From - Thu Jan 17 20:21:02 2002 Message-ID: <3C46E966.AA6CE68D@earthops.net> Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 10:10:30 -0500 From: Tiny Human Ferret Organization: copyright 2001 all rights reserved -- non-UseNet transmission prohibited. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.17 i586) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.gothic Subject: Re: [childfree] Goths and Childfree, dead-end street? (was Re:Handicapped child at ballet References: <3C2C2849.3539E637@mnemonides.net> <3C3BD6DC.80309@speakeasy.org> <3C45A9E7.30F4097F@earthops.net> <3C45FF2B.E7BF0EDD@earthops.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.205.1.226 X-Trace: vienna7.his.com 1011280289 65.205.1.226 (17 Jan 2002 10:11:29 -0500) Lines: 396 X-Authenticated-User: tjh22isp Path: vienna7.his.com Xref: vienna7.his.com alt.gothic:837370 Zoe J Selengut wrote: > > On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Tiny Human Ferret wrote: > > > Zoe J Selengut wrote: > > > > > > On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Tiny Human Ferret wrote: > > > > > > There's a limit on what you can 'raise your kids to be'. Free will, you > > > know. > > > > Well, obviously. However, one would like to presuppose that people who go > > out of their way to try to go a good job of raising their kids are probably > > not going to inflict the world with kids who wind up alienated and twisted > > bitter creatures. How many seriously freakish people do you know who can't > > be fairly easily explained by injury, pathology, or very bad parenting? > > Well, me, for one. Although we may be using seriously divergent > definitions of alienated and twisted bitter creatures. I knew a girl in > high school who used to cut her wrists and then wrap duct tape around > them, who had a younger brother who successfully held off the juvenile > authorities from his bedroom with a baseball bat in a two-hour standoff. I > went over to her house from time to time and her parents seemed perfectly > nice and normal, as well as wealthy and educated. Of course, you never > know what goes on behind closed doors. And again, there's not a lot you can do about pathology, other than hope that there's useful medication and therapy that works. Plus you can take pathology that would be pretty minimal on its own, and have a bit of that behind-closed-doors stuff going on, and you get synergies that are seriously freakish. But we digress. > > > > What you are leaving out is that intelligent and articulate women who want > > > children don't have to argue for reproduction, they just do it. > > > > I would say that this may be more of a struggle that you appear to think, > > due to social pressures from peer and affinity groups. > > Maybe so, but as has been expressed ad nauseum, pressure comes from both > directions. At least three female professors I know have children, my old > piano teacher has a child, and all of my female cousins have children. All > of these are fairly intelligent and highly educated women. Goody! Hear hear and alla that. > I only know of > one woman in my family or social circle who is childfree - I don't count > my friends because they're in their early twenties and haven't decided > yet. What exactly _is_ your social circle? I think I'm missing some context here... > If you are intelligent etc you ought to be able to resist the social > pressure and do as you damn well please. Actually, I'd like to think that as intelligence increases, absent pathology, one is more likely to do what seems to be the most reasonable or easily justified. > That's part of being an adult, > and a woman who is so easily influenced in either direction probably has > no business being a parent, either. > > > > > > They are > > > by definition smart enough not to wander into a childfree newsgroup to > > > start fights. > > > > Intelligence does not necessarily preclude jumping into a debate. Jumping > > into a debate does not necessarily equate to picking a fight. > > In most childfree groups, it certainly does. Anything defined as a support > group is a bad place for this kind of debate. a.g. is a much better place > for it, even if it is off-topic. Once again, it seems to me that people are defining anyone with a divergent opinion as a troll. > > > > > > Two professors in my department had children last year; they > > > are both extremely intelligent and amiable women and I expect their > > > children will be smart and happy. One of them gave birth to twins, while > > > the other adopted an infant from Korea. If you think she would have been > > > better off perpetuating her superior genes instead, I can only say I > > > disagree. > > > > Why do you disagree? > > Because that child she adopted will grow up in a loving, stable household, > full of books and lively conversation, with two Classics professors for > parents, instead of being left in an orphanage somewhere. Ah. I cannot even begin to put my finger on all of the levels of illogic in that sentence. Not this early in the morning. I will try to get back to it later in detail, but for now, I can only wonder why you would think that it's better to raise someone else's child than one's own, given the ability to have one's own child. You're not saying this outright, but it seems implied in your statement. Yes, this child will certainly have better opportunities in their new life than they would have had in their old life; Korean culture absolutely despises children intentionally given up for adoption and doesn't treat orphans much better. That in itself might be an excellent argument for adoption, but it doesn't make a very good argument for forgoing one's own reproduction. You may wish to examine the proliferation of the cuckoo bird in the wilds, as you consider your response. > I don't know > their reasons for adopting, and don't know them well enough to think of > asking, but it is possible they had medical reasons as well as altruistic > ones. That would make the most logical sense. It would fulfill a desire to rear a child on the part of the parents, and would benefit a child who would otherwise be quite likely to languish in deprivation. > > > > > BTW, of those two women, only _one_ had children. The other brought a child > > into her life. But I do take your meaning as "these two women decided to > > commit to being parents". > > Of those two women, only one _bore_ a child. They are both mothers now. I believe I said something generally to that effect, but you are in error unless you're using a different dictionary. A woman who has a child is the mother of that child, a woman rearing another woman's child is an adoptive parent. > > > > > > Every now and then I am tempted to pop into the childfree groups and make > > > > this argument, > > > > > > They've heard it before. > > > > Does that make it incorrect? > > Not in itself, but it makes it a waste of your time and theirs. That is insufficient reason to avoid holding forth upon one's convictions. By the same logic, cops shouldn't bother to report for their shifts because it's a waste of everyone's time because those criminals are so wily. > > > > > > > > > > sociopathological, probably the exact women who can best argue that they > > > > don't want children are probably those who most should have them. > > > > > > Well, plenty of geniuses have had neglectful and abusive parents, but I'm > > > not sure you can prove causality. > > > > That's one of the more interesting things in this debate. So far as anyone > > can tell, one cannot breed for genius. Apparently the truly gifted pop up > > pretty randomly in all populations, rarely, of course. They appear to be a > > bit more likely to show up in families where both parents are of slightly > > higher than average intelligence, but they also have been known to pop up in > > places one might not expect them. > > True. And the children of geniuses are usually fairly bright, but nothing > special, and emotionally screwed up as well. Cites for that emotionally screwed up as well? You appear to be arguing that emotional imbalance on the part of a mother is contributory to the emergence of genius. > > > > If you really want more women to have kids, > > > > I absolutely do not. I want women to have less kids _on average_. > > Well, fine. But when most people go on about the declining rate of > childbirth among educated women, they take a woman with one child as an > example of an alarming trend. Most of these women choose to have one or > two children at most, and I don't see why they should start trying to > outbreed the unwashed masses. They're doing the right thing. The problem is that the unwashed masses, as you label them, are not "doing the right thing" anywhere near to the same degree as are the intelligentsia. To use the classic summarization almost popularized by the band No Trend: "stupid fscking humans, you breed like rats and you're no better!" -the non-better "you" being the people who are having no kids because they're intelligent enough to recognize the need for controlling reproduction. Do the math sometime. Do it across several generations. Intelligentsia -- by which I mean people capable of easily graduating HS and several semesters of college, and those more capable than that -- are having kids at somewhat less than the actuarial replacement rate, which IIRC is about 2.4 per couple. The sub-intelligentsia -- by which I mean people not easily capable of graduating HS and incapable of surviving more than remedial college courses -- are tending to have at least the replacement number of children, though in many cases its anyone's guess as to how many per couple that is, since in the fastest-growing sectors of Western-world populations, even serial monogamy appears to be an incomprehended concept. In a world which is increasingly complex and which, as its population increases, increasingly survives only by extremely inventive micromanagement mostly funtional only when based on deriviative functions which are not at all readily apparent, the population of persons who will ever be capable of this management -- much less the development of new systems which coudl exceed the capabilities of the present complex systems -- is declining rapidly. At the same time, the populations which don't appear to even be capable of managing to take one BCP daily, are increasing, increasing fairly rapidly in the Western world but literally exploding towards direct geometric increase in many parts of the world. The cold equations have many variables other than a free choice to reproduce or to not reproduce. All are worthy of extended consideration. For instance, one might be very tempted to say "but with fewer children I increase the general standard of living for both the parent and the child and the advantages of lavishing increased resources on fewer offspring tends to leave them better prepared and better positioned to succeed both in general life and also in perpetuating said higher standard-of-living to posterity". And at first glance, this seems to be a very reasonable assertion. However, if this isn't a practice so common as to be effectively universal, before long it's impossible to lavish increased resources on your fewer children, because the numbers of those who have had more children have grown to the point where there are no more resources. Those who reproduce irresponsibly have thus devoured the future for which one planned the strategy of limited reproduction; furthermore, they vastly outnumber your own progeny and those of people like you: relatively they have far less chance of surviving social breakdowns leading to mob-scenes where the advantage goes to the large mob of the animalistically vicious rather than to the small group of the calmly rational... so long as the calmly rational don't alter their ethics to some form capable of dealing with the large mobs, said ethical change probably being to a form far more studied, but hardly less vicious, than the forms of the unruly mobs. Quite a conundrum, yes? > > > > > agitate for the > > > development of some kind of science-fictional uterine replicator. > > > > Not thinking it through, are you? When it's possible to fully gestate a > > fetus -- possibly even from the moment of fertilization -- what does that do > > to the debate about abortion? Further, assuming that you can afford the > > probably hellish expense of this proposed artificial womb, where will you > > get the source genetic material? > > Huh? Egg and sperm come from the prospective parents; where else? It would > clarify the abortion debate considerably, since you couldn't create a > child this way by accident or through rape, and the fetus wouldn't be a > parasite on the woman's body. The expense would be hellish at first, but > would get cheaper, like every other new technology. I don't seriously > expect it to happen, because public attitudes towards reproductive > technology are not governed by reason, and because people tend to think > 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' - the lord said women would suffer in > childbirth, and suffer in childbirth they shall! - but it would be awfully > nice. If your argument for legal abortion on demand is that it's the woman's body, and that whatever the rights of the fetus as a potential human being, the rights of the woman as an actual human being are paramount, hence abortion is permissible, Thus: - If the fetus has any rights inherent to humanity due to it being genetically human; - If the rights of the woman are solely to protect her own health from the fetus; - If the fetus may be removed from the woman so as to safeguard her health AND also be brought to term externally in an artificial womb; THEN the termination of the life of the fetus in-vivo rather than transplantation to in-vitro is a willful act of terminating the life of a human being, when the alternative not leading to the death of a potential human being. HENCE, as the termination of the life of a human being, when there are alternatives not leading to the termination of the life of a human being, is homicide; Given the possibility of in-vitro support of a fetus to term, medical abortion is premeditated murder. PS, so far as I can tell, there aren't that many ways to shred this argument other than defining that only "human born of woman in the natural way" have human rights to any degree. Which argument would neatly shred the argument _for_ use of in-vitro gestation as an alternative to old-fashioned gestation. QED, I think. Also left unaddressed, what of the possibility of unwilling or even unknowing genetic donors? > > > > > > My own > > > decision not to have them is equal parts extreme squickedness by both the > > > physical process of pregnancy/childbearing and by infants up until the age > > > of four or five. Get rid of the former and it might be easier to convince > > > a lot of women. Being rich enough to afford a nanny would help a lot too. > > > > That last point is _very_ well made. And I can certainly understand your > > unwillingness to put up with the medical risks, or the bother of child-care, > > not to mention ear-splitting screeches. > > And you know, I think part of the problem is that motherhood is _too_ > fashionable, and not the reverse. In the good old days, the children of > the wealthy were raised by nurses and governesses, while the mothers went > their merry ways to charity balls, soirees, and languid afternoons full of > cocktails and ennui. Nowadays, the hands-on diaper-changing parts of > parenting are viewed as Essential Experiences for both mother and father - > if you don't like that stuff, goes the conventional wisdom, you shouldn't > be having kids at all. This is crap and everyone knows it, probably you know it too. The function of the nanny is to ensure that the wealthy who _had_ to manage businesses to success and thus ensuring continued employment for their staff (either in particular or the abstract) weren't driven to distraction and sleep-deprivation and thus managerial incompetence. It might be argued that the institution of the nanny was essential to the prosecution of business. > Add to that the hysteria about abuse from > professional childcare providers, and the kindly, emotionally distant, > bored-but-dutiful parents of yesteryear are only a beautiful dream. Abuse from child-care providers is unfortunately common, if hardly to any degree warranting hysteria. Rather, much higher standards and regulatory controls are called for in this industry. Also, I believe that you generally are grossly mischaracterizing those parents who employed nannies -- or who had family members capable of and willing to exercise that role. Aside from the fabulously well-to-do, boredom hardly enters into the picture: freed from parenting requirements, nanny-employing adults could further their careers more easily and probably successfully than could those whose time was unavoidably dedicated to child-care. Your characterization might be applicable to the high-societies of the exceptionally wealthy, but in many middle-class families in the last half-century, something fulfilling the functions of a nanny has been indespensible, increasingly so as women's social roles have changed so much that a career is not optional but rather is required. > > > again. The problem here is that a whole lot of people are listening, and > > becoming convinced, and are in fact limiting their reproduction or omitting > > it from their lives altogether. > > I'm not trying to get you to make your whole argument over again, but.... > that's _good_. Plenty of people end up in the middle class who were not > born there, even today. They struggle, work hard, go to college on > scholarship, work hard some more, and end up not having many kids, just > like their sisters born to privilege. But, and here's the point, their > parents were poor, often had loads of children, and may have been stupid. This may have been true as recently as 1990 (varies by area). However, you might want to look at some of the figures since that time, especially the reproductive rates by income, marital status, and -- dare I breathe it -- ethnicity. Draw your own conclusions. I have a further bone to pick with your rhetoric above... you mention scholarships, seeming to have the idea that they grow on trees and are available to any idiot with crap grades. If you're an idiot, no matter how hard you work, if you can't comprehend the material you aren't going to make the cut for a scholarship. Some people are going to work hard and still not make the grade, they may work as hard as they can and still not make the grade. Their work will make them middle-class, almost certainly, though a generalized higher education with heavy specialization in applied abstractions never shall. We're talking about people who go into trades and services. And these are the salt of the earth and the backbone of society. But these aren't the people under discussion; we're discussing the extremes, yes? -the middle-classes are vanishing and have been vanishing for about 40 years, at least in the US, relative to the sizes of the rapidly growing impoverished classes. And the relative ranks of the intelligentsia are shrinking even more rapidly. > The fact that childbirth rates decrease in _any_ population, pretty much > regardless of culture, with the introduction of education and independant > wealth for women indicates that raw intelligence is not nearly as strong a > factor as you make it out to be. You cannot eliminate the possibility of this causality, yet neither is it demonstrable directly, as the availability of education and independent wealth for women arrived concurrently with effective birth-control. You can as easily make the case -- many of the best feminist thinkers have -- that the availibility of birth-control did more for women's opportunities for education and careers than did any other single factor. > It's not being smart that makes women > decide as a group to have fewer children; it's awareness of options and > opportunities. If you have no future, why _not_ have a kid? That's not > stupidity, that's depression and nihilism. You have to have a certain amount of intelligence to be nihilistic. I could make an argument that with the right viewpoint, if you have a future and you don't share it with progeny, thus wiping out your own line of ancestry, that's supremely nihilistic. "genosuicidal", to coin a phrase. > > Zoe -- Be kind to your neighbors, even though they be transgenic chimerae. Whom thou'st vex'd waxeth wroth: Meow. <-----> http://earthops.net/klaatu/