We should not forget the kids where ones little children, so the issue comes from high birth rate. Africans especially do not try to take birth control measures making our available resources not sufficient enough to meet up the needs of it's citizens leading to high average and poor citizens.
The issue on population is kinda different from what the op is saying. If we want to focus on population now then we should not blame those people giving birth without control, have you observed something in Nigeria let's use Nigeria for example, people involved with giving birth to multiple children without proper care are mostly uneducated people and ignorance, mostly in rural areas. People like this need to be educated on sex and preventive measures to regulate population. I know of some organizations that visits rural areas once in awhile and educate mothers and youth on issues like this. The increase on population is an easy matter to deal with and the duty of the government bodies is just to sponsor such organization with the necessary materials.
I'm sure I did not go too far from what the OP was trying to explain, if at all back then our parents where educated enough to understand that applying birth control measures will help reduce the rate of youths who are old enough to begin their lives by doing jobs and get paid, then definitely our resources would have met the needs of everyone but unfortunately we have greater population than our available resources.
I still know of a young family who has upto 12 children, as times goes on they will grow into their youthful age and if the country doesn't experience a change then they will have to suffer nothing different from what we are facing currently.
I also have this believe cause the young will definitely grow, but the idea of correcting older people is nice but when correcting the government we ought to be careful cause in Nigeria na who get power to rule na strong pass and they can easily deal with anyone that want to kill their government.
Their should always be a voice to speak out, if everyone of us decides to keep shot then definitely in years to come we won't experience any positive changes.