OPINION: Welcome to your world, beautiful Baby Maeve
So, then, what kind of world can Baby Maeve, Ireland's first-born baby of 2019, expect to grow up in. Well, for a start, the little girl from Kilmessan, can expect, all boding well, to live until 2101, according to a report by Unicef at the weekend.
Babies born in Ireland this year — there were 62,053 registered births here in 2017 — can expect to live into the next century, Ireland being one of only 28 countries worldwide where such babies will likely live until the 22nd century.
In the past three decades, the world, thankfully, has seen remarkable progress in child survival, cutting the number of children worldwide who die before their fifth birthday by more than half, says Unicef Ireland Executive Director Peter Power.
"Unfortunately, nearly half of all children born this year around the world likely won’t have the same positive future. A child born in Ireland in January 2019 is most likely to live to 2101, while a child from Somalia would be unlikely to live beyond 2077.”
(By the way, this year marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, under which governments are committed to, among other things, taking measures to save every child by providing good quality healthcare.)
Baby Maeve is one of 175 babies born here on January 1, a tiny fraction of the 395,072 estimated to have been born around the world on New Year’s Day.
Maeve will have a better choice of jobs. Or worse. It depends on which experts are right. The end of the Baby Boom generation could open up more jobs for more people being born today. And there will be good jobs for people with a knack for math, science, and health care. On the other hand, the continuing outsourcing of work and the advance of robotics and AI could spell the end of many traditional jobs.
Also, statistics this week show that Baby Maeve will not get her State pension until the age of 77 — and her children will have to wait until their 80s, according to leading accountants Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
At middle age, Maeve will see the end of the Baby Boom generation, the huge number of people born between 1946 and 1964. They’ve defined society for so long, in so many ways, it’s strange to think how it’ll be when they’re gone.
Maeve's world will be a very crowded place. By 2050, the world’s population is projected to reach between 8.3 billion and 10.9 billion but it may be a more peaceful planet. Armed conflict between nations, the kind that kills most people, will keep falling, according to the Peace Research Institute in Oslo which projects the proportion of countries ripped apart by conflict will be halved by 2050.
According to the soothsayers, in the next 50 to 100 years, babies born this month can expect, among other things:
(i) to be able to communicate through ‘thought transmission' where picking up thoughts and relaying them to another brain will be as easy as storing them on the net.
(ii) to be able to control the weather. (This is already happening as with mediating tornadoes).
(iii) to be dealing with one, worldwide currency. (Good news, no more of that confounded euro. Bad news, it will be the Chinese renminbi).
(iv) to be wired to computers to make brains work faster. Think Twitter on speed. Personal computers will be really smart but may be smarter than Maeve or any of us. A report from Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group says a €1,000 computer will have the processing power of all the humans on earth by 2050.
The possibilities are endless.
For many of the challenges any new baby faces, the answers may well be through technology. As she grows, Baby Maeve will no doubt track health and fitness statistics, manage savings and investments, and have more direct power over every aspect of her life, if the use of such technology is focused.
But she will also need to develop emotional resiliency, as well as deep cultural and social connections with people who offer support, love, and meaning to her life.
This is the real challenge ... and it is for all parents of all new babies...