Considering how people are already often sneered at or looked as freaks for not having or wanting children, I certainly don’t want to make it worse.
So much wrong with this…
What do you call people who are not near old enough to retire, but who choose not to work? You also forgot the disabled, house wives/husbands and probably others I’ve forgotten right now.
Actually, no they don’t. There is no guarantee that a baby born this year will ever have a job in it’s lifetime, and there is certainly no guarantee that any given baby will be a productive member of society in any form.
Which, for some bizarre reason, those who want to have children choose to ignore. No one needs to have more than one or two children these days, because no one needs to have a bunch of workers running around the house and farm. We currently have a metric tonne of people unemployed right now, and yet the country is still running, so it is pretty obvious that we don’t need the number of workers we have now, much less have any need to keep replacing them at a greater rate.
The government is already doing this, tho I don’t know how it is going over with most employers. When my husbands last job was sold to Dallas and they cut way back on R & D here, the only engineers they laid off were the once that were over 50. Unless you can convince employers that there is nothing wrong with older workers, #3 isn’t going to work.
Having children in a severely overpopulated world is antisocial and selfish. Particularly in the cast of the millions who cannot afford to properly raise their children and depend on the government, charity, taxpayers, their church to just get by. These people are not likely to be raising future productive members of society. (Note I said “not likely” - trying to prove me wrong by telling me a story about one person that rose above it doesn’t make up for the 74,028,454,934 people in 3rd+ generation of squalor.)
There are also plenty of people out there who shouldn’t even be near children, much less having and raising their own. For examples, I refer you here.
No, if the population started to drop, we would actually have jobs for all of those folks on welfare and currently, all those folks looking for work. Of course, it is never going to happen that everyone would chose to be childfree, so this seems to be a bit of a strawman anyway.
It also seems extremely selfish to want people to have children so there will be workers around to take care of you in old age…
I think that would be a great idea, provided those studying it weren’t biased.
Has it been previously?
(I wasn’t going to post in here, since I’m busy getting my ass handed to me in the other thread, but I decided to pop in and agree with Lynn, who gave me some excellent kitten advice last summer.)
This is true. My brother had a kid by accident, and while he wasn’t actively wanting one, when it came it wasn’t unwanted. Those of us who actively dislike children go to great lengths to avoid having them, including periods of total abstinence. I know people who have had double and triple BC failures, but if those people really, truly were opposed to children, they’d have had abortions or given them away for adoption. Myself, besides just disliking kids, I think it’s almost unethical to bring more children into the world when so many are already starving, or neglected, or abused. I would adopt one before I had my own.
Thank you, on behalf of myself and my non-existant children. Nobody deserves parents who don’t want them.
As far as the matter at hand, I think it’s unfair to say that childless people contribute less to society than those who choose to have children. I, young as I am (23), have volunteered, rescued animals, cared for the elderly and run errands for the handicapped. I have been actively involved in cleaning up my community of trash and debris, I have tutored students in high school and in college. I own a house and a car, I pay my taxes, and I’m paying for a college education. I think I’ve contribued to society as much as anyone with kids, even though I haven’t produced another drone to take my place when I die. I think we could benefit by raising the retirement age a little, while starting a campaign to help those in middle age stay fit. I would gladly volunteer to teach a free yoga class, or organize a weekly neighborhood walk, for example, to help keep people in shape and active. How many people 50 and over would be able to work if not for obesity or high cholesterol? Keeping people fit to work for longer would lessen the burden of those who, like me, are trying to finish our education before esablishing a real career.
I was in a time and place where I could not legally obtain an abortion until I was about four months along. My husband was stationed in Spain, I could not get a legal abortion on base OR from a Spanish doctor, and I could not get a travel allowance and permission to travel until I was past the first trimester. I couldn’t adopt her out, really, as my husband trumpeted my pregnancy to my family and his. As it turned out, I love my daughter, but I don’t love the conflict or the other lifetime consequences that having her has brought into my life.
I had three pregnancies in two years’ time. One was when I was on the Pill, and I miscarried that one. Lisa was conceived while my husband and I were using condoms and contraceptive foam in combination. And I manage to get pregnant with an IUD in place, too. That was another miscarriage, and I had the IUD checked and found to be still in place. After that I told my husband that he wasn’t getting ANY nookie of any kind until I had my tubes tied or he got himself snipped.
Bitter? Moi? Whatever gave you that idea?
Wow, that’s a streak of bad luck I don’t think I’d survive. Out of curiosity, how come you couldn’t get permission to travel? Were you in the military yourself? I mean, nothing stops people from disregarding doctor’s orders except themselves. Not that I think you should have aborted your daughter, since she is a good part of your life, but logically, if your intent was to abort, what would be the reason for restricting your travel, assuming it wasn’t to protect the kid?
I was not able to come up with the money to get back to the States. The military at that time did not believe (and for all I know, still doesn’t believe) that spouses are full adults, with the rights of adults. So, I didn’t have airfare back to the States until my husband was closer to his Permanent Change Of Station, which is military speak for “getting assigned to another base”. I think that his paycheck was around a hundred dollars twice a month, and even the cheapest airfare would have been a couple of thousand, probably more. I’m foggy on the details. All I can remember is that he hadn’t earned that much money in his entire AF career as what the airlines wanted. So the restriction was purely financial. I’m not sure whether or not I could have obtained an abortion in some other European country, but back in those days, I don’t think so. This was in the late 70s, so abortion was not something that was as readily available as it is now.
Ah, gotcha. For a sec I was afraid that in Spain doctor’s orders were enforced by the police or something. I’m glad it turned out well for you though. I can only hope that if I ever face such a situation I’ll still have the option of giving the kid to a gay couple I know who want a baby badly. I’m sure if I didn’t, I’d suck it up and be a fine parent, but here’s hoping it never comes to that. Didn’t mean to hijack, sorry guys.
Why don’t you volunteer to teach a free yoga class on your own initiative? I agree that people should be encouraged to be healthier in middle-age. I plan to volunteer my services as a massage therapist when I am setup in my practice.
I don’t think the argument is that you are not productive as much as it is you will be a net consumer of resources in retirement and that you’ll be screwed if there are not people to replace you in the work force.
Part of the problem I have with an argument like yours is there is an underlying sneering subtext that views raising people to be productive workers to help continue the species is somehow dishonorable. Like there is something wrong with creating more workers. Like it or not, your social security is going to be funded by my grandchildren’s work.
My living room isn’t big enough to teach a class in, and I can’t afford to rent a room at any local gym or community center to teach one. If, however, said community center were to set aside an hour for the class, I’d be happy to do it. I can’t identify any sneering subtext in my post, and there’s nothing wrong with creating new workers. As I said in the other thread, I have a problem with people who would let them run amok, but there isn’t anything inherently wrong with having kids. I think more people should adopt, because there are already a lot of kids in the world in need of homes, but that’s another thread.
I would guess that the next three decades will be economically uncomfortable, then the last of the baby boomers will die circa 2040 with the solemnity of the felling of the last Truffula Tree and the world afterward will be comparatively utopic. Heck, compared to the Thirty Years’ War or the Dark Ages, this period of discomfort is downright trivial.
Try a church.
Bryan Ekers Absolutely. It just means we can’t consume as much.
No.
shrugs Existing community centers that love to provide space for such things exist plentifully all across the country, if an ideological reason prevents you from utilizing existing resources then I guess you only meant it hypothetically. 
Not quite. I live in Alabama. You don’t teach anything relatively new age in a church in Alabama unless you want to be burned as a witch.
:rolleyes:
I’ve been to Alabama. There is certainly a Unitarian church somewhere. There are DEFINITELY Yoga classes there. Maybe you live WAY out in hickland, but in Birmingham or Montgomery I cannot imagine that this is the case.
1 hour from Huntsville, 4 hours from Birmingham. It’s not the smallest town ever, but there’s not a Unitarian church around here that I know of. I’m surrounded by Churches of Christ and Baptist, Methodist, and Pentacostal. I could probably organize something at a park, weather permitting, but how many people would really show up? What I’m thinking of is some kind of nationwide fitness campaign aimed at seniors or those headed toward retirement age. Private groups are fine, but they are only effective on a small scale. Raising the retirement age for the country won’t work if all we have are people like me with a couple of co-workers in the park.
Aren’t there seniors groups? Don’t they have any senior centers?
Not to my knowledge. There are two nursing homes, and one senior rehab center, for those who have had hip or knee replacements or things. I live in a neighborhood full of elderly people, most of whom have lived here since before my mother was born. They go to church, they come home, do some gardening, and sit in front of the tv. At least, the ones who don’t think tv is evil do. It’s sad watching them deteriorate. We do have a"rec center" which consists of a park with a walking trail and a swimming pool that charges $7. I’ve often wondered if we could set up some sort of group at one of the local high school’s gyms, but lots of them can’t drive and we don’t have public transportation here. It’s a lot of obstacles, and who am I? Nobody.
Yeah it’s sad that social barriers exist to hosting a free exercise class. But as to who you are, well you are someone who knows how to teach people Yoga.
And your grandchildren’s education and the tax deductions their parents get for 18 years will be funded by my work. It appears we are at an impasse.
Tell you what–your grandkids can help support me for 2 decades after I stop working, just like I’ll have spent 2 decades helping support them before they start, and then they can euthanize me and we’ll all be even-steve.