h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sorry, I phrased that last bit badly. By cease to exist, I mean that hopefully these places will eventually sort out some sort of package to take care of their elders. Where in many cases the strategy seems to be to have as many children as possible to work the land, except then you have lots of mouths to feed so it backfires. Poverty breeds children and children breed poverty.

If women all stopped having children, would society grind to a halt? Well I guess it would, but we'd have at least 16 years before the effect was felt at all, in which time we could save up the benefit to the economy of not having to bring up children to prepare for the eventual winding down. I couldn't predict what net effect on living standards it would have though. But the point is that at the moment, in most places, women are having more than enough children.

>>> has anyone ever elected to have children because they think it's a socially responsible thing to do? <<<

I think there are as many answers to that question as there are people to answer... In many societies, children are essential to the family unit - to extending and perpetuating its identity, if nothing else. Many have children to ensure their own ole age. This is still true now even here in England. It is the same reason some will have more than one child as opposed to raising an "only". I often wonder whether the desire to have children is not a narcissistic selfish urge to ensure the banishment of loneliness - but that's just me in my odd moments and will take us into the meaning of life... another thread.

Once our kids came along - everything changed - suddenly we were grown ups with proper responsibilities and duties and we both work extremely hard to try and get it all right: the nutrition, the health, the morals and manners, the education... it is all thought out and discussed.

This is what scares me about the little girls I see around here carting their babies around in designer gear. I know that their kids may grow up to contribute more to society than mine, etc but it isn't about competing with parental skills more that I wonder how that child is going to reach adulthood sane and healthy.. It is very worrying.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't like government intervention in family affairs and the whole nanny/bully state thing bugs me but these kids are so often neglected and sometimes not allowed to be "children" for long enough. Three year olds playing on a street corner alone with no coat and no parent in sight in an area rife with weirdos.... Those children need homes and families. Then you have the young mums who are struggling financially and getting so stressed and depressed because they feel powerless and trapped. If a job helps their situation and secures a good upbringing for their kids, then they can have my tax money to keep those babies safe anyday.

another worth

W

So do you mean that you see many women having many children as a burden on society, rather than women have children per se?



I had a conversation once with a woman who had lived in SE asia for a number of years. She reckoned that elderly and also ill people were usually looked after much better than in the West. Obviously this is not true if people are too poor, but in places where there was a reasonable standard of living, it seemed that the social structure managed care of the elderly much better than we do (which actually wouldn't be hard).

As those are the places that have extreme povery as well, taking their young talent would be devastating.

>>Someone will have to explain that as I don't get it<<

I can only speak from my own experience, but I can't think of anyone I know whose *primary* goal in having children was the wider good of society (and I'd think it pretty odd if that were the case).

*Sweeping generalisation and in my personal opinion alert* The sterotypical bond between parent and child is an inherently selfish one. The parent looks to his or her own child's interests first, the child looks to his or her own parents for protection and support. The relationship between the family unit - in whatever shape - and the good of wider society is not always a harmonious one and these things don't always point in the same direction.

So, in the abstract, a system which subsidises childcare does so for the wider benefit of society and rightly so. But the individual parent, coming into contact with that system, looks to it for immediate support and works it to their own advantage - it's not looked at as a contract in which anything has to be put back at the end.

You're saying that the production of healthy, well-balanced children is a benefit to society. I agree entirely, but I don't believe those children who have been helped out by childcare subsidised by the general taxpayer (parents and non- alike) are then going to be fired up with a special sense of social purpose: they're going to pay their taxes 'through gritted teeth' like everyone else.

Oo - this one is moving quickly!

Somebody earlier (kea?) mentioned that when they were young they were cared for by grandparents while their parents worked - that isn't going to be possible these days as the grandparents themselves won't be able to give up work until their late sixties.

Reading back my last posting, I appear to be taking a very cynical attitude towards humanity in general today

Statement intended to clear up what I'm 'getting at':

Basically, I think government support for the welfare of all children whomsoever isn't even an issue, it's a moral 'given' and has to be done.

I also think that the current UK government is determined to parade its 'best intentions' on this issue while actually carrying out policy and changing legislation in as mean and inadequate a fashion as they can possibly get away with.

Which involves shifting as much of the burden as possible on to employers who are even more mean and self-interested.

Which means parents are going to grab what they can while they can with the entirely justifiable suspicion that they are going to be left in the lurch by one or the other sooner or later; while taxpayers without children are going to grumble about it.

Because the trust is gone - we have a supposedly socialist government whose chief message seems to be more and more 'look out for yourself'.

Which is horrible, because there's nowhere left to go. The principles you believe to be the correct ones are in the hands of people so affluent and privileged that childcare isn't even an issue in the context of any of their lives (the nanny's wages barely making a dent) and so becomes something of an abstraction, vaguely affecting the vague hordes they're told live somewhere vague 'out there' and whom they never have to meet.

Point is - on reflection - that Taxpayer A and Parent B shouldn't be getting at each other. They should turn their attention to the root of the problem.

Right - rant over.

It's a whole chicken and egg thing- why have children if it means you don't have enough money to stay at home and raise them, so then you have to go back to work and barely afford childcare? (childcare is very expensive, probably 'coz parents are captivated by the must of going to work). I think the notion of raising children within their family is only good to a point. Since it doesn't take a village to raise a child anymore, and we don't have villages anyway, then things have to change. The whole social aspect of a child learning from distant relatives and neighbours is lost, and since the nuclear family's gone to pots too in most cases, i.e. single parenting, and families live away from eachother, there's no other way but to rely on government funding and childcare. And the government encourages people to work, 'coz it's cheaper to pay tax credits than unemployment.
If children are a burden on society, then so are the elderly, those incapable of working due to mental/physical disabilities and those on long-term treatment by the NHS. So let's get rid of the lot, shall we? And throw in the royal family while we're at it, they haven't worked much recently, as far as I know....
Or maybe you can look at it like this- no children means no society at all, and no young nurses to take care of us all when we're old, and no one to pay the taxes that support the NHS and the government pension scheme and traffic and sewer and electricity infrastructure. I bet Hooloovoo doesn't have kids, otherwise I doubt she would make any of these cases.
And I think a world without the burden of money would be much nicer and prettier, but there you go...

to Elly

Elly, I was just in the middle of writing my first reply to this thread, but you have said exactly what I was gonna say, and in a much clearer way than I would have!!

Not everyone in a society can be productive at all times. Children have to grow up, older people retire, some people get sick. We can't throw them all onto the dungheap!

Someone said that if women stopped having children, they're be no-one to look after us in our old age. I'd go one further than that. If women stopped having children, the human race would die out!

Oh, by the way, I'm a part-time working mum, married to full-time working dad, expecting second child, after which I know I cannot afford any others untill I get a more decent-paid job. And I can testify that parenting indeed involves sacrificing a whole lot, and it was with tears that I put my child in nursery on the first day.
However, I wouldn't have it any differently, 'coz I believe I have to help as much as I can in supporting my family so I can give it a good life it deserves, and I don't believe that I've lost all my value as part of the workforce just for becoming a mother.

> If children are a burden on society, then so are the elderly, those
> incapable of working due to mental/physical disabilities and those on
> long-term treatment by the NHS. So let's get rid of the lot, shall we?
> And throw in the royal family while we're at it, they haven't worked
> much recently, as far as I know....

Ahhhhh!! But there's a big difference there. The elderly, those incapable of working due to mental/physical disabilities and those on long-term treatment by the NHS, are all in a situation of no fault of their own. The elderly in particular have already worked and paid in their fair share of tax.

Having a child is a conscious decision you make, and one of the factors influencing your decision should be whether you can afford to give up work and look after them, or if your job pays well enough to employ someone else to look after them after you return to work. It's not as if a baby just appears by magic when you least expect it.

And no I don't have kids. I can't afford to buy my own house never mind afford to bring up a child at the same time. Or maybe I should have three or four kids and then expect the council to give me a five bedroom house to keep them all in?

Thanks for that. Just spoken from the heart.

Elly, I'd just like to say that you sound like a hard working and excellent role model that more people could do well to follow.

I can tell you council property is limited to 3 bedrooms. With 2 jobs, we still can't have a mortgage 'coz the costs are so high.
And the old people were children once, too. The oldest of them still living fought in WW2 and the rest.... well, they've mainly worked and paid their taxes, I believe.
I don't think most parents (who, like me, work and pay taxes, too), expect to be given everything on a silver platter, but without children we really have no future. Fact. Not everyone has to have them, and I have nothing against people who can afford millions of nannies to care for their one child, and then not see them, 'coz most of the time they're at work, but the working-class, who does take on most of the jobs, qualified and unqualified, is overwhelmed by the costs of everything- and needs help. We can't all have well paid jobs, and therefore we all lean, in one way or another, on the system. That's exactly what it's there for. Ask your parents if they ever had to rely on benefits. And believe me, I'd really rather be in a situation where I don't have to rely on the system, it's not pretty or comfortable, and you're constantly under inspection, but it's better than having no food for my child.

Some of you seem to be blissfully unanaware of some econimic realities.

In the UK atleast cars ARE subsidised by the government in a number of ways. These include tax incentives for foreign companies to set up car plants thus lowering the price of vehicles and ploughing investment into communities that have lost jobs in "traditional industries".

They are directly subsidised to peple who would have trouble getting about without a car. People who would have their quality of life and employment oppotunities severly dented by their lack of mobility. More importantly if the state did not help them in this way these people would very likely need other costly government interventions. So its give them a hand to make a life of their own or keep on with doleing out payments because chances are they wont make it by themselves.

This is the exact same logic behind providing state assitance for childcare. It makes economic sense to do so.

Lets not forget that the money does not disappear into the ether it goes into the wage packet of people who might otherwise be getting unemployment benefits. The wages of childminders are in turn taxed.

Id have thought even Hooloovoo could worked that one out

Dont be afraid of the bogeywoman.
Of course some of the money in a round about way goes on cigarettes and booze, but Id like ANYONE here to tell us how many people they actually know, not people the Daily Mail have invented, anyone they know who gets preganant so they have more money to spend on ciggies and beer. I cant think of one.


While we're on the subject of fags and bevvies can anyone explain where we draw the line on self inflicted injuries.

I keep fit(ish) by playing rugby but if I break my nose shold I be refused treatment because I know its a potentially harmful sport. Winters day old lady breaks her hip, should we say "its your own fault you knew it was icy". 2am car accident passing patrol car stops and says, "Its night time dont you know more accidents happen at night get yourself healed you irresponsible burden on the tax coffers.



one love

I'm not sure if that was said cynically, Hooloovoo, but I'll risk thanking you for your comment.
blickybadger has raised another set of chicken and egg from the ashes, which'll never be resolved, of course- where do we, and who, draws the line? I think equality is very important as a base assumption for the NHS and the benefits system, or no one will get anything.
Now mind that over there, and pass it to me...

> I can tell you council property is limited to 3 bedrooms

So that family with 8 kids or whatever that was in the news a couple of months back was all lies was it?

I don't know which story you are referring to, but that's certainly not the rule, is it ? btw, it sounds like a story from the 'Bild' Zeitung

Haven't heard of them, just that the properties on offer, as far as I'm aware, are limited to a certain size. Maybe in other parts of the countries they're bigger.