And country after country has demonstrated how relatively easy it seems to be to reduce fertility. Iran is a not so well known example. Back in the 80s Iran started to feel that their fertility was a problem. Their population was growing far faster than they had the resources to sustain, so they instituted birth control availability and mandated 'marriage classes' [1], not entirely unlike what's being suggested here. And in these classes they worked to try to reduce overall fertility.
It succeeded far beyond any expectation. Their fertility went from 6+ to 2 in less than a decade. And then it just kept dropping. Today it's down to below 1.7 and it keeps falling. They've long since tried to reverse this trend and started an equal but opposite pro fertility program, but like China also showed - it's far easier to reduce a population's fertility, than it is to bring it back up. These sort of programs work as a perfectly viable proof of concept of a practically invisible eugenics program, and that's quite dangerous.
What you described is not eugenics though.
See, for instance, the famous quote from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Interestingly enough, the ruling from that court case (Buck v Bell) was never formally overturned. It's simply that eugenics fell out of fashion, following it being taken to extremes by a certain vegetarian artist in Germany with a knack for rhetoric.
For example — we don’t particularly need to do anything to reduce birth rates of technologically advanced societies societies with human rights. That’s because women choose to study and work on their career in their 20s, while men try hard to save up to afford the sky-high real estate prices. The market does the eugenics for everyone.
If anything, the fear that uneducated populations or those in low-cost-of-living countries are going to “replace us” is a result of that simple fact. Comparing continents, Africa is expected to continue to have a ton of kids per woman compared to, say, Europe or USA.
Religion, of course plays a role. When the condoms are off, the religion doesn’t matter — you’re going to have a lot of babies. The only difference is, how early do you get married? Religions tend to frown on premarital sex.
Fertility is most strongly correlated with child mortality IIRC. The more likely your kid is to die young, the more likely you are to have lots of kids. Very low child mortality in developed nations, so very low fertility.
Other than the hard work put in to scaring would-be parents. Indeed, the birth control pill put people in control, but it it is only since the "16 and Pregnant" movement, which campaigned on demonizing having children and stressed the importance of not being saddled by a child, that we've seen below replacement levels.
As a result, the youth of today in their prime rearing years look negatively upon having children, and by the time they "snap out of it" they are into their geriatric child birthing years and biologically don't have much time left, putting tight constraint on how many children can be birthed.
> That’s because women choose to study and work on their career in their 20s
Trouble is that those who choose to have children in their 20s have to face the scorn of society. Unless you are strong-willed, you have little choice but to study and work on your career, even if children is what you truly want.
Drawing an equivalence between these two is like saying a school system that punishes mistakes with physical abuse as a matter of policy to make a smarter population is identical, morally speaking to society at large, as a school system that just rewards good and hard work as a matter of policy to make a smarter population.
It makes no sense. I can't believe anyone could actually believe rewarding parents who have demonstrated a commitment to rearing a child well is identical to enforcing undesirables not have children.
I think you could also make an argument in reverse here as well. An increasingly large chunk of Western advertising is actively seeking to push values like contravening said genetic proclivities, yet it seems to have had little to no impact on what people find attractive. That's even more telling as obesity is rapidly becoming the norm rather than the exception.
[1] Historically, horrible things happened in the name of eugenics. So did in the name of medicine. Does it mean that we should forgo medicine? No.
Nobody is qualified to state whether another human being should be allowed to live on the basis of 'faults' in their person.
It is a totalitarian-authoritarian dogma that must die.
Eu-genics is literally good-birth. We already do a lot of things which are de facto eugenics (e.g. choice of mating partners, prenatal screening, good diet, social actions to reduce alcohol consumptions among women) are 100% eugenics. And most people consider them beneficial.
You are attempting to equivocate heinous racist ideology with 'natural cause'.
This is a reverse straw man argument [0]. You present your position as something easy to defend (good birth, choice of mates, good diet, etc.), even though some parts of it (forced sterilizations, genocide, etc.) are difficult or impossible to defend.
It is like saying that if I one is in favor of medicine, they are in favor of the human vivisection and lobotomy. We can (and often - need to be) selective.
I don’t argue for every kind if eugenics. Yes, a lot of it were atrocious. And I am against that as well. Yet, I guess you are in favor of things we already do (mentioned in my previous comment).
So, I don't use the word eugenics on its own. UNLESS someone says, "oh, this is eugenics" - as a catch-all argument against a thing. For example, the Polish government banned abortions in most cases, including serious fetal defects. It used to be one of a few exceptions, among the mother's health or life being in immediate danger. The government phrased it as "a ban on eugenic abortions". Yes, by all means, these abortions are eugenic - so to argue otherwise would be dishonest. Yet, this is one of the cases where the majority of the population (even in a religiously conservative country such as Poland) would be in favor.
Here's a definition from a commonly cited online dictionary of American English:
> eugenics
> : the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the population's genetic composition
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eugenics#dictiona...
Here's another definition from the Oxford Dictionary of English Third Edition:
> eugenics | juːˈdʒɛnɪks |
> plural noun [treated as singular]
> the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.
I see no possibility, so I end up at the same place I do with things like "good" government, I oppose it in favour of people doing what they will in the hope that good ideas outperform bad over time.
We're actual a bimodal distribution. Even not accounting for intersex folk it's a lot less binary than most people assume or was covered in 8th grade bio.
Cambridge University Press The Biology of Reproduction
When you're able to produce a 3rd kind of gamete, or a human that can produce the other kind too or in sequence, then you can change my mind and claim your Nobel prize.
FYI, intersex is a misnomer because it gives those who don't seem to understand the basics of human biology the idea that there is a 3rd sex (at least) when actually, it means that someone may have ambiguous gender, but they are still either one or the other.
Many people result a null in this category in this without any medical intervention. Unless you intend to imply that someone is genderless if they produce no gametes?
> FYI, intersex is a misnomer because it gives those who don't seem to understand the basics of human biology the idea that there is a 3rd sex (at least) when actually, it means that someone may have ambiguous gender, but they are still either one or the other.
That is inaccurate. Humans can be born with both, or neither, sets of genitals, and chimerism can occur resulting in different portions of the body containing different genetics - it's possible for some portions to be XX and others to be XY. In addition, conditions such as klinefelter syndrome typically lead to individuals appearing closer to the XY end of the scale, their genome is actually XXY and doesn't match either.
Sex is defined by the gametes one produces. Female for few large gametes, male for many small gametes. If you don't have the capacity to produce functional gametes, you're asexual.
Gender is the social expression of the set of behaviors typical for a given sex. Your gender does not necessarily have to correspond to your biological sex.
> Gender is the social expression of the set of behaviors typical for a given sex. Your gender does not necessarily have to correspond to your biological sex.
I'm more aware than most :P
I just find it easier to start with the concept that people don't even understand even the biology they claim to tout before getting into that.
E: I did poorly phrase that line in my last comment though.
I may be ignorant of history on some pedantic definitional level, but every single thing I know or am aware when it comes to this topic is that there have always been two of this "thing" whatever you want to call it, barring small odd cases or medical conditions. Two. Likewise, sex and gender were always seen as one in the same and interchangeable.
This is very much a new, modern thing that's been thrown into the mix. And don't get me wrong, everyone should have the right to express themselves freely as long as they don't hurt others.
But this whole "gender" being something different to sex seems very much a spanner thrown in the works to confuse and back something as being "fundamental" as if it's needed in the fight for equal rights for the affected individuals. Whether a person gets to act as the other sex/gender is irrelevant, they are a human being and get rights as such.
Various cultures always have had different norms and rules for the sexes. What might appear manly manly in one culture might seem effeminate in another culture. Just see how makeup was considered manly in ancient Persia and how it was ridiculed as woman-ish in Greece.
There have always been different interpretations and manifestations of what it means "to be a man" or "to be a woman" - that's gender. Some cultures - like some native American people - recognize expressions of sexual identity disconnected from their biological sex.
So no; sex and gender were not "always seen as one in the same and interchangeable".
I agree that sex/gender are irrelevant and that every human has the same rights as every other. Including the right to not be discriminated against based on sex/gender.
They’re often used interchangeably, but they’re two separate concepts:
Sex is the body’s reproductive role - males produce sperm and inseminate females who produce ova and gestate fertilised eggs into mini-humans.
Gender is a set of socially constructed stereotypes concerning how men and women should generally look, think, act and feel - traditionally men are masculine and women feminine.
At least in the UK 2nd wave feminism sought to reject gender on the basis that it was sexist (discriminated between the sexes) in a way that limited and harmed particularly female people as individuals, but also males. They saw gender as part of a masculine / patriarchal (rule of the father) system of female oppression.
I won’t write an essay (not what HNs is about) but that’s why some people have issues with gender being used as a synonym for sex.
> The first title in SCI to use gender in a nongrammat- ical sense was Hermaphroditism, gender and precocity in hyperadrenocorticism: Psychologic findings (Money, 1955).
John Money[2], as it happens, was a sex abuser who performed experiments, sick experiments, on a pair of brothers that led to them both committing suicide. I wouldn't usually go with the genetic fallacy of dismissing an idea because of its origins, but I have no problem with it here because I see no valid point for its novel use.
This quote is at the end of the Wikipedia article, and it sums him up and, perhaps, the movement that seems so desperate to use his work:
> If I were to see the case of a boy aged 10 or 12 who's intensely attracted toward a man in his 20s or 30s, if the relationship is totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally mutual, then I would not call it pathological in any way.
Edit:
Additionally
> If you don't have the capacity to produce functional gametes, you're asexual.
Being unable to produce a gamete does not make one asexual, all humans are either male or female. If you lose your genitals in an accident that doesn't make you asexual, it means you're male or female who had an accident. Humans are bipedal but if you don't have both legs you don't stop being human either.
[1] The Inexorable Rise of Gender and the Decline of Sex: Social Change in Academic Titles, 1945–2001
So what? The way we use words changes all the time. We discovered that we want to differentiate between the innate sexual reproductive capabilities and their expression in society, now we use words differently.
That's what language does; it changes with time.
> If you lose your genitals in an accident that doesn't make you asexual
You don't have to go as far as accidents; menopausal woman lose their ability to produce gametes. They lose their sexual reproductive capabilities. Does it make sense to speak of a sex if you don't have sexual reproductive capabilities? Seems weird to me.
Additionally; there have always been differences in how various cultures expressed sexual identity. And what seems effeminate in one society is seen as manly in another one; expression of sexual identity and sexual identity are two different things. We're not dung beetles that only have instinctive behavior; we also have cultural and individual behaviors that are added to that.
That's why it makes sense to me to differentiate between sex and gender.
No one has to accept it, that’s what’s what.
> You don't have to go as far as accidents; menopausal woman lose their ability to produce gametes. They lose their sexual reproductive capabilities. Does it make sense to speak of a sex if you don't have sexual reproductive capabilities? Seems weird to me.
Pre-pubescent boys do not produce gametes either but that doesn’t stop them being male. A male cannot produce large gametes but may not ever produce small gametes or may never again, and the opposite for females. Whether that’s weird or not to you has no bearing on anything but your ability to process the logic, that’s the way it is.
Sure; language is an agreement. No one can force you to communicate clearly and if it is your desire, you can go all day long babbling nonsensical syllables. No one can stop you; do as your heart commands you.
> Pre-pubescent boys do not produce gametes either but that doesn’t stop them being male.
So, you're arguing that we should not only consider the current state of an organism to determine its sex but rather the normal lifecycle and what kind of gametes the organism would have produced?
Sure, we can go with that, if you prefer that.
Does it change anything?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex
I again ask; does it change anything?
I gave you the definition of anisogamety, from something a bit better than Wikipedia, but since this is the level we're at, from [1]:
> Anisogamy is a form of sexual reproduction that involves the union or fusion of two gametes that differ in size and/or form. The smaller gamete is male, a sperm cell, whereas the larger gamete is female, typically an egg cell. Anisogamy is predominant among multicellular organisms. In both plants and animals gamete size difference is the fundamental difference between females and males.
It goes on:
> Anisogamy is a core element of sexual dimorphism that helps explain phenotypic differences between sexes.
I hope this is the end of this.
I still don't see why your distinction between the formulations of
> If you don't have the capacity to produce functional gametes, you're asexual.
and
> In both plants and animals gamete size difference is the fundamental difference between females and males.
makes any difference to the argument I made, namely:
> It makes sense to differentiate between sex and gender
Does it make any difference?
Thanks!
Oh, I see. My mistake, you wanted me to read the actual URL! /s
No, you wanted me to read part of the article but since you lazily posted a URL instead of that then the URL stands in for the entire article as I have no way to read your mind to work out which part of the article you wanted read.
Please, keep the pedantry, and the laziness, to an absolute minimum.
Secondly, humans are not asexual. Asexuality is a reproduction strategy not involving gametes. Humans produce gametes. Talking about asexuality with regard to human sexuality is a) erroneous, and b) irrelevant. If we were involving plants in this discussion it might make sense, but we're not.
Please stop mentioning it.
Lastly, you claimed that I had conflated two concepts when - quite ironically - your novel use actually conflates its new meaning with an existing psychological concept known as temperament or personality.
So, your use of asexual in this conversation, no it makes no difference because it is wholly irrelevant.
That humans are sexually dimorphic does make a difference (the word is relevance), because you've taken a word that describes that and applied it erroneously (again) while mixing it up with a different word, and largely based on gender stereotypes to boot!
There are many temperaments and personalities, they certainly have a spectrum (or something far more profoundly complex). Gender does not, and I have no interest - except to oppose it wherever necessary - in the pseudo-science from which silly claims like "sex and gender are fundamentally different" that it cannot validate or support, beyond borderline fraudulent citations and repetition among those with not the first clue about biology or basic reasoning.
I think this would be a good opportunity for you to get off your high horse; to me, all these responses of yours are pedantic rants about the correct use of "asexual" and complaints about changing language. Let's try to give each the benefit of the doubt.
> Lastly, you claimed that I had conflated two concepts when
No, that was a reply to Shared404. You for some reason felt the need to jump into the conversation - which is perfectly fine, this is a public discussion board. But please - don't lie; that response was not aimed at you.
> So, your use of asexual in this conversation, no it makes no difference because it is wholly irrelevant.
Sure, that's why I'm so confused why you get so hung up about it. I can go with either definition, I think I wrote that, eh, two replies ago. Let's stick to the actual question.
> That humans are sexually dimorphic does make a difference [...]
That was not my question. My question was:
> [..] why [should] your distinction between the formulations [..formulation A..] and [..formulation B..] make any difference to the question of "It makes sense to differentiate between sex and gender".
I think you answered that now; you admitted that the definition of asexuality doesn't make a difference to my question above.
> There are many temperaments and personalities, they certainly have a spectrum (or something far more profoundly complex). Gender does not [...]
I don't really comprehend what you are trying to say here. Can you maybe rephrase it?
That in turn was a reply to me and I'm the one who replied to the top level comment that leads to here, from my comment, so you are the one jumping in, and if you're "correcting" a reply to me while agreeing with the gist of their comment, then it is, in essence, still a reply to me but with enthusiastic notes left in green ink.
> > So, your use of asexual in this conversation, no it makes no difference because it is wholly irrelevant.
> Sure, that's why I'm so confused why you get so hung up about it.
I might rejoin that I care about truth, and if you get to add corrections why don't I? But no, you made said point in support of a larger point (a new understanding of human sexuality). Since said point is irrelevant, and incorrect, it doesn't support the larger point. That's how reasoning works.
I do appreciate you moving so deftly to disown your own point though, I wouldn't call it moving the goalposts unless you are the posts. Perhaps goalposts are an identity now. Speaking of which:
> I don't really comprehend what you are trying to say here. Can you maybe rephrase it?
Gender is sex. Therefore it is not a spectrum. However, you claimed it is different, that things like asexuality exist in humans. Since, as pointed out, that is objectively wrong but since there are people who believe in "gender identity" who claim to be asexual and that asexuality is a gender identity different from one's sex then we should examine that too. From What is asexuality?[1]:
> Asexuality is a sexual orientation, just like homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality.
Orientated towards what? Nothing? And yet:
> While most asexual people have little interest in having sex, they may experience romantic attraction. Others may not.
Contradictions are fine in this world of illogic. Furthermore:
> Asexual people may be attracted to the same sex or other sexes
This is clearly nonsense, predicated on other nonsense, but it also already comes under the classification of that known as temperament or personality. I can imagine Samantha Jones in her scathing and nonchalant manner explaining "Yes, my darling, I know that you say you're asexual but what you really are is an uptight, slightly ugly girl who wants to be a housewife but needs an excuse for failing to attract anyone, anyone at all." Presumably she'd throw in something about blowjobs too.
As to the pseudo-science part, that's been covered elsewhere[2].
[1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327272
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair (yes, the whole article)
Let's have a look at my original reply
> Sex is defined by the gametes one produces. Female for few large gametes, male for many small gametes. If you don't have the capacity to produce functional gametes, you're asexual.
We can leave away the part about asexuality, the point still stands; sex is a biological trait related to the gametes ones genes and biological does (or would) produce.
Whereas gender is
> [..] the social expression of the set of behaviors typical for a given sex. Your gender does not necessarily have to correspond to your biological sex.
You on the other side take the position;
> Gender is sex.
You can go with that. But I've found it more useful to distinct between gender and sex since there's a lot more to human sexual behavior than just the biological mechanism underlying the dimorphism. Human's have culture - vastly different cultures - that all have a different interpretation of what it means to behave like a male or to behave like a female. And some people have the desire to not behave like their biological sex.
An example; wearing a skirt is considered female, in western societies. So if I - as a male - wear a skirt, I'm drawing attention and potentially ridicule upon myself. Why is that? My sex is unchanged, I'm still male. But I don't behave according to the societal expectations of how males have to behave.
> From What is asexuality?[1]:
This links represents neither my position nor my arguments about asexuality, so I will just ignore all said about them.
Yes, let's, because it didn't support your point, though I see you continue to assert its validity based on a claim to usefulness. Let's address that.
> > From What is asexuality?[1]:
> This links represents neither my position nor my arguments about asexuality, so I will just ignore all said about them.
Actually, it does, because it points out (via its inane existence) that the distinction you make between sex and gender is really a repurposing of the word gender where temperament or personality already sit.
> An example; wearing a skirt is considered female, in western societies. So if I - as a male - wear a skirt, I'm drawing attention and potentially ridicule upon myself. Why is that? My sex is unchanged, I'm still male. But I don't behave according to the societal expectations of how males have to behave.
Firstly, "wearing a skirt is considered female" is an equivocation. "Female" as an adjective is entirely different to female as a noun. Even if your statement is true, applying the adjective does not bestow noun-status on the object. Licking your feet may be feline but it does not make you a feline.
Additionally, males have certain strongly associated temperaments and personalities (e.g. lower disgust response, higher aggression), as do females in turn. These lie on a spectrum, if not some multi-dimensional shape. There are feminine men, or men that have higher disgust response than most other men, or men that enjoy musicals (I'm one), or men that hate sport… or men that enjoy wearing women's clothing. These are not gender, these are temperament and personality. Male is their gender. Enjoying X is their temperament or part of their personality. Expressing higher levels of disgust than most males is temperament. Being disagreeable or aggressive is personality.
Taking up the stereotypical behaviour of other people is not a "gender identity" or an identity at all. The clothes do not maketh the man a woman, and I only used to hear that kind of nonsense from those mired in stereotypical thinking who were often truly bigoted. Plus ça change.
So, grammatically it's not useful - and that's even before discussing pronouns (Lord, save us, this atheist begs you!); in biology it's entirely erroneous; and in life it's undermining free speech, endangering actual females, confusing the hell out of children, and helping close to no one.
It can be, it can be defined other ways; biomedically for humans its not usually defined exclusively by gametes, since humans who do not produce gametes are usually assigned a sex (recently, in medical practice, assigning more than one, scoped to a particular purpose, and potentially involving narrative rather than simple labels has had some adoption and more discussion, because “sex” broadly is a multidimensional space of correlated, but not perfectly correlated, traits.)
> Gender is the social expression of the set of behaviors typical for a given sex
That’s specifically gender expression, which as distinct from gender identity and ascribed gender as it is from any of definitions of ”sex”.
Humans only have the potential to produce one type of gamete. Whether they actually are able to produce that at any given moment is a different matter.
> Humans can be born with both, or neither, sets of genitals
Again, unless they are able to produce gametes of both types from them then it doesn't matter, and we have no recorded instances of this occurring.
> and chimerism…
is irrelevant unless it leads to the production of both types of gamete at the same time or in sequence, which it does not. There are only 2 sexes because there are only 2 types of sex cell. Each sex produces one type, that is why they are of that sex. There is no 3rd, there are no humans that produce both. Hence, humans are sexually dimorphic.
In addition, as noted elsewhere in the thread, sexual dimorphism is typically used to discuss more than just gametes in study of other species, so why not ourselves?
You seem focused on actual when it should be potential. That individual, if one were to exist, would not be able to produce both if their disorder could be fixed. There have been no such individuals recorded so the scientific community waits with baited breath.
> In addition, as noted elsewhere in the thread, sexual dimorphism is typically used to discuss more than just gametes in study of other species, so why not ourselves?
As pointed out in the quote written by the zoology professors, anisogamety is determined thus. Whether other aspects of biology can be determined or inferred from sexual dimorphism is irrelevant to anisogamety. I know you want to make the “we are more than our genitals” argument but it’s just not relevant.
Sex does have several meanings, and form is one of them.
The situation isn’t helped by Americans often using the word gender as a direct substitution for the word sex. Gender is the set of social expectations around how the different sexes should look, feel, think and act.
Originally this was rigidly imposed (two genders - males obliged to be masculine / females feminine - or suffer negative social consequences) but now in the West people are free to construct their own gender from a set of infinitely variable gendered characteristics.
[disputed ideological view] Someone’s expressed gender doesn’t alter what sex they are, though - nor is someone’s ‘true sex’ that which their gender identity might suggest. I say this because it doesn’t seem logical to complicate sex (the process by which new humans are created) with the infinite complexity of human personality and culture. Sex doesn’t determine character, and character doesn’t determine sex - would be my TL;DR.
Now which PhD candidate will bite :)
Not to mention that unless the adoption of kids are done blind by parents, there has to be some biases there. As an example out of my ass, kids with behavioral problems might have way less adoption rate, and potentially those are the one with below median outcome in any case.
That gets you two categories of people do definitely want kids, and only one is subject to the classes, interviews, and checkups.
Really the ideal test would be, in order of preference:
1. randomization (some parents get the classes, some do not, chosen randomly)
2. geographic (parents in state/area A get classes, rest do not)
3. temporal (parents after year X get classes)
4. twins (parents of twin A get classes, twin B do not)
That we wouldn't actually do that speaks spades about our priorities.
Also, as someone not from the US who heard unsubstantiated rumors about parents getting in trouble with law enforcement for leaving their kids alone for 5 minutes, I doubt this could in any way be sensibly handled. Similar problem exist in other countries too of course.
Best make room in school for some basic education, as there isn't any in most countries.
Kids in families with good parenting, a focus on education, etc are the ones that make it out.
In rich countries, most of the kids "make it out", not just the ones with good parenting.
every factor we mitigate helps
> Potentially break the cycles of bad parenting
You can't break cycles of bad parenting, because they are 2nd order effects of cycles of trauma. And cycles of trauma have been a fundamental part of human civilization since we've existed. We absolutely should teach compassion, good parenting 101s and basic logistical upskilling as a part of high school for both men and women.
But, expecting humans as a whole to suddenly start acting with decency is not going to happen.
There's 8 billion of us.
Reducing the number of (unfit, unwilling, unplanned) parents is a net positive.
I'm with you. We can have fewer people on earth. But, that means 2-ish generations will have to do 2x-the-work per capita while receiving 0.5x the care when they retire. Our social welfare and economic systems are not built to deal with decreasing populations, let alone halving of population every 2 generations.
I am approaching 30. I very much feel like the generation that is going to pay for a comfortable retirement for boomers, never be able to afford real estate, pay huge amounts to raise kids and get nothing in return. Because, by the time I retire, the work-force will have halved. If even fewer people have kids, society will find itself staring at collapse.
The definition of 'good parenting' has changed rapidly over the last few decades and it is going to keep changing. As of now, it seems like an impossible bar to reach. It's better to expect just 'slightly less worse' from each generation, and let the momentum carry it forward.
Current forecasts put generalized famines, all around the globe, at somewhere between +2.5ºC and +3.0ºC of global warming. We are on track to cross +2.0ºC around 2050, at best 2055 [1]. So really, it's just around the corner.
At current trend, it's not lack of birth, but lack of food that is going to drive population decline...
[1] https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/world-lik...
It mightn't be my problem, but fuck I'm a bad person if I just drop it on the floor for my kids to pick up - or slip over and die on.
That doesn't seem to be humanity's prevailing trait though...
> Current forecasts put generalized famines, all around the globe
I am not aware of any such forecasts and call BS on that. If we are having a famine, it's because of a war or a conflict that disrupted our supply lines. Climate change effects are really minor (beyond having a bit of a hotter summer).
That's patently false. It goes way beyond hotter summers. We're already observing today the increased frequency of extreme weather events (droughs, floodings, hurricanes). Even not taking into account the other changes, just the extreme weather events will massively impact the US.
While I agree that the US will not suffer a famine (though a massive movement of farming activities), there will be global famine events that the richer countries will compensate by buying up all the market and letting poorer countries to suffer.
What will be prioritised when there aren't enough workers for all the current positions? - necessities for everyone - luxuries for those who can afford exorbitant prices
It can be both, to some extent, but with any luxuries will come a sacrifice of necessities, and a sacrifice of necessities will increase the prices. The best of people will tend towards being paid more, which shallows the pool of talent for necessities, which reduces quality at the same time as increasing price.
I'll give you the politically incorrect answer.
Until recently, a large population of old people oppressing a slighter smaller population of young people (by majoritarian voting patterns) meant violence.
Humans have eliminated the 3 main uncertainties that ensured some level of demand-supply elasticity : unprotected sex, starvation and violence.
So now, instead of society promptly reacting to a disgruntled workforce, we instead get slow but perpetual decline because the workforce cannot retaliate in any real manner. They can't vote out old people. They can't enforce violence. In any other world, bored-young-people would be having tons of unprotected sex and brute force replacing the old population. But, contraception allows people to engage in their most primal instinct (sex) without the resulting rise in work force.
Now, I am a 100% not suggesting that we need a return to older times. But, we need an awareness that the removal of these avenues means that history might not repeat itself and nature might not heal on its own.... because we have conquered nature.
They better make it work then
Birth rates are plummeting in many first-world countries but it's skyrocketing in most places.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Total_Fe...
By what metric? Economics?
Economics, ironically, is the reason I don't have more kids. My family is doing, what I would consider, "quite well", but we'd still be pretty fucked with one more mouth to feed, the need for a larger car and possibly larger house.
I truly don't know how people that aren't that far below us on the resources / income scale have any hope of comfortable retirement prior to actual death.
"Comfortable retirement" is a luxury of the recent past. It wasn't a concept for most of human history and will stop being one for most people fairly soon.
If anything, for most of human history, having someone to take care of you when you're old has been a primary incentive to have kids.
I think that societies should return to supporting this approach to life (but through valuing an individual's contribution, not sanctions). Growing older will always come with changes in one's abilities (not always to the worse) and personal priorities. This should be embraced and encouraged basically up to the point of death. I.e. my village has an organization called "Rentnerbande" (="gang of pensioners") where older guys help local schools, kindergartens and people with beautification and handicraft stuff for free.
We could be a lot less humans on earth, it would be amazing for the environment, and I think we'd be as happy.
The only downside I see is economic (in the sense that everything is built with the expectation of growth). But it is to me an economic problem, and not a reproduction problem.
Because when people are happy they fuck on impetuous and fucking on impetuous generates children (modulo vasectomy and morning after pill)
It’s not about the outcome , it’s about the happiness on the way there, whatever outcome it might be.
Also when people are happy they wind up perishing by fucking around in the real world due to excessive confidence doing dangerous activities such as drinking and driving, jetski accidents, drug overdoses etc
You have to substitute these people somehow
I was quite amused that in your comment you explicitly talk about expanding your lifestyle to have another child: "the need for a larger car and possibly larger house".
Poor people have more children than well off people until you hit top >1% incomes. Economics is not the thing stopping people from having kids, reduction in lifestyle is.
Technically you're somewhat correct, because it sucks to have kids when you know they'll be raised by an economically poorer you.
And as most of the people don't see themselves as economically stable given the socio-economic conditions that have been in place for the last 15-20 years, that means that many people give up having kids because of said economic reasons (so, you're also incorrect, because economics is indeed stopping people from having kids), saying something like this: "I'm already only scrapping by as it is, bringing a kid into the equation will only make things worse for me and my spouse and definitely for the kid".
Not saying that everyone thinks and acts like this, because otherwise no-one would have had children by now, but it's a strong part of the population I would say.
But as the OP says, this is almost backwards. The poorest in America are continuing to have children; their lifestyle isn't encumbered by a family.
Meanwhile, it's the young professionals, who sometimes have a skewed view of what it means to be "poor", who aren't starting families because they don't want to give up aspects of their lifestyle. Again, not a judgment, just observing.
This is a cultural thing. My wife and I ended up with a child at a fairly advanced age. We moved to a rural area about 5 or 6 years ago. Now that our child is of the age to play sports and other activities, we are socializing with other parents. They are sometimes half our age, married with families in their early 20s. These people are what would generally be considered "lower-middle class". And yet most of them have everything they need. There's no expectation that you're going to be a globe-trotting nomad, or live in a 5000 sqft house here. Raising a family is a priority.
I don't think is a skewed view when you don't own a house/apartment, and many of the young professionals from around the world, not only from America, are now exactly in that position.
Honestly glad that it worked out for you moving to the rural area, where I suppose housing is way cheaper, but that option is not on the cards for a lot of younger people out there.
And those kids most often have all sorts of problems when they grow up. Sure, my poor as fuck mom could raise us, and technically keep some food in our mouths, but the stress of doing so while having an anxiety disorder that the back asswards rural community we lived in didn't even know existed until 2010 basically broke her. Thankfully we were predisposed to intelligence by genetics, and a strong family value of education, so the kids all "made it", by varying degrees.
Each and every one of us is in therapy, and on multiple medications. How much does that cost society over a lifetime? How much would it have cost society to just give my mom a little help to raise us instead? Helping poor families not drive themselves crazy struggling to do the basic things of being alive has a huge potential upside, and it's abhorrent that we don't do it because some people think they don't DESERVE help.
"I'm barely scraping by", says the person with an above average income, living in an expensive city, frequently going out, going on multiple vacations per year, buying luxury items, etc.
People who are actually scraping by do not talk about needing to buy a bigger house if they have more kids, because they literally cannot afford that.
https://twitter.com/kitten_beloved/status/166761594887723417...
What do you consider "quite well"? Does your car have a backseat? Does your home have more than one bedroom? If so, you don't need larger of either.
Yes, there are some sacrifices to having a family. Nothing in life is free. The problem is that it sounds like you don't want to your lifestyle hindered by a child. That's fine, but saying you "can't" is untrue. People much poorer than you are doing it all around the world.
But that's not really a problem. The world has plenty of children. If you visit the border of Mexico you can probably snag a handful. Given their state of poverty they won't even mind.
So to the original question. What does it mean for a birthrate to be "too low". Too low for what? Sustaining some level of GDP output? Propping up Wal-marts bottom line with fresh souls to work the checkout counter?
People, who have enough resources (financial, educational) don't have much children. I don't think that this will affect this group.
People, who have no access to education or anticonception, have disproportionally more children. Many of them are unwanted. Some are irreversibly damage due to abusive susbtance intake.
If anything it's the opposite.
> You can't break cycles of bad parenting
Because you said so?
It's very hard for people to swallow their pride and admit humility, to say "I don't know" and listen to the experts. I have an immense amount of respect for anybody who does, and it is an example I try to live by (though not always successfully).
I was born in a time when kids were supposed to sleep with their backs up and mothers were supposed to wash their nipples using antibacterial before breastfeeding...!
Sometime before that there was a time (at least around here) were kids were supposed to eat sour cream porridge from early life.
Of course kids died left and right, but the logic was, if so many died following the best practices, how many wouldn't have died if babies were left drinking only milk! (Retold as best I can describe it from what an older person in the family told me.)
All this is before we start talking about parenting fads like "no rules parenting" (not sure about the exact English term) which must have caused untold harm.
So creds to your dad for finding the correct advice and sticking with it.
How do we make sure that what you call 'correct advice' is not again a reflection of today's zeitgeist and 50 years from now will make fun of these suggestions in a similar way as of applying antibacterial before breastfeeding?
Moreover, people of Nordic ancestry tend to have paler skin, which is arguably an adaptation to the low levels of UV.
While reading the book (attending the course) would likely provide more benefits, just the intention to be a better parent and the willingness to reflect on one's parenting practices may still be valuable step leading to an improvement in parenting abilities.
A little nitpick : you seem to imply that buying a book is having an influence on parenting skills. I'd argue that's its correlated but does not have a direct influence.
As you said, if you're buying a book it means you're ready for self-reflection, which is what has an impact on parenting.
One of the conclusions was that they "type" of people that would go out of their way to buy a parenting book were already the type of people to do the "right thing" when parenting and the book itself offered no additional support.
The sole thing that is universal is simply giving a shit and putting effort in. If you legitimately care about your kids and live a life to ensure they get the best reasonable outcome you can achieve for them, things are likely to turn out fine.
This goes across countries, continents, cultures, socioeconomics, you name it.
Anything else after that is basically focusing on micros vs. macros. It's amazing how rare this train in parenting actually is.
After that it's largely on society in most places. The suburbanized atomic family expected to handle everything on their own are extreme headwinds for the average parents to push against for example. Only once you get beyond this would I feel "parenting education" would be worthwhile of any serious society effort.
As a new parents we got tons of books as gifts on pregnancy and baby's first year or two. But then it ended. I continue to buy books on parenting, child psychology, etc. But sadly it seems once baby turns toddler, most parents are done with learning.
One of the most common toxic phrase I keep hearing from these parents is I was raised this way, look I turned out to be fine. Of course, later in the same conversations they will admit they are not fine.
Maybe it is us geeks who love to learn and feel proud to deep dive into whatever we get into.
There's alot of people pissing on public schools, whether to sabotage the general public or have special non-standard curriculum only available in private schools, I have no idea.
There is a lot of religious-y "If you don't go to school you will spend an entirety in hell, er, flipping burgers" or "Those who graduate will make more money – please don't notice that incomes are stagnant and that those with struggles in life that will make them economically unproductive fail/drop out because of the same struggles" nonsense floating out there, but not a lot of concrete details on what value is actually delivered. Other governmental departments put a lot of effort into communicating their value proposition, but schools seem rest on faith.
Which may have been fine a century or two ago when people still remembered why the schools were created, but people now forget. As such, they seek out things they think the schools should do to justify an existence.
For example, plenty of schools teach media literacy, and yet the kids who desperately need it don't pay attention because they are not motivated to learn, nobody encourages them to learn, they and the people around them do not value education on it's own merits, and sure enough ten years later they are posting that Obama is a lizard person.
We have a giant amount of, essentially, knowledge skepticism. These people are convinced that studying something robustly for four years is valueless, and meaningless. Some of them are so "skeptical" they want to homeschool their kids expressly to just teach them the bible and nothing more.
Seeing this repeated in this thread. Who are these "experts"? What makes them "experts"? Is there some kind of track record I can look at?
They updated their views based on expert peer-reviewed evidence instead of relying on their own armchair theories. I laud them for that. I used to be pro-spanking since I turned out OK and was stunned to later learn my parents regretted it all after what they subsequently learnt. They earnestly wish they had learnt sooner it wasn't necessary.
At the other end, modern parents have so many restrictions and expectations put on them.
To me it seems quite trivial to create unfalsifiable arguments, for near anything, using extremely nebulous terms like "reducing public health risks." It's not like anybody's ever going to say, "No way man - I really think we should work to increase public health risks!" But what separates science from pseudoscience is falsifiability. So it's only once you break things down into actual, specific, and measurable goals that the conversation can even begin.
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As but one example, the most fundamental component for a society to perpetuate itself is fertility. And so, in my mind, a child's upbringing should absolutely be focused on ensuring this person will be able to both raise and support their own healthy family in the future. Yet of course even this simple goal is going to prove controversial because there's some conflict between it and certain cultural norms. And you'd need to reconcile this in some way that people, independent of worldview, can be generally happy with. I'm not sure this is possible.
Amount of psycological trauma and repression, neuroticism, insecurity. Suicides.
All easilly measurable.
define repression? given that this is HN I'd imagine the definition will be different than from someone who was from, say, Malaysia or Saudi.
what does neuroticism mean? at some level we can agree what "crazy is" but where do you draw the line? ditto for insecurity.
most of this is NOT easily measurable, outside of suicides, which are discrete events. definition of things like sexual assault, child abuse, or repression vary by state, and even more so by country.
Definition of homicide also varies by state, so what? Homicide is not real?
So basically you do not believe we can objectively measure psychological issues, so any parenting, no matter how bad, even outright abusive parenting, can't produce psychological issues.
Why do we have parents at all then, let's have all kids cared for by a commercial company, will be more efficient, right?
Literally every documentary following prisoners has some variation of "My dad was in prison so I never saw him so turned to crime. And BTW I've got kids too", or an abuser who was themselves abused, so the cycles repeat.
Down vote away...
The alternative would be to treat prisoners as victims of their upbringing, but that raises questions about the degree to which it's possible to reverse someone's early emotional trauma. For some crimes (e.g. drug addiction) that may be a better approach, as seen in more progressive countries like Portugal.
I actually think that sterilization is an incredibly important tool in terms of family planning and should be offered for free to all interested and consenting adults. But prison is probably the worst place to offer it, because (especially in the U.S) it is a place of coercion that precludes meaningful consent for a non-reversible non-life-saving medical intervention. Like other attempts to use sterilization to solve social problems throughout history, it would just contribute to trauma under these circumstances, not alleviate it.
s/is/should be/
Ultimately I believe society would benefit by breaking such toxic cycles.
You also need to consider that a staggering number of men in prison in the USA for decades were jailed over cannabis, which is now legal in more states all the time. These are not people who we need to sterilize.
Any situation where an authority incentivizes a marginalized individual to be sterilized, there’s a serious problem.
An incarceration system, if it has any hope of working, must treat prisoners as people who can become valuable members of society in the future despite their past wrongdoing. When you decide that prisoners are a blight on society and that no rehabilitation is possible then prisoners turn into some kind of underclass that is to be disposed of, either directly or indirectly. That's real dark.
There is something very visceral that comes out of people when you suggest that procreation should perhaps not be a universal right. And don't get me wrong, I think parenthood is integral to a society, but we're broken atm and need to get to a place where we have an upward trajectory.
Poverty is not a choice but dictated by economic circumstances. If you want to "fix" humanity, it's not by taking away a universal right from humans, but by making sure that their needs are are taken care of.
But when? Pre-conception seems like the best choice and yep, they have $$$. Oh, no, month 2 of the pregnancy has a complication which wipes out $$ of their money. Still, good to go. Oh no, there's a birth complication and that's another $$ wiped out. Basically on the edge of financial viability now - do you take the baby away? Then there's, say, a global economic meltdown and our unlucky parents are now wildly underwater - do you take the baby away? Or the landlord decides to jack up the rent or sell the building or ...
It's a nice idea but ultimately unworkable unless you can predict the future.
That goes without even going into morals, bad incentives and overall this-is-not-a-good-idea-in-democracy stuff. Imagine if, instead of these severe punishments, you would try to make people better human beings in prisons, teach them skills they can use for honest life once getting out and actually properly help them out? Most folks in prisons are not career criminals, not when they enter the system. I know, very non-righteous-conservative-living-by-bible approach. Instead, ie in US prison record ruins your life, and population generally doesn't give a fuck, you went to prison, you deserved it, now suffer and suffer more, you are sub-human.
Honestly, people in Germany are freaking out because the AfD won the county equivalent of a mayors election for the first time. In Germany's second smallest county (it is a Landkries, a county is as close a thing as possible). What bothers me much, much more is to see all this Nazi-eugenics derived ideas slowly but surely finding their way again into mainstream discours. Freaking scary actually.
Concern trolling is a manipulative tactic where an individual pretends to be genuinely concerned about a particular issue or cause, but their real intention is to derail the conversation and discredit the opposing viewpoint. In the example you provided, person B is attempting to associate the contentious idea with Nazi thought in order to make anyone who opposes or questions the idea appear sympathetic to Nazis.
> How about some minimal coaching so that all parents are aware of the state of the art in child psychology and techniques to do better as parents.
In my country, we had a housekeeping class in school, that taught everything from basic cooking skills, to safety with electrical appliances. There was also a woodworking class, where you were taught how to use various tools correctly and safely. Later, in university, there were courses that concerned things like paying taxes in more detail, employment law and how small businesses work etc.
I think that parenting classes sound like a good idea. It can also help people figure out when they're absolutely not ready for something or are not comfortable with it - like happened to me and getting a driver's license.
Good parenting is foremost about growing up before your kids do.
Society decided to dump most doctrinal support but unfortunately this has left a significant portion of the masses with little direction. But also many have little inclination or time to work it out for themselves. And even if you did start to read Jung, Nietzsche, Hegel, Hiedeger or whichever philosopher you chose there's a myriad of directions one could take it and it's a heady mix. I've started to read these philosophers but I bring it a traditional Creator grounding and it's still pretty wild.
Ultimately I don't think we have a clue what we're doing and we are prone to getting very scared and taking it out on those around us or in our care.
Kids are VERY counterintuitive (mine at least). Our kid has had behavioral problems at school and at home. And it's extremely difficult to understand the root of the issues (it turns out that the pandemic, moving houses, starting school and having a baby brother all at once can be a bit much for a 3 year old).
Literally EVERYONE who is not a professional told us to smack our kid into submission. But by reading stuff and talking to professionals, you learn that some kids do have weird ways of expressing their emotions, and that acknowledging that and supporting them works. You have to completely turn the way you speak to them around. It's really hard to do cause nobody wants to confort a kid who's annoying, but it works.
None of the stuff I do with my kids would have been possible had I not learnt it as an adult. Stop the magic thinking. Read about children, they're weird and wonderfully different.
What does this mean? I never talk child care in any significant way on the net, so I feel there are way to many ways too misinterpret this. Even the nice interpretation of this would border on illegal here.
(FWIW I think I agree with you on all accounts and I have had it easy)
Anyways, although illegal, hurting your kid is a very common practice around here.
On that subject: humiliation in school by teachers has been prohibited since 1953, and is still common here too. In the first school my kid went to, there was a board on the wall in the hallway where they would write the name of bad boys to public-shame them.
When I was in primary school in the 90's, it was technically still allowed by the state, and was threated by teachers, but I don't believe it was ever actually done, and I believe is illegal now.
That said, this entire thread is a shitshow and further convinces me that no one has any idea what they're doing or probably even any coherent idea of why they're raising children in the first place or what they want for those children, and reinforces my decision to opt-out of the whole idea.
In the US? Of course not. Still allowed and in fact being done: https://theconversation.com/video-shows-students-still-get-p...
Having a child necessitates raising the child. Rather simple.
One of the founders of the DevOps movement once gave a talk on Dallas where he described striking a young boy who had hit his daughter because he thought especially young white boys need to learn consequences.
It only has one possible meaning: beat your child until they comply. A large percentage of parents have no other response. If they don't use physical violence they may use verbal or psychological violence instead.
People have a biological urge to reproduce which they're happy to indulge but are often unprepared for the challenges of raising children. Exasperation and exhaustion make shouting at or striking your child an attractive strategy. Note that this is different to (effective) discipline in that these responses are often arbitrary and unpredictable, leading to anxious and depressed children.
I don't think there's any way to really understand what raising a child entails until you've done it.
It is hard living some problem, and then experiencing that the people who are in charge of taking care of you, consistently communicate "No, there is just something wrong with you, you don't want that/that isn't really a problem".
I am very sure it was. In many parts of the world (including the USA) that is still completely accepted and normal.
If that's true I urge you to find a new social circle.
The people in my family who smacked their kids aren’t professionals. Plenty of professionals hit their kids though.
Would you make it practice to hit adults??? No? Why are you teaching kids that this is what happens?
It makes no sense.
My grandfather was married to my grandmother and had nine kids and then even a few grandchildren all before the age of 52 when he died.
So here I am now no children, not married, I'm past at the age my grandfather died. Staggering to my mind how mature the previous generation was or had to be.
Or how immature they really were?
Actually I do.
This is exhibit A, not only have they learnt nothing, but will reject every opportunity to learn. Exactly like my Father.
I have a daughter growing up, and every time there is a decision to make, I check what people like this would do, and do the opposite. Or at least make sure to avoid that.
My mother tried to be a good mom but never addressed her mental health issues, leading to four kids having pretty severe problems twenty, thirty years later.
She took decades from us, though she "tried to live" but didn't want to learn anything she didn't already know.
This unfortunately is not a given and that's the crux of the discussion.
If every parent were able to achieve complete knowledge and wisdom about all things parenting before they had kids we wouldn't be talking of any of this.
One of the things that Finance people do is force employees to have short computer-based trainings every year. They seem stupid and bother everyone, but I think they are fairly effective (and they've been going on for years, so they must have proven some level of effectiveness).
Health insurance providers could be forced to have parents do a yearly 1-hour training on how to handle kids to enable benefits.
You're not going to solve the biggest problems, just like SEC trainings don't prevent money laundering, but whateveer moves the needle a little bit may be worth doing...
They are effective
In reducing the liability of the company that is forcing it's employees to take the course. As for actual behavioral change, that is often not the case.
Historically, the role of the “parentin school” you’re proposing has been played by the family, most importantly grandparents. As we move away as a society from relying on family structures, we need to recognise their utility and find equivalents.
We moved away successfully from family structures in many areas of society: succession of rulers, for example. So this doesn’t need to be a bad thing. But I think the role that grandparents played should be studied carefully when proposing certain types of schooling for parents.
Seriously though, those tribes or large familial structures that keep the youth accountable because their authority is established and trusted is what all children need. Sometimes that trust comes from teachers but rarely.
There is no equivalent. Full stop.
Maybe you could re-create an extended family w/ friendship and local community - "the village" so to speak - but let's say I have my severe doubts about finding enough like-minded people in at least the US to accomplish it. Very few with options have the commitment.
The government and institutions seriously cannot even hope to replace a tiny fraction of this support structure though. People actually have to care about each other on a individual human level. It turns into checkboxing CYA otherwise - having seen a bit of this implementation in social work.
I think it’s a situation where we can’t stop people from having babies so we don’t even attempt to limit.
There have been attempts to prevent births in “undesirable” populations that people thought weren’t capable of properly raising kids. [0]
But unless we’re going to have a super controlled society with forced birth control and abortion, there’s not a qualification to give birth. And developing nations have really low birth rates so anything to further lower birth rates has some negative societal and economic impact.
That being said, there are many free programs available to parents but they have to reach out to find them. I live in a pretty backwards, relatively speaking, state and there were numerous state, county, charity, and religious programs to help with parenting coaching before and after birth.
It does seem like a good idea to add coaching into the maternal health programs to give more education and support to expecting and new parents.
[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/08/14/43208...
Did you mean to write developed, perhaps? I'm under the impression - and a quick google confirms - that the more economically developed a country is, the lower its birth rate tends to be.
(I'm sure I'm oversimplifying. I've not studied in this area, which is why I'm replying)
There does seem to be a function of the more money and education for women, the lower the birth rate. Some countries are increasing immigration to compensate.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
I think a better reward would be the ability for someone having gone through the parenting program to have the ability to tell child protective services, or law enforcement, to fuck off straight to their face without any negative consequences.
What is "state of the art" in psychology? A bunch of irreproducible papers?
Many people have such broken relationships with their parents that they refuse to believe their parents can offer them good advice.
Before they take a parenting class, they might be better served taking a counseling class to repair their relationship with their own parents.
So for example, the one for 3,5 years has sections on how to deal with food pickiness, or with excessive preference for one parent.
1. We don't know as much as people think we do about what constitutes "good parenting". At best, we know some behaviours which are typically harmful (molestation, violence), but everyone already knows that, and the people exhibiting those behaviours need therapy themselves, so a parenting course won't fix that.
2. You're basically turning what is normally considered an innate human right into a privilege for which you need to earn a license. This invites all kinds of abuse (only the right kinds of people get this license!).
That question is incoherent.
Here's what I consider to be a simpler question to answer: do you think people have the right to give birth to a child whose existence would be only horrible, endless suffering before eventually succumbing to death?
This isn't just a hypothetical: people tend to agree that a parents who are at high chance of birthing a child with a terrible genetic disease probably shouldn't take that risk (or, at least, should protect against it with some preimplantation genetic testing).
But everyone suffers at least a little bit at some point in their life. If you don't think people have a right to birth children whose lives would be pure suffering, but you do think people have a right to birth children who would suffer at least a little bit in their lives, then how do you justify one but not the other? Is there some threshold amount of misery which you think is okay to inflict on someone without their consent?
There may be some other moral framework or argument which articulately justifies this, and I'm genuinely curious to see if someone has come up with an interesting answer to the question.
Unless you've worked out how to obtain consent from someone that doesn't exist either we create kids without their consent or society ends.
Do you consider the continuation of our society to be more important than respecting consent?
Is this satire?
Since an infant or fetus is unable to provide consent, why would you think a parent is incapable of doing so?
This is a baffling line of thought to me.
Our options are to keep creating support programs to cover for bad parenting (not nearly as effective as good parents) or to stop “bad” parents from having kids (not super moral).
Horse crap, a huge amount of parents genuinely believe violence is a necessity for child rearing (including frequent repetitions of "spare the rod, spoil the child") to the point that they've even pushed to bring it back into public schools!
Even the very basics are not accepted as fact by many.
The effects of corporal punishment are small compared to the effects of molestation and physical abuse. If corporal punishment were our only "issue", we'd be much better off. I wouldn't even classify this under "the very basics".
Corporal punishment is physical and psychological abuse. It is in the title: punishment is a judgement and corporal is the violence.
There is no such thing as corporal punishment that is also not an abuse. Maybe there is a scale of it but it is abuse.
Are you suggesting that judging your child's actions as wrong is psychological abuse?
> There is no such thing as corporal punishment that is also not an abuse.
That's incorrect, and the legal precedent has been clear on the legality of spanking and the distinction from abuse:
https://www.childwelfare.gov/topics/can/defining/disc-abuse/
Nobody said that. We are saying that corporal punishment is physical abuse.
> the legal precedent has been clear on the legality of spanking and the distinction from abuse
An action does not need to be illegal in all areas (or illegal at all) to be a form of abuse. Corporal punishment causes negative emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes in children regardless of whether it is used in an area where it is legal or illegal. It is physical abuse and a poor method of parenting that is detrimental to the children's long-term welfare.
> Lifetime spanking/slapping was independently associated with increased odds of mental health disorders, physical health conditions, and defiant behaviors in adolescence after adjusting for childhood adversities and child maltreatment (unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios ranging from 1.29 to 2.19).
> These findings suggest that lifetime spanking/slapping is uniquely associated with harmful mental, physical, and behavioral outcomes in adolescence, and efforts should focus on its prevention.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07067437211000...
No, it's saying that infrequent lead exposure is not as harmful as most think, and certainly not as harmful as other environmental pollutants that are more pervasive.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/30/one-in-t...
How is that judgement communicated? Without that information the question is incomplete.
That even worse abuses such as molestation, rape, and murder exist is not a justification for corporal punishment (physical discipline), which has been shown to cause negative emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes in children. Corporal punishment is a form of physical abuse, considering these negative outcomes.
> The Resolution on Physical Discipline of Children By Parents, adopted by APA’s Council of Representatives in February, relies on strong and sophisticated longitudinal research that finds physical discipline does not improve behavior and can lead to emotional, behavioral and academic problems over time, even after race, gender and family socioeconomic status have been statistically controlled.
Fortunately, that's not the argument I made.
The issue is that in US driving license is trivial to get and it shows on the roads ( queue explanations that it is just the function of car being a necessity -- true, but irrelevant too the point ). Even if instituted, I don't think people would accept that kind of infringement though I admit this is probably one place, where we should be able to self-regulate ( we clearly can't though and some systems are built for ever increasing population, which is a separate force that would prevent that kind of change ).
In short, I agree. I don't think we are doing it well now.
Something along those lines, such as cheaper hospital stays or government covering part of childcare or some incentive like that could support what you are thinking. Not required, but a financial incentive. This is especially useful because it targets lower income families, hopefully reducing the correlation from parental income and career/health/etc outcomes.
PS: Smart of you to wear your nomex, this thread is a conflagration.
For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity.
However with parenting we have nothing and the result it seems is we pay with a ton more resources downstream in the way of therapy, detention centers, jails etc.
How about some minimal coaching so that all parents are aware of the state of the art in child psychology and techniques to do better as parents. Potentially break the cycles of bad parenting that have been running in families for a long time (I write this as one such person).
I expect it will be hard (nay impossible) to institute a parenting license (like a driving license) in a democratic society. So instead have a strong incentive in the way of a financial grant for every parent who clears a parenting curriculum sometime before their child turns 1 (or some appropriate marker). Keep the freebees /incentives piling on during the kids childhood so parents are motivated to undertake "continuing education"
Parenting is truly important stuff - for many parents it is the most important responsibility we'll ever have in our lives- but we seem to leave it to chance to get the right outcomes.