The concept of a “free rider issue” directed against people without children (applied to any degree whatsoever) would only exist if children were produced by those heavily or entirely motivated to support society, and whose actions subsequently were directed toward that goal.
Since that motivation and followup behavior is rare to nonexistent, the concept as it applies to those without children is ludicrous.
Given the material and non-material benefits ladled out to childbearing couples, and the costs laid on non-child raising individuals, one could much more logically tag childbearing couples with the pejorative term “free rider”, not that using such labels has much utility.
I agree that children are not produced to further society. Yet they are necessary for that all the same.
Similarly, folks do not go to work to “further society”. Yet those who do no work are nonetheless considered “free riders” on those that do*. If you were correct and what counted was motivations, surely you would have to be consistent?
Given that pretty well no-one does anything for the express goal of “furthering society”, then there can be no such thing as a “free rider”.
As for material benefits - what material benefits are you referring to?
*Edit; with all the necessary caveats of having the ability and opportunity etc.
First off, while it’s relatively uncommon, there are people that choose careers aimed primarily at societal benefit rather than putting food on the table (religious and charitable endeavors being non-exclusive examples). Contrast that to the virtually nonexistent “We’re having children to pay our debt to Society” motivation. Our working generates taxes to perform essential government functions. Having kids drains tax income (excepting of course sales taxes - but you don’t have to have kids to be a rampant consumer.:D).
Tax breaks*, discounts, preferential treatment at work (i.e. with regard to vacations and other forms of time off)…the list goes on.
*I await with interest proposals to eliminate child deductions for income tax purposes, to be replaced with a $1000/head carbon tax to discourage child-bearing for its role in accelerating undesirable climate change.
So, aside from monks, social workers and the like, no-one is in a position to claim that those who leech of the system are ‘free riders’? :dubious:
Without kids, there is in future no society and no government to be benefitted by one’s taxes - money is after all ultimately of value only because there are people around willing to do stuff for money. If no-one your age had kids, where exactly would you be when you, and everyone as old as you, retires? What good is everything you have earned if there is no-one able to work to put food on your table or fuel in your furnace?
I rather suspect that the financial downside to having kids - a career-wrecker for many women for example, payment for room and board and post-secondary education - is rather more significant than the “copious” perks you have mentioned.
To be clear I’ve already staked my position on the OP - that the decision to have kids or not is not an ethical one in the abstract. But there is no doubt that society, and all of us in society, depend on parents. Seems to me pretty obvious, since no kids = no future.
You can wait. No society really wishes to encourage its own extinction, however “desireable” this may be from the point of view of the climate.
This is more of the logic where children are consumer goods and not people, so therefore they are labelled in terms of carbon footprint or societal cost, and their value is considered part of the parental consumption rather than treating them as full human beings.
You would be wrong then. Children are produced to further society, by definition. That is precisely why children are produced. There is no other reason. If people stopped having children society would cease to exist. In fact it is the ONLY activity that furthers society. Everything else is maintenance.
I agree that this is the effect - read the rest of my posts. I also agree that this is not the motivation. People have kids because they want 'em, not (in general) out of a sense of social duty.
Just as people work, not so that society will be well stocked with weath, but for their own motives; so people have children, not so society will be propagated, but for their own reasons.
Society would be neither wealthy nor exist if people did not work and have children. Everyone depends, ultimately, on folks who do these two things.
A person who does no work (though able) is in no position to sneer at those who work, because ultimately everything the non-worker consumes is produced by those who work. A person who has no children is similarly positioned vs. parents; ultimately the future existence of society is only possible through their efforts.
The fact that neither worker nor parent sets out to conciously further the aims and existence of society is simply irrelevant; they do so no matter what their reasons.
This is a false dichotomy. People certainly DO have kids for the purpose of furthering society. That is the primary motivation for having children. Only accidental pregnancies fit your criteria. People have children so that they can create the next generation. This is a knowing and willing choice for many parents. Creating the next generation and furthering society are the same thing.
Your entire point of view on this is skewed. People DO work to further society. People want a job that both brings fulfillment and puts food on their table. Feeding one’s family, ‘furthers’, society by keeping their families alive to keep society going on. Survival and the preservation of life IS the furthering of society.
You guys are diminishing the value of human life with this argument. All of you are someone’s children. And all of you were brought into adulthood by people who were committed enough to furthering society to ensure that you didn’t die.
Well, my point is that this debate (which will I’m sure be really a matter of semantics) is quite irrelevant. Who cares what motivates people to have kids? No kids = no society in the not-so-long run, no matter what reasons they have.
Fair enough. But any broad statement about the motivations of parents or non-parents will inevitably be wrong, as there are a complexity of reasons why people do the things they do. Some people have kids because they didn’t want to wear a condom when they were drunk. Others have kids because they think it is a duty to society. While certainly some people don’t have kids because they want to be free to run to Barbados on a whim, while others don’t have kids because they don’t think they’d make good parents.
Equally to the point - given the economic outlook, there are going to be a lot of younger workers grateful for jobs taking care of the needs of retirees.
Those old farts’ cash will put food on the table and pay for the latest must-have hellphone apps.
This thread mostly has been devoted to discussion of the societal cost/benefit of children, so your objection comes across as incoherent.
This is a manifest delusion. Whatever nagging sense of duty plays a part in the equation relates to satisfying expectations of relatives, friends and acquaintances - not altruism.
That’s your own failing. It was perfectly coherent. If we are judging the ‘value’ of my family of four for instance, you must divide by four, not by two. There’s nothing incoherent about that.
No it’s not. No one said anything about altruism. That’s some bullshit you just made up to make yourself feel superior to others, as is the case the vast majority of the time someone utters the world altruism. Duty to relatives, friends and acquaintances is the furthering of society. Wanting to expand one’s family, or spread one’s seed is indeed a desire further society. Altruism is irrelevant nonsense for polemicists. One does not need to be altruistic to further society.
Again the ONLY activity that furthers society is breeding. Society can go on without Doctors, without Lawyers, without Politicians, without Missionaries, without High School Teachers, without Construction Workers. Society can lose ANY AND ALL professions, and continue to be society. With the exception of one profession, parents. Parents are the only necessary occupation required to further society. This is about as controversial as ‘Water is wet’. There is not a valid counterpoint.
Right! The phenomenon of no one having kids is right around the corner - better start breeding while you still can!
I really haven’t given enough credit to the people in our society who have kids because they possess the sort of dedication manifested by Katharine, Winston Smith’s hot spouse in 1984, who consents to intercourse with him only because it is their “duty to the Party” to have children.
And where will those old farts get the cash? From pensions or investements? Fine. Where does the money that drives those pensions and investments come from? It comes from money being generated in the economy by workers. Not workers at the time that the pensioner was working, but workers at the time that the pensioner is asking for returns on the money they invested.
You’re making the mistake that too many others make, of assuming that money put by for the future is like burying acorns of a type that will never rot, and then digging them up when the time comes. It’s more like burying post-dated cheques and hoping that future generations will be able to honour them.
The phenomenom of not enough people having kids is right here, right now.
I disagree with mswas that there are are people having kids just for duty to society. Duty to a particular community, certainly, but not to society as a whole.
Regardless of that, kids do fulfill needs for future societies. Kids who were brought up well fulfill even more of those needs. Nobody has an obligation to have kids, and certainly those who really don’t want kids should try their very best not to have them - but we will all need somebody’s kids someday.
Whether or not there is an actual demographic crisis in first-world nations (evidence points to there being one in at least some nations, caused by people having children at less than the replacement rate and living longer - see, for example, Japan), isn’t your response simply that you can comfortably afford to allow others to take care of the issue for you?
That may well be true, at least if you live somewhere that people are on average reproducing at the replacement rate, but it is also the very definition of free-riding.
Duty to community and duty to society are the same thing. Society is just community in the macro and community is society in the micro. They are synonyms that refer to differences in scale, not differences in kind.
In fact people have kids for no other reason than to move society forward. There simply is not another reason to have them. Other than accidental pregnancy of course, but I am talking about people who make the decision to have kids intentionally.
This is an unjustified fear. People will still have kids, even if a minority of the population can’t or won’t. It’s really better for the planet that not every single person replicates their DNA.
Populations have fluctuated throughout human history; we are not in a crisis for the survival of the human species right now. Right now, there’s a lot of fearmongering that the right kind of people are not breeding, which is extremely racist. (CNN, I’m looking at you.) But humans, on the whole, are still getting it on and still having kids.
The idea that childless people aren’t doing their part for the world, and making parents do all the work, is terrible. First of all, the childfree are scientists, teachers, doctors, and other vital occupations for the survival and development of our species. Second, you can turn that idea around to say “You’re not helping the homeless and letting charitable people do all the work” or “You’re not looking for a cure for cancer and letting the scientists do all the work.” Some people are meant to do certain things, while others are not.
Except that it is a major problem for many polities.
Pointing out that the educated and affluent are breeding less than the uneducated and poor is not racist. Education level and affluence are not racial characteristics. Classist maybe, but not racist.
No one said anything like this. This is your own insecurity being projected outward. Pointing out that the only way society moves forward is through the creation of new generations does not diminish the contribution of people who do not have children. If you are helping cure cancer or helping the homeless then I thank you for helping make the world a better place for my children.
Actually, the latest statistics available show a birth rate of about 14 per thousand people in the U.S. and a death rate of about 8 per thousand. The population continues to grow and we continue to have to deal with the effects of that increase.
There are areas in the developed world where birth rates have significantly declined and population is shrinking. That’s not because those societies don’t sufficiently worship parenthood, it’s because their economy stinks. Maintain a healthy economy and your population grows.
And we’ll want considerably fewer of them, to prevent resource depletion and potentially catastrophic environmental degradation.
So after rejecting it earlier, you’re reviving the “free-riding” label. How consistent.
In the end, most of what this silly debate involves is the need of some parents to feel morally superior, get lots of bonuses and pats on the back for having procreated for their own (almost entirely selfish) purposes and look down (with considerable, unwonted jealousy) at people who did not breed for their own (almost entirely selfish) purposes.
Sorry, but ethics just doesn’t come into it (with exceptions like if you’re bearing kids who are highly likely to have horrific, fatal genetically-determined illnesses). Parents who do a really good job of raising their kids deserve metaphorical pats on the back. The usual run of parents - meh.
Maybe that’s what we should be basing tax relief and discounts for parenting on - the quality of child-rearing. If we can define teacher pay on student performance, a parental equivalent shouldn’t be impossible.
I’ll volunteer for grading based on child behavior in restaurants.
