining here, populations are declining there.

Is it the threat that some people say it is to nations?

It is.

I mean, look, in the Caribbean, the first thing I did when we won government in 2018 was to create a National Population Commission.

Because having served as Minister of Education many years ago, I realized just from the numbers going into schools that we had a problem.

In those days, I had about 4,200, 4,300 kids every year.

When I came into office in 2018, it was down to about 2,000.

5,000, 2,600, 2,700, something like that at the beginning.

And now the ones going in in infants A are like 2,200.

So that you can clearly see the sharp decline in 30 years.

And if I go to other countries in the region, let me give you context.

Guyana, that is the fastest growing country in the world.