Freight Dog:
Rjan:
what I’m saying is that for every person who declines to have children or participating in raising a child, then somebody else has to have more children and do more child-rearing, and contributions (in one form or another) still have to be paid by all,
Ahhhh. This is exactly the woman’s hour claptrap I’m talking about. Stick the point we’re talking about. All this chat started with you saying breeding kids is valuable work. I said it’s not, because no ones motives for having kids are the above, so don’t pretend they are doing some sort of conscious public service.
I really don’t understand your point. Does a “conscious public service” have to be somehow painful or adverse, or at least absent any intrinsic pleasure? People who do the most good often find a seed of personal satisfaction in the task, which is then magnified by others’ recognition of it as promoting the common good.
The person worthy of being called good is the person who feels good about helping the old lady across the road (and would probably do it regardless of social recognition, or even in defiance of the bystanders telling the person to push her under the traffic). The person who begrudgingly helps her across in obeyance of social norm, whilst only just managing to suppress their desire to see the old lady pushed under the bus instead, is not the exemplar of good character.
The same is true of parenting. The good parent is the parent who enjoys having children for its own sake, not the parent who sees themselves as bearing a cruel burden for the common good. Almost all of the poorest mothers show virtue in this respect - they continue to have children and raise them adequately even when there is little or no social and economic support and condemnation from right-wing politicians for having children whilst on the dole, and in that respect their character is fundamentally good (no doubt you think the opposite).
And I maintain that having children is valuable work - I’m not saying it’s especially valuable work, or trying to put parents on a pedestal above all others. I’m just saying it’s an essential social function that deserves basic recognition and respect as being such, not being denigrated as a personal frippery or an economic privilege for those who do well in the free market.
Incidentally I don’t come at this question because I have any specific personal stake in it. I’m just acutely aware of how it is a class war issue, as rightwingers try to renege on the iron obligation to pay decent wages and provide steady work that allows children to grow up in decent and stable conditions.
Meanwhile they characterise struggling parents as deadbeats and dole claimants who are bleeding the country white, and bemoan under-disciplined and often underfed rascals that roam the streets or disrupt classrooms, but never accuse the bosses of free-riding on low-paid labour which the state has to top up, or of reaping the benefits of the last round of reproduction without enabling another, or accuse the speculators, the asset strippers, and the undercutters of harming the public interest when they destroy decent livelihoods without any commensurate public benefit.
Even the insinuation that swathes of the poorest should simply not have had any children is an absurd argument if you have already accepted the iron necessity of maintaining reproduction, since any widely successful suppression of reproduction caused by the dysfunctional free market in wages would simply be a monumental act of economic self-harm, a wedge of dynamite under the footings of civilisation with a 20-year delay fuse.
The fact that the social importance of reproduction is baked into people’s natural inclinations, the same as eating and drinking is baked in and doesn’t need a moral justification, is completely besides the point. The point is for you to respect the expression of those inclinations as being perfectly legitimate and socially functional, and a task for which adequate resources must be set aside which you have to contribute to, whether you choose (or are able) yourself to be a parent or not.
To entertain this notion for a second I’d put it to you, based off your above idea people who have children are getting the numbers rather wrong in their pre conceptual planning. Or would you think the upward trajectory in numbers is “about right”.
I say again, there is no upward trajectory! The current rate of reproduction amongst the settled people of the developed world, is slightly less than the replacement rate.
When making this assumption do people take stock of others within certain circles for say religious reasons breeding like it’s a hobby? Does that mitigate how many children one would choose to have? What about Moira or Ranjit who bred two lay layabouts who like fighting and live off the dole? Do I get my money back? Hardly a good deal is it? If im expected to pay for someone having kids in my absence I’d want good value for money!
You get most of the value for your money just by virtue of the very existence of a younger generation, and if you want better parenting then you’re going to have to pay for expensive interventions, or just accept that we have to knock out minor defects in children as we go. I still think you haven’t woken up to the fact that opting out of reproduction (even implicitly, by trying to deprive the task of the necessary resources) is not an option on the table, regardless of the circumstances.
And what mathematical model are these couples using when “taking up the slack” for childless types like me. I presume they are, as you say they expect the likes of me to pay for their good service to society! I rather think the eager breeders getting the numbers “wrong” is actually DETRIMENTAL to society and that the cost should in fact be reversed. So you see this is all nonsense. People have kids because they want to…
Do you honestly think “Janet with 5 kids” has made conscious decision to do me a favour because I don’t have kids so she’s taking up the slack. Thanks Janet! Nice of you to bloody ask anyone if you’re efforts are needed and thanks for expecting me to pay for your “public service”! What a hero you are Janet! Baloney. Janet has 5 kids because she can’t keep her legs shut.
It’s not necessary to evaluate whether Janet thinks she is doing you a favour. It suffices to recognise the fact that she is. Same as the sun doesn’t rise to do me a favour, the trees don’t grow to do me a favour, the bees don’t spread pollen to do me a favour - it’s completely immaterial what drives these processes in a narrow sense, so long as we have the mutual understanding that they are useful processes whose maintenance is imperative.
The vagaries of why some families have several children, and some have none, is not really material to the question of whether there is sufficient reproduction in aggregate. It is not a bad thing that in a liberal society people have a fair amount of latitude about how many children they have - we can afford that some have fewer, by thanks to the fact that others have more, and vice versa.
I’m not actually despite what you think against Janet doing this. That’s her own right. I’m actually passive on it. What I have a problem with is the people who do have kids SCORNING those that don’t and then instead of being honest about their own selfish motives wheeling out some dishonest tosh that they consciously do the world a favour and that the childless are somehow lacking in societal responsibility..
I’m not scorning you for having no children - which I’m acutely aware may or may not be your choice. I’m scorning your irresponsible attitude to having to participate, in one way or another, in reproduction. The tone of stroppiness with which you begrudge having to pay for other people’s children, even when you have none and yet expect to share in the fruits of continuing civilisation.
I’d like to know where you got the idea when discussing people’s motives that I said the world should NOT reproduce.
You said it implicitly, by asking rhetorically why you should have to pay for it! And I’m making it perfectly clear that you do have to pay for it, because reproduction costs resources! Same as sowing a field costs seed and human attention, and it is simply necessary that that seed is withheld from the previous round of growing so that the next round may begin, without any choice in the matter (other than collective suicide).
with the indigenous population being out grown by the ever increasing immigrant one.
