Destro and The Barren-ness
This article about Deliberate Childlessness, via Pandagon, speaks directly to something that's come up here before.
The author, and I presume a fair number of people out there, seem to think that "The church must help this society regain its sanity on the gift of children. Willful barrenness and chosen childlessness must be named as moral rebellion." Now I believe that children are our future, and we should give children every possible opportunity, including health care and good public education. I also know that this world is overpopulated, or getting there fast, and it isn't really a bad thing if the birth rate goes down.
Honestly my main concern is that intelligent, creative and driven people are the ones deciding not to bear and raise children (for what seem like obvious reasons) and an increasingly larger percentage of the population will be made of sibling groups of 6 or 7 from the least critical or motivated members of society. I see no easy to solution to this. For while I, high-minded elitist that I am, may restrict myself to 2 children merely on the basis that I wish to replace my wife and I without contributing (too much) to overpopulation, someone who doesn't care, well, won't care.
We look down on China's birth restrictions as an imposition on civil rights, but the fact of the matter is they or something like them may someday become necessary worldwide. We have only so much space and so many resources. We should take any cultural movement which reduces our population growth as a good thing. It keeps us from getting to the point the Chinese have been at for years.
The author, and I presume a fair number of people out there, seem to think that "The church must help this society regain its sanity on the gift of children. Willful barrenness and chosen childlessness must be named as moral rebellion." Now I believe that children are our future, and we should give children every possible opportunity, including health care and good public education. I also know that this world is overpopulated, or getting there fast, and it isn't really a bad thing if the birth rate goes down.
Honestly my main concern is that intelligent, creative and driven people are the ones deciding not to bear and raise children (for what seem like obvious reasons) and an increasingly larger percentage of the population will be made of sibling groups of 6 or 7 from the least critical or motivated members of society. I see no easy to solution to this. For while I, high-minded elitist that I am, may restrict myself to 2 children merely on the basis that I wish to replace my wife and I without contributing (too much) to overpopulation, someone who doesn't care, well, won't care.
We look down on China's birth restrictions as an imposition on civil rights, but the fact of the matter is they or something like them may someday become necessary worldwide. We have only so much space and so many resources. We should take any cultural movement which reduces our population growth as a good thing. It keeps us from getting to the point the Chinese have been at for years.
1 Comments:
'replace my wife and I'
You never told me you were married. ;)
It is a good idea for the intelligent, creative, motivated people to have more kids, but just because you are intelligent, etc. doesn't mean your kids will be. So there's the kicker.
But I agree that the people who should be having the least children are having the most. My old roommate had been pregnant twice- intentionally- by age 19. none survived much past childbirth. I just don't understand why an uneducated barely employed teen thinks she needs to raise a family so young.
Then I heard about a family where the parents had like 6 or so children and every one of them had down syndrome. But they just kept having them. I don't understand that either.
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