# Big families and the ethical dilemma of restricting family size. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 18, 2005, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-families-and-the-ethical-dilemma-of-restricting-family-size/326736 "2005-10-18T12:37:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2005, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-families-and-the-ethical-dilemma-of-restricting-family-size/326736/21 "2005-10-19T15:36:20Z")
> [@D\_Odds](#): > > If you can’t afford them, don’t have them. Oh, brilliant. WHAT ABOUT THE CHILD? It did NOTHING wrong. Why should it suffer? And, as for foster care – that’s mostly a bad joke. If the only ‘wrong’ with the original parents is that they are too fertile, then the child will do a hundred times better staying with the original family. If you want to be draconian: at the birth of a third child, Mom gets sterilized. ---
**Author:** ![irishgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8edcca/32.png) [@irishgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/irishgirl)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2005, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-families-and-the-ethical-dilemma-of-restricting-family-size/326736/22 "2005-10-19T15:41:20Z")
**StarvingButStrong** -why mom? Female sterilisation has a higher failure rate and is a more dangerous and costly procedure than a vasectomy… ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2005, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-families-and-the-ethical-dilemma-of-restricting-family-size/326736/23 "2005-10-19T15:51:20Z")
I’d like to see what people arguing for financial disincentives would when children are going hungry. Are you going to let children starve because their parents made poor choices? What if the parents could afford 10 kids, but then Dad gets hit by a bus? Do we let the kids die because the primary breadwinner for the family is now dead? Is population reduction such an important issue that we’re willing to let children starve to death to prove a point? ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2005, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-families-and-the-ethical-dilemma-of-restricting-family-size/326736/24 "2005-10-19T16:16:45Z")
_Won’t somebody think of the CHILDREN?!?!?_ **starvingbutstrong** and **Lemur866** , I believe I’ve answered both your questions in previous posts. _If_ we ever reach the point where population control is a necessity, then I’m pretty sure that any workable plans will far exceed the character length of a theoretical exercise on the SDMB. ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2005, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-families-and-the-ethical-dilemma-of-restricting-family-size/326736/25 "2005-10-19T16:21:57Z")
> [@irishgirl](#): > > **StarvingButStrong** -why mom? > Female sterilisation has a higher failure rate and is a more dangerous and costly procedure than a vasectomy… Because: 1. Mom is right there at hand, and thus it is practical 2. Because you can’t be sure of who daddy is, unless you want to run genetic tests. 3. Any time you need to control the numbers of a species, you need to cut down the number of breeding FEMALES. They are the choke point due to biology. A hundred women and one fertile male could produce 100 children in a year (or more, if twins and such) but 100 males and one fertile woman results in one child a year. ---
**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2005, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-families-and-the-ethical-dilemma-of-restricting-family-size/326736/26 "2005-10-20T18:39:55Z")
As a semi-hijack, a lof of the women in my parent’s church came from mainland China, and a few of them talked about how every woman they knew had at least one or two abortions and said women were generally rather blase about that fact. (Yeah, yeah, the plural of anecdote is not data, but something worth sharing, methinks.) ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2005, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-families-and-the-ethical-dilemma-of-restricting-family-size/326736/27 "2005-10-21T16:29:13Z")
> [@dotchan](#): > > As a semi-hijack, a lof of the women in my parent’s church came from mainland China, and a few of them talked about how every woman they knew had at least one or two abortions and said women were generally rather blase about that fact. I read a statistic in (IIRC) _What about the Russians - And Nuclear War?_ that the average Soviet woman had six abortions in her lifetime. I believe it was attributed to the low quality of Russian condoms (no jokes, please) and the unavailability of other forms of contraception like the Pill and IUDs. This was back in the 80s. That can’t be good for your health, but I don’t believe it had to do with trying to limit family size. Didn’t Stalin make some woman with umpteen children a Hero of the Soviet Union? Family size in the old USSR seems to have been limited (in Russia) by unavailability of living space, because children had to stay with their parents even after marriage because there were no apartments available. I thought the populations of the other republics was growing, particularly in the Islamic ones. Point of information - is birth control a no-no for Muslims? > [@Kimstu](#): > > I keep agreeing with you these days. This is scary. My evil plan is working! BWAHAHAHAHA! Your point about population increase leads to another issue that I am surprised hasn’t come up yet. Financial incentives for limiting family size are going to fall disproportionately on the poor. Rich people can afford to disregard reductions in child tax deductions, and can even afford to pay penalties. Poor people can’t, which leads to all sorts of arguments about eugenics, which some people find to be a positive and others a negative. Which is another can of worms. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![zenith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zenith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zenith)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2005, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-families-and-the-ethical-dilemma-of-restricting-family-size/326736/28 "2005-10-22T14:07:44Z")
The OP’s Option 3 scares the Hell out of me. Foster care is horrid. Numerous cases show up in the media each year concerning mistreatment of foster children by foster parents not properly screened and/or trained for the job. Actually, the family size Iwould like to see limited is the “family unit” defined in my burg’s housing code. A single housing unit,house or apartment, is limited to having a “family unit” of no more than 10 persons “when all are not related by blood, marriage, or adoption”. In other words, nothing can legally be done about 6 singles, each with a car, sharing a small 3-bedroom house that has off-street parking for only 2 or 3 cars. Four to six unrelated people share small houses in neighborhoods designed back in the late '40s when married people got by with one car, two tops. Complaining homeowners have no rights here–landlords rule City Hall. ---
**Author:** ![istara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e79b87/32.png) [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2005, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-families-and-the-ethical-dilemma-of-restricting-family-size/326736/29 "2005-10-23T19:48:22Z")
> [@](#): > > There are only 3 ways you can prevent people from having large families, after all. > > 1. Prevent them conceiving. > 2. Prevent them giving birth. > 3. Prevent them raising any child which is born. No - there is a fourth way. Restrict medical treatment such that a significant percentage of offspring (and mothers) die in birth and infancy. This greatly cuts down average family size, but of course could not be implemented today for humanitarian reasons. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/big-families-and-the-ethical-dilemma-of-restricting-family-size/326736.md?page=1)