velvetpage: (studious)
velvetpage ([personal profile] velvetpage) wrote2007-03-13 02:01 pm
Entry tags:

Anti-natalism (PoAC)

Anti-natalism in America

I've seen this before - more often from liberals than from conservatives, though I've seen it from them too, usually in the guise he mentions of not wanting to support the kids of people who can't support themselves. It angers me, every single time. And yet, I'm a part of it. I view children as a blessing to be taken in moderation. I may have one more child, but that will certainly be the end of it, and probably would have been even without the health factor that I now have to consider (each c-section is progressively more dangerous than the last.) We have planned our family quite carefully. I subscribe to the moderate view that the best way to prevent abortions is to make birth control as widely available as possible - not exactly a "children are an unmitigated blessing" viewpoint.

This is one of the areas where my heritage shows through. I cannot ever be the kind of environmentalist who believes that her own children are more of a detriment than a benefit to the planet or to society. I really can't see the point of life without children, though I understand and respect an individual's desire not to have their own. What do we live for, if not to pass on what we have, make, believe, did, are, to those who follow us?

At the same time, I find the source of this article profoundly disturbing. Chuck Colson drives me nuts. He makes a token gesture towards the fact that some conservatives think like this, too, even while ascribing the problem mostly to liberal environmentalists, and he completely ignores the part of the liberal agenda that he should really be able to see the benefit of: that is, measures that help people support their kids at a societal level. The Christian Post is far enough to the right that ideas like fair wages come in quotes in his articles, as do gay marriage and pro-choice. He supports people's right to have children indiscriminately, but also seems to support the idea that people should be able to take care of their own without much help from a social safety net. Surely, if he expects people to view children as a blessing to be accepted when given, he should also be prepared to help those families survive in a nation where twenty grand a year for health insurance, plus co-pays, excluding certain specialists, is a growing phenomenon.

I see myself as sitting somewhere close to the middle ground on this one. I'm not sure how skewed that viewpoint is. What I do know is that it galls me to have a huge failing on the left, pointed out by the likes of Chuck Colson in his holier-than-liberals attitude.

[identity profile] merlyn4401.livejournal.com 2007-03-13 06:42 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm an advocate of personal responsibilty - just don't have more kids than you can take care of. If you are someone like the Duggars, and can feed, house, clothe 18 kids, more power to you. If you are like, well, me, and can only do 3, fine.

That said, once they get here I think we as a society are required to help them. Of course, our definitions of "help" are pretty different, I think. But I'm still not into punishing the kids for the sins of their parents, and I am certainly not against short term help for an entire family in the event of major life crises. As you know, I feel the goverment should be the last step for aid, not the first. :)

[identity profile] neosis.livejournal.com 2007-03-13 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Hmm. I'm not sure I buy the articles premise. Environmentalists are not necessarily liberals. In fact, environmentalists pretty much have to be reasonably fiscally conservative. The can't be too socially libertarain either, because they can not respect the right of others to live as they please where it conflicts with their environmental agenda.

Children are both blessing and burden. In our increasingly technological world they are more burdensome (financially speaking anyway) then they used to be. It's like anything else, every right comes with a responsibility. You really shouldn't be ashamed of being able to see reality.

This is one of those cases where you can't reasonably on either extreme. One is "they had the baby, they can raise it", the other is "they had the baby, let's give them lots of money so they can raise correctly". Both sides have clear values self-reliance versus the best outcome for the child, but neither side can actually work independently. Give too little money and some children become locked in an eternal cycle of poverty, give too much and baby-making becomes an occupation and some children become a means to support the parent(s).

Just don't let the fools who want to abolish public education get involved in the discussion, it'll become a nightmare.

[identity profile] perlandria.livejournal.com 2007-03-13 08:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Not all liberals are not fiscally conservative...

Of course.

[identity profile] neosis.livejournal.com 2007-03-13 09:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Truer words have never been not spoken.

Not strictly on topic

[identity profile] neosis.livejournal.com 2007-03-14 08:33 pm (UTC)(link)
I stumbled across an article on the difference between liberal and conservative families (http://www.gurus.com/dougdeb/politics/209.html) while reading that series on breaching the fundamentalist wall.

It's an interesting look at why conservatives fear or don't appreciate liberal ideas.

Re: Not strictly on topic

[identity profile] kesmun.livejournal.com 2007-03-16 01:32 pm (UTC)(link)
That is incredibly enlightening. And by the lights of that article, my mom is much more liberal than she'd like to believe. *L*

As the author said, though, we all have a combination of the two different frames of reference. I tend to come out of a family that tends toward inherited obligation: my parents are worrying about my grandparents (or their respective parents-in-law, since both of them have second spouses whose parents I don't know, much less consider grandparents), while in turn trying to keep their kids taken care of as well. Yet both of my parents are also mobile, Mom more obviously than Dad. Both of them, individually, make plans to make sure that they're financially taken care of for as long as possible by their own efforts, rather than through the efforts of us (their kids). We're one of the families that the author describes as growing more liberal.

I think the swing voters are probably people like my family, who basically live out the negotiated commitment model, but still feel the pull of the inherited obligation model. It's unspoken, but my parents would be disappointed if one of their kids (at least) didn't step up to help them or each other when in need. We all have a tendency to look to the family for support (emotional, financial, whatever) before the social net, yet we acknowledge the importance of the social net because at various times our family has fallen apart to the point where the social net was the first place we looked.

When the propaganda is geared to pull at one or the other, we're more likely to vote where the pull is from.

Re: Not strictly on topic

[identity profile] velvetpage.livejournal.com 2007-03-16 01:51 pm (UTC)(link)
That's exactly my situation. The inherited obligation model is part of my life, and I'm deliberately making it part of my daughters' lives by having Oma look after them. I didn't really have a frame to describe that when that decision was made, but now that I do, I can see that it was part of my reasoning all along. But my family simply isn't in a position to support us the way the social safety net does, so there's a role for both.

Re: Not strictly on topic

[identity profile] kesmun.livejournal.com 2007-03-16 01:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Exactly. Even though we're close-knit despite being spread from hell (my personal hell is freezing, so Alaska qualifies!) to breakfast (Florida orange juice anyone?) and do depend emotionally and sometimes financially on each other, my family has become seven distinct and disparate family units, and there are some things that a wide-spread family just can't do. To a point, it's basically that we've made the choice to accept a more limited version of the inherited obligation model, so it's a renegotiated commitment. *G*