The grave danger of having too many kids...

eatyourveg · Post by **eatyourveg** » 29 Dec 2011, 11:41

Keela wrote:
emordnilap wrote:'Getting rid' of children is something rich people do and have done.
? Sounds as unjustified as LB3's remark.

http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/plantagenet_13.htm

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 29 Dec 2011, 11:47

I suppose if one measured the distance between parents and adult offspring one would tend to get larger numbers from rich folk. It's always been thus, with princes marrying foreign princesses while the peasants married within the village till the bicycle was invented.

eatyourveg · Post by **eatyourveg** » 29 Dec 2011, 12:22

biffvernon wrote:I suppose if one measured the distance between parents and adult offspring one would tend to get larger numbers from rich folk. It's always been thus, with princes marrying foreign princesses while the peasants married within the village till the bicycle was invented.

Are you suggesting LB3 is the result of something to do with the village bike

?

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 29 Dec 2011, 14:00

But he's a Lord

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 29 Dec 2011, 15:08

biffvernon wrote:But he's a Lord

But not necessarily a legitimate one

.

Keela · Post by **Keela** » 29 Dec 2011, 15:24

emordnilap wrote:
Keela wrote:
emordnilap wrote:'Getting rid' of children is something rich people do and have done.
? Sounds as unjustified as LB3's remark.
Think day care; think hired help; think boarding schools; in times past, think governesses; think wet nurses; think aristocracy illegitimate children.

Guess I was thinking more along the abortion lines - or handing over responsibility to the state.

Lord Beria3 · Post by **Lord Beria3** » 29 Dec 2011, 18:53

All this seems a bit abstract to me.

If you have lost your job in the family, living on a ever shrinking welfare system and have six kids to feed its a no brainer that at some point with ever rising food costs, that you are going to struggle to feed your kids.

Thats why Greeks are getting desperate. Some here don't appear to have read the article which is the Guardian btw.

ceti331 · Post by **ceti331** » 29 Dec 2011, 19:13

IMO,
Peak oil will be the ultimate Malthusian Catastrophe.
severely restricting births is the single most effective countermeasure in terms of minimizing the amount of misery we're all in for.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 29 Dec 2011, 19:31

Lord Beria3 wrote:Some here don't appear to have read the article which is the Guardian btw.

The article begins by describing a man with ten children. This is hardly representative of the average Greek since their birthrate of 9.21 per 1000 population per year is one of the lowest in the world, ranking 201th out of 221 nations listed here: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=gr&v=25
At 1.38 births per woman Greece also has amongst the lowest total birth rates in the world. It seems that if we want a smaller global population we had better learn from the Greeks.

extractorfan · Post by **extractorfan** » 29 Dec 2011, 20:02

hmmm, in the end, childless men may be the heroes for us all.

http://purplemotes.net/2011/04/17/child ... n-society/

Lord Beria3 · Post by **Lord Beria3** » 29 Dec 2011, 20:30

Families with many fewer children are suffering.

Maybe I have struck a raw nerve here... of course having children is a good and wonderful thing, but not so great if you can't afford to feed them properly.

As for the argument that having lots of children is good if you are very poor, I have never entirely brought that argument.

Surely if have few resources, than having lots of children puts you at massive risk of not securing sufficient resources to feed them every year, running the risk of them starving to death.

Ludwig · Post by **Ludwig** » 29 Dec 2011, 20:35

extractorfan wrote:hmmm, in the end, childless men may be the heroes for us all.

http://purplemotes.net/2011/04/17/child ... n-society/

Fair dos, but some of that article is overstated guff:

Such men, not the men of heroic legends, are the true heroes of human history.

They weren't heroes, they were just filling a niche in the community

extractorfan · Post by **extractorfan** » 29 Dec 2011, 20:38

of course you've hit a nerve. Poor people have lots of children not because they think about it, they do it by instinct, and no matter how "civilised" and educated we think our society is, it is only the abundance of resources that give us options as to how to invest in the future.

If you have 10 kids, and manage to bring them all up as good healthy people into adulthood, you're sitting pretty in your old age.

Obviously though, that's the extreme example. It is far better for intelligent people to have a couple of children in order that some of the decent values of civilisation survive. (I'm thinking freedom of thought, the right to free speach, the right to due process etc.)

extractorfan · Post by **extractorfan** » 29 Dec 2011, 20:42

Ludwig wrote:
Fair dos, but some of that article is overstated guff:

Was trying to lighten up. The subtitle of the blog is "a journal of whimsy and hope"

It's a nice blog, not meant to be a peer reviewed journal of science.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 29 Dec 2011, 23:02

If you have children in poverty they generally "grow up faster" that is, transition from being a "cost" to being an "asset" by a younger age than the UK typical one for the middle-classes, of 21. For a family with, say, five children, the oldest is generally old enough to be of some help by the time the youngest arrives. A generation later, you have (if all's gone well) a useful social network. Even if only 1/4 of the people in it can find work, they'll be able and (because they're related) willing, to help the rest.

Also, in the Soviet Union, and in Russia as it is today, it's often the grandparents who bring up the children while both parents work. Far from being a sign of the family breaking down, it's a sign that everyone's willing to pitch in and help.