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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (7255)	6/9/2000 8:20:00 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 9127

Speaking as someone who chose not to have children, I can assure you that it is not a decision that society values. It's more of a legitimate choice now than it was when I made it, but only barely. Then and now, too many women have children because it never occurs to them not to. Such are the expectations of society. If, in the course of communicating the desirability of having fewer children, society also let it be known that it was OK not to have any, more might make that choice. Of all the parents who are ill-equipped to have children, perhaps the most obvious category is those don't want them enough to make the sacrifices. Society should say that that's OK. Karen

To: Dayuhan who wrote (7255)	6/10/2000 2:24:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 9127

<<I agree that there are many people who shouldn't have children, but I can't see any ethically acceptable way to prevent them from having children.>> That is the problem. I can even think of ways that might be, though non-PC in the extreme, ethically defensible. But I can't think of any ways that don't introduce the slippery slope problem. What is done, becomes normal. "The normative value of the actual" is a phrase I read once in a book about capital punishment. (It explained to Europeans how Americans, otherwise so decent and civilized, could support state killing of citizens-- being "actual," in America, execution has come to feel "normal" to them, the phrase explained.) It is a wonderful, generally elucidating phrase. Not a week goes by that it doesn't come helpfully into my mind to explain some peculiar social phenomenon or other. "The normative value of the actual," I think, and how some bizarre situation can be accepted by the people becomes clear. Mental slogans. They're the greatest. I find.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (7255)	6/10/2000 6:15:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9127

<<I agree that there are many people who shouldn't have children, but I can't see any ethically acceptable way to prevent them from having children. The only remedy would be to persuade them to think about it, and there are few things more difficult than persuading people to think.>> There is no reason to think that thinking, even if people could be persuaded to do that, would yield the result you want. It is not always contrary to self-interest to produce children you can't support or raise as you or I think proper. It can be a perfectly rational choice, even if made without conscious thought. One example among many: How many of the very poor have Keogh plans or IRA's or pensions? What percentage of their children are likely to volunteer to take care of them in their old age, or be able to? Ten percent? That makes having ten children a sort of Keogh plan.... Throw in welfare that escalates with each child. Throw in prospective parents who see themselves as having no role to play in, or value to, society. Well, being a mother or father is a role. It is a romanticized one, even. Almost sacred! And your little child loves you, adores you, even if you burn it with cigarettes or only see it when you pass it in the street. So if you are nothing, feel like nothing... make babies. Then you're... something.