It’s About Making Babies!

Sharon at Casaubon’s Book mentions a recent CNN report about the Italian region of Lombardy offering cash to women considering an abortion – to keep the baby.

I understand the issues – the Muslim religion is exerting tremendous pressure toward population growth within their community (averaging 8.1 births per couple). This pressure must destabilize any non-Islamic nation.

I think I am coming closer to answering a question that concerned me some five or six years ago. Telling kids to not get pregnant – or not to have sex – seemed short sighted. That was the initial question that got me started here at ItsAboutMakingBabies.com.

What if we explained why they should have babies, and work from there on when and where it works out for the very best? Only, I couldn’t see an answer. The Bible claims “be fruitful and multiply” which is a means of growth for the Church – but lacks anything but an authoritarian “Do it because I said so.” Don’t get me wrong – for that particular Authority, that is a pretty persuasive argument.

But I wanted an answer that fit non-believers, and a secular culture and society.

I consider culture to be the rituals and traditions, with the values and definitions of right and wrong, that a family chooses. Here I mean family as adults choosing to care for progeny; extended family is the families that the adults were raised in, and the families of their siblings (brothers and sisters). The cultures of the families in a community make up the culture of that community. In times of affluence (cheap energy), communities can tolerate a lot of outlying, non-conforming families (family cultures). During periods of harsh choices – during conflict, scarce resources, and other periods of stress – there will and should be less tolerance of “not our kind”. Communities have a vested interest in assuring that children raised there, and newcomers, come to assimilate the general definitions of right and wrong, the median values, the most common rituals and traditions. Without the communal culture, the community loses the ability to care for itself, to provide a secure environment for its families.

So. Why should we (as a member of a family or community), choose to have a baby? To honor the culture of our extended family and community.

We learn what we are raised with. If we respect (not necessarily the same as enjoy or adore) our parents – we must feel a need to grow into their examples of adulthood, including the family they raised us in. We would need to produce the next generation, to assert the fulfillment of our destiny, to recreate the role models of our parents and family and respected members of the community.

The notion of romantic love as a basis of forming a family – or having a romantic “relationship” without benefit of family – is quaint, and since its invention in Renaissance Italy, has sold a lot of soap, cosmetics, provocative clothes and fancy vehicles. What Romeo and Juliet point out, poignantly, is that ignoring the effect on the community and extended family when choosing a mate can be catastrophic to the lives of the people involved.

I note that weddings in the US typically require one or more witnesses to complete the marriage certificate; none are needed to proclaim “I love you, your place or mine?” That is, that forming a family is a public event, a community event, and creates a new member of the community – the couple joined together choosing to raise progeny.

I am not denigrating marriages that don’t contemplate having children, not even adopted. It is just that such couples have chosen a form of genetic suicide, and even a disparagement of their extended family cultures, since they are refusing to teach their values and definitions of right and wrong, their traditions and rituals, to the next generation. For whatever reason, as of the next generation – their legacy is no longer active, in a community sense. Adults sharing time and home serve many useful purposes to nation and community. Serving the next generation, however, isn’t one of them. (Choosing to unilaterally reduce one’s own society and community is akin to cowardice in battle – it gives aid and comfort to the enemy, and increases risk and danger to one’s companions. Pursuing mutual goals might be different.)

Let us tell our children, “Grow up and have babies, because that is the strength of our community and family.” “Grow up, and choose a mate to make a family, and your children will be a blessing to your faith, your family, and your community.” Maybe even, “Any person that wants sex with you, but doesn’t want to participate with you in the community and your extended family, is refusing to be a mate or co-parent.” “No rebel is ever really happy.”

Don’t tell the poor single girls “don’t have an abortion.” So called Right To Life activists have always offended me. They wait until the ladies and girls have an unwanted pregnancy, they intervene with their own moral interpretations of life, and walk the hell away. I could respect an anti-abortion activist that signs up to pay the medical bills and adopt the baby from the unwanted pregnancy – nothing less is conscionable. In my opinion.

Instead, tell girls and boy, and men and women, that their community needs them to form families. That they need to find a mate-prospect with similar cultures, with excellent character, with suitable life skills and character – discipline, honor, honesty – and build a home. That marriage, or a so-called relationship (fornication, cohabiting, whatever), is not about “the last first date you will ever have”. That forming a family is a stepping stone, carrying their truths and beliefs forward in the same manner as their parents and grand parents before them.

Many states in America, if not all of them, have statutes making sex with minor children illegal. So – explain to me why we worry about whether pregnant teens (and preteens) have abortions – when we aren’t sending some man to jail for each and every pregnancy, let alone every sexually active minor? When single women have an unwanted pregnancy, why are we concerned about whether she has an abortion – when we used to enforce community and state laws forbidding sexual intercourse outside the bonds of marriage.

For the ladies in the Lombardy region of Italy, my sympathy. The elevation of ambition (“I scored last night!”, and “He was so fine!”) has replaced contentment of family life and community. There may come to be a culture and society that provides a context for a fruitful life for the single woman or poorly married woman with children and no culture, few assets, and reduced prospects. But it hasn’t happened yet.

As for the anti-abortion people, what I recall at the time of Roe v. Wade, was that abortion was illegal – thus only unlicensed procedures were available. And lots of women died, unnecessarily, in the face of unwanted pregnancies. My personal feeling is that I hope no one I know ever needs and abortion – and I pray it is available to anyone that believes they need one.

Theotherryan at Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest wrote about “For the spouses, another perspective.”

When the summary showed up on my BlogLines.com page, there was an ad. A greenwash-type ad. The kind that has a product, and calls it green because it might be – and might generate income, if the market thinks it actually is green. You know, like “saving oil” by mining the metals and producing exotic compounds, and shipping/trucking materials and parts all around the world and the nation, to build a “green” electric car that you plug in – to electricity generated from a coal or oil fired plant (still the majority of electricity in America).

Any, this picture of some young man in a white t-shirt, looks a bit like his parent’s back yard in the background. The tag line on the picture reads “Go green. Date a neighbor.” www.MeetLocals.com. How quaint.

One of the greenest people I read is Sharon Astyk, who writes about the depth of her pantry (Chatelaine’s Keys, and Casaubon’s Book), about saving seed to preserve genetic viability of beans and beets and tomatoes into the future, of preserving peppers and corn and potatoes for her daily life. She writes about scrounging, when need be, for what might be available, growing more vegetables and herbs in window boxes and planters and small gardens. About victory gardens and social issues and reducing her carbon footprint. So I sent her a note about this greenwash ad, and about the TSLR post, which I think touches on a very important aspect of life. Of living long and prospering, as Mr. Spock (Science officer on the USS Enterprise, a starship on Star Trek, a 40-year-old TV show) borrowed from a cherished blessing.

Sharon,

I just got a glimpse at a “personal” greenwash.

… One of the occasionally interesting blogs I read is a gun nut – Total Survivalist Libertarian Rantfest. Today the rotating ad on BlogLines on his article was – MeetLocals.com

The tag line on the picture (smiling average guy in suburban background and unlabeled plain white t-shirt) was “Go green. Date a neighbor.”

Which I think misses the point.

Thursday theotherryan posted about “For the spouses, another perspective.”

http://tslrf.blogspot.com/2010/02/for-spouses-another-perspective.html

Basically, the point was to be sympathetic, when getting “the paranoia” and wanting to start spending only for lots of guns and preserved-forever food, and a rustic bunker in the boonies. I paraphrase.

Lately, the old children’s song (that I really did learn in school), about “can she bake a cherry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy?” has been running through my mind. (A National Institutes of Health site lists two children’s song lyrics – I don’t recall either version – and annoyingly plays an instrumental version of the song – NSFW, for the noise factor when the page loads up.) That is, rather than date a neighbor because you spend less gas money – date someone with the skills and aptitude to enhance your ability to survive what you see coming in the future.

If that is the guy/girl next door – great. The better you know his/her family, and they know you and your family, the better. There is still room for surprises and serious disconnects in values and goals, and if you are dating someone you already know then little issues – like serious skirt chasing as a lifestyle, drug and alcohol abuse, or terror of intimacy – shouldn’t be a surprise.

At least today, mating with a neighbor won’t be a problem. In the next generation, if neighbors aren’t still finding themselves brought together randomly, then finding a mate a ways from home may again become more important, as a means to strengthen the gene pool and to keep ties to neighboring communities fresh and strong.

Just a thought. As I commented (lengthily) at TSLR, I think we face a time where picking a suitable mate may well become (as it has been historically), one of the most important choices we make for surviving and thriving.

I think a part of my comment to theotherryan bears repeating.

Often times, in selecting a partner, we invest a large portion of our self identity into an image of us with them. When change hits, it isn’t just a matter of changing our mind about an everyday thing – rice or potatoes? – but about letting go of our identity and building a new sense of who we are. Any survivalist that chooses, after selecting a partner, to seek a different community for any reason, even for better chances of survival, chooses to abandon the old community. To the spouse this is an isolation; if it isn’t voluntary, this is a significant means of spousal abuse, to deny your partner access to friends, family, and familiar surroundings.

Change is measured in pain. Always. The least pain is for changes that are insignificant to the person involved. It might be contemplated and eagerly sought, but change is always a loss, a spiritual death or clearing away of the old life to make way for the new (quoted from the Tarot, explaining one of the major arcana cards). When making your own choices, you weigh options, you choose the lesser of evils. When you impose that on someone, or try to, then you end their previous life, all to often suddenly or unexpectedly.

Realistically the first thing a survivalist – or anyone – should consider is the stability, trust, and integrity of the things they depend on most – their sense of self and selection of suitable partners and companions. You don’t buy a gun that you know breaks, or that reliable ammunition cannot be found. Why would you want a partner near you that isn’t as invested in surviving whatever may come, at whatever effort, as you are? That should be a primary consideration about choosing a companion.

Sharon preps for an economic decline, a gradual loss of support for today’s consumer-driven economy and society (Sharon, I hope I got that part right!). Theotherryan is part of a community that believes the coming end-of-civilization will be as violent and that communities will devour themselves as so often happened in the past, when things collapse. Sharon works to motivate, demonstrate – and begin living at a level that she believes is achievable today, and likely to reflect the realities of what will come – by gardening, buying clothes at yard sales instead of stores, re-using, and doing differently rather than finding different ways to do the same old, same old. Theotherryan envisions survival as an armed and prepared, remote bunker as a means of surviving the transition.

Neither vision has room for a partner invested in expensive displays of wealth or social status. Both examine their tools and surroundings for ruggedness and usefulness – like Sharon’s broadfork for the garden, or theotherryan’s selection of weapons.

Selection of companions and partners should pass the same test for soundness and appropriate values. People are wired to respond sexually in intimate circumstances. Finding someone you respect and honor, trust and depend upon will seriously narrow the field of candidates. Finding a good person that you will also enjoy holding and getting skin to skin with will be the tiniest bit more difficult.

Good of the community

One of the recent topics I noticed on Transition/Peak Oil, is about organizing communities and building and strengthening communities. Picking a life partner has to be part of that discussion.

Communities grow, or maintain themselves, by the growth of families – partnerings and children – and by adoption, that is, assimilating newcomers. Every formation of family, every bringing together of adults to make a home and raise children, is a vital and integral part of the core of the community. Any time a community member attempts to make a home with a partner unsuitable to the community, or that would make a home that was unsuitable in the community, the community is weakened.

Even today, marriages routinely require the presence and implied consent of the community – witnesses, at least. When times get hard and affluence not as wide-spread as today, the community interest in who forms a family gets much more direct and important to the survival of all.