About ethics of child rearing
Honey write a guest post today at 20-forty about “The Ethics of Having Children“. Honey’s message: I won’t, it is better to adopt, too much population.
The Christian Bible is an interesting historical document. If you read the old testament, they emphasize raising sons, as if boys were more important.
Boys grow into soldiers and fight off attackers.
The ancient Greeks were a bit bent. Aristotle (from the collected dialoques of Plato) waxes philosophical, romantic and drunk in the Symposium collection, and declaims about how love blessed by the gods is what a man feels for his boy-toy. Yet the government (state, for Aristotle, living in one of the Greek city-states) enforces the law, that every man marry and raise a son or three for the army.
The ancient tradition of armies attacking their enemies, defeating their army, killing the men and raping the women still lives on in parts of the world. This tactic, probably where the term ‘barbaric’ comes from, eliminates the enemy as a nation, the women are ‘sullied’ so they can’t achieve power on their own (there is also a sacred desecration aspect to the rapes, and most ancient religions were predominantly female dominated), and the children (if any) would be part-blooded of the conquering nation. This practice assimilate the people left in the enemy territory into a new, expanded conquering nation.
What I gather from this? And act of birth is always an act of war, it just pre-dates the time of conflict.
Honey notes that there is an inverse relationship of births per family and economic status. Rich people buy security. Others need additional helpers – children – to raise more crops, to work more low-paid tasks, to care for each other. If you raise the standard of living – reduce crime, increase security of food and shelter availability, people spend their time doing other things than making and raising babies. Honey is focused on her career and her quality of life. Many women, struggling, are focused on finding food and shelter, and tend to think in terms of security – and make more babies.
Where Honey sees the world birth rate a problem for finding food, she might be overlooking what that means for national security. We see Russia striking out, gathering resources through military conquest. We ourselves turn new recruits into apprentice soldiers in 8-14 weeks. How many soldiers could China, or Malaysia, or Puerto Rico, or Mexico turn out?
20 years ago there was a ‘Zero Population Growth’ movement in the United States. The goals were great, but there was little interest where it would have mattered. The poor, those struggling to achieve a secure lifestyle, were focused on security – which often includes or results in more children. The ‘intelligentsia’, well-to-do, educated upper classes were already near the zero population growth procreation goals.
When you look at communities, and armies, you realize the axiom ‘grow or die’ happens quite quickly. We either raise children, or make ourselves vulnerable to those out-procreating us.
As for adopting, that, too, is a luxury that the rich can afford, or the desperate attempt. Abandoned or orphaned children of medical neglect, drug and alcoholic mothers, and permanently injured by disease or trauma, are much less valuable, in economic terms, to the community and family that raises them. Wealthy families and communities can afford the growth of human spirit that raising such children provides, but those without the resources, or facing military or criminal hazard, can’t afford such burdens.
Honey mentions a comment I make from time to time, that a mate with the aptitude and skills to be a successful co-parent makes a better mate. Note that I don’t believe that every couple needs to raise children, or that finding a mate to raise children with is the only reason to date. (Actually, I think dating, as practiced in the movies and in the US since the 1950′s, is a horrible way to find a mate.) I do think that making a home – with or without children – is the point to becoming more serious that casually dating a partner.
So child rearing, to me, is directly related to national military and economic security. I could never countenance an effort to reduce our national birth rate, until the rest of the world is secure in food, shelter, and safe from attack. Until that happens, there will always be the spectre of war, and a need to ‘man’ our own armed forces in defense, or in offense.
In one very real sense, one could ask today, as in the past,
How patriotic are you? How many sons have you raised for the Army? (Navy, Coast Guard, police, Marines, Air Force, fire department,etc.)
Golly. I am not sure I’ve heard a contemporary common man aver such a thing as birth for the sake of war. I guess it’s as good a reason as any to have children.
Not sure if you read my post that touched on this question. But here’s a couple of cents worth.
http://cathouseteri.blogspot.com/2008/06/where-have-all-young-girls-gone.html
cathouse teri, Thanks for commenting.
I wasn’t so much contradicting Honey, as pointing out there are other reasons than personal conviction to take into account.
Children are the way that cultures and beliefs persist down through history. I have seen speculation that the Catholic Church practice of celibacy in the priesthood and among monks caused the dark ages, a tremendous loss of some of the best and brightest minds that were never propagated to the next generation. Roger Bacon comes to mind, as a man whose genius should have been available to succeeding generations.
If everyone that earned $1,000,000 or more this year chose to never have children, we would lose access to the family history of the most successful achievers of our age. Those that work low-paying jobs will continue to procreate. Future generations would be ill-balanced to maintain a national economy. And poorly placed to defend the nation against foreign military and economic attack.
Now think, if we stop having babies, and China and Russia keep having babies – we leave the next generation attracting more Mexicans, Chinese sneaking across the Canadian border – none of which are eligible for military service – and more at risk for more violent challenges to national security.
The dilemma is almost as poignant as the soldier in war. For a soldier, on average his chances for surviving if he runs away – which destroys the army, which loses the battle, which puts our runaway soldier at the mercy of the enemy. If he stands, though, he risks being killed in battle, but the risk is slighter than if the battle is given away. Should the soldier run or stand? Should a woman choose to have a child, so that her family history and her husband’s family history will persist in the next generation?
Failing to have kids is a genetic equivalent of suicide – your genes, what you would have taught your children, is lost to the world. Adopting kids, you can teach them part of the history; like all kids, parts will be lost in translation. But the genetic heritage is simply lost. Whether you carry the genes for greatness, for wisdom, for stunningly outstanding mistakes or for resistance to viruses – those particular contributions to the gene pool are lost.
China mandated, with draconian laws and punishments, a single child per couple. That has slowed their national population growth. Their current disregard for public safety, air and water quality, and sane industrial working conditions, bids fair to reduce that problem even further.
But Malaysia, Bill (and Hilary?) Clinton’s friends, and other places are growing rapidly and rabidly to be a center of over-populated Islam fundamentalists. They look to push their control and ideology around the world. Other places with more people that food are looking for weak places to push people and snatch food. We have to be careful, that good intentions to save the earth don’t doom us to conquest by those that refuse to discipline themselves and don’t have the time, patience, or interest in worrying about the health of the planet. Many are looking for food for tonight.
I don’t at all believe that the world should stop having babies. Neither do I believe the world will. And your comment at my post seemed to imply that you feel I come across as having a desire to make abortions illegal. Which is entirely untrue. In fact, in the story I told, I had advised my little friend that I was with her 100% no matter what she chose. I also would never want to live in a world where we decide who gets to have children and who doesn’t. Truly, not everyone should have babies. But they do. And that’s that.
I adore my children and my grandchildren. I think I have made it plain in almost every bit of my writing that everything good in my life comes from the children. It just pisses me off that people get a little crazy about that whole childbirth thing. Mainly because there are so many who need families. Why not help them?
cathouse teri, as a former foster parent, I agree about the need for adoptions.
The pressures of family, community, and nation for childbirth do need to be acknowledged. Adoption solves a different problem.