It’s About Making Babies!

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The Christian Bible is an interesting historical document.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.)