Planning for a better future and believing your child will live is an afterthought for most American parents. Most American mothers are free from worrying that their child will die an untimely death from injury or disease -- much less a preventable ailment like diarrhea, which kills over 2100 children every day.



But imagine your motherhood held no such promises. Imagine having to take into consideration the fact that it's likely at least one of your children will die before the age of five. How does that affect the family that you plan for? How does that affect the future that you plan for your daughters or sons? How would it affect your own sense of the future, and of plans for your life?



These are the realities faced by our world's poorest mothers. And though the child mortality rate is at its lowest ever, it is a reality no less painful for the mothers who live it.



In their annual letter, Bill and Melinda Gates outline three popular myths that block progress to the poor. The third myth, outlined by Melinda, is that "saving lives leads to overpopulation" -- the belief that some people in poor countries have "too many" children and that if we saved all of them from dying, the world would become overpopulated.



At first glance, it's a bit of a brain twister, and a shock to the sensibility of many American parents. But think back again to the mother who must plan for the untimely death of one of her children. In places where child mortality rates are high (the chance of a child dying before the age of 5 is at or above 20 percent), women tend to have more children. As history has shown us, as child mortality rates decline, the size of families declines as well. A woman no longer needs to have more children to make up for the ones she might lose.



It comes down to education, and to choice.