My theory of the third word of the last sentence is that it resulted from a reanalysis of "tem" in such phrases as "president pro tem" as a word in its own right, and not an abbreviation of "tempore", which was then subjected to regular morphological rules for pluralization. It means, of course, "terms", but with an emphasis on temporal stretches.

Could you possibly have come up with a better title, given that Joe Francis is in jail now and also under indictment for tax evasion?

Also, I read somewhere the other day that live births of male babies are going down a little. Maybe this will be a solution.

All that said, I agree with your conclusion, of course. And I urge you to try to live with the many different people of the world, including the boys with long hair.

Beating up is also a mode of being with, as someone might say.

That's a pretty geeky way to insinuate a threat, ogged.

So you're a sadist?

How come that surprises me?

I think I hear the laughter of squirrels in the background of this post, even though I agree with the broad point that changes in family structure are having a ginormous effect on society and culture.

The post is in earnest, although one hopes that it is not itself earnest.

Try not to feel so threatened, Ogg.

I'll advocate the market-driven viewpoint: Most Womenz still like Menz. Demand ensures supply.

What's the big deal?

I object to the perjorative use of "lowest common denominator". This concept forms the backbone of our society, and any attack against it is an attack against America.

Sounds pricey.
The poor folk will have to make do with less sophisticated methods.

News for you, ogged: situations other than traditional happily-or-miserably-married-mother-and-father parental structures have been very common for a very long time, and have had massive impact on our society. Women With Sperm have been around for zero time, and will barely make a difference to the former phenomenon. So why the fuck are you associating one with the other?

IMterriblyHO, it's philosophically interesting in a bullshiting-at-a-coffee-shop sort of way, but as a practical matter, it's not terribly earth-shattering that upper-class lesbians will have the ability to have biological children instead of needing a sperm donor.

There are already many children being raised by lesbian/gay couples, and I honestly don't see what the problem is. What I think would be interesting though, is to see what the children's (girl's) reaction will be when they find out they're the result of a lab experiment, as opposed to, say, finding out that mummy and mommy won them for adoption in a tight competition against a couple of impotent gay transvestites. Also, if this catches on we might actually et to a point where there are two or more women for every man: how cool would THAT be?!

One can think that making sperm is problematic without having any kind of issue with lesbians raising children.

Which, I suspect, is the line I'd be inclined to take.

What's next? Test-tube babies?

B-b-but if the sperm start out as a lady's bone marrow before getting turned into sperm, how does Jesus know when to put the soul in?

re: 17

There is clearly a flaw in these scientists' plan. They need to go back and read more Aristotle.

The journal article mentioned in the link doesn't seem to be online yet, but here is a similar one from the same professor, published last year.

More seriously, people are right that the change in familial arrangement is no big deal and has long since happened, anyway. I'd also be inclined to say that the particular family units people choose to form -- two women, two men, one woman/one man, multiples of any of the preceding -- aren't really any of our business.

But Ogged is right, this IS a big deal and ought to be subject to a serious debate in exactly the same way, as say, reproductive cloning or germ-line gene manipulation. It's not just quantitatively different to IVF, it's qualitatively different too. The change from sexual to asexual reproduction -- even for a tiny minority of people -- is a fucking big change.

re:15

So much of it goes to waste everyday anyway, so these people would just be replenishing the supply. I think the only losers there would be the guys that actually sell theirs for artificial insemination.

The change from sexual to asexual reproduction -- even for a tiny minority of people -- is a fucking big change.

Isn't this just sexual reproduction by other means? These women aren't budding.

This counts as asexual reproduction? There are still two parents. I'm not the philosophy of science guy, but that seems wrong to me.

I'm on the "Non-nuclear families are old news -- whatever this is a big deal for, it isn't for the family structure." We've already got lesbian couples raising children, and have had for ages -- the fact they they could have babies biologically related to both of them now isn't a huge social difference. I suppose you could use it as a teaching moment to talk about what families that don't fall into the Mom&Dad&kids pattern mean, but there's no reason that you'd have to.

There are bioethics questions about it -- mostly, as far as I can see, around whether it really works without risk of injury to the eventual child.

Maybe ttaM was referring to lesbian bed death.

Heh.

Eh, I wrote a whole thing, and then re-read 20, which already said it. This is a big deal from a bio-ethics point of view, not from a social point of view.

If we judge by Alice Sheldon's work, this will enable society to stabilize, then thrive, after the terrible catastrophe that kills all the men. Contrawise, if we judge by P.D. James' work, this is going to put a stop to people dressing up their pets and pushing them around in baby carriages. Win-win!

Donating bone marrow is a pretty excruciating process, isn't it?

There are still two parents.

Not necessarily. Although fertilizing your own egg with your own sperm would be like super-incest, I guess.

Evens things up then -- the mother donating bone marrow doesn't have to go through labor.

I suppose this is also an infertility treatment for men, isn't it?

30: Oooh, talk about reinforcing bad recessives.

Okay, bioethics people -- if it is also an infertility treatment for men (infertile man has sperm cultured from his bone marrow) is that ethically complex? If not, why the difference?

re: 33

For me, personally, yes. I don't care, from a bioethics point of view, whether it's a man's bone-marrow or a woman's and whether it's the same woman (for a sort of parthogenesis) or different ones (for a sort of quasi-sexual reproduction).

I suppose if it was a single woman it'd add a certain degree of extra diffculty, come to think of it, just because of the increased likelihood of genetic diseases.

29 - Consider it a different kind of boner.
30 - Super-incest? More like self-cloning with all the genetic risks extant.

Of course the technology would discriminate against gay men who lack the incubation equipment.

You're obsolete, Ogged. That's the significance of this.

"What's the big deal?" is an interpretation of the fundamental datum, which is "Ogged is obsolete".

By this method a woman could presumably self-impregnate, thus getting a near version of herself -- but not a clone, since some of her recessive traits would come out. A series of such kids would al have slight differences.

So, if you raise your kids to be conservatives, you're a bad parent?

For that matter, how is promoting belief in free trade and individual freedom "an implicit rebuke to conservatism"? Do you mean "conservatism" in some 17th century sense?

Nah, it's time to talk about man-woman-birth-death-infinity again and this is as good a hook as we're likely to get for now. Social need.

It seems it's always easy to downplay the significance of technical developments, pointing out that the social changes people want to associate with them are often well underway anyhow. So for instance associating the sexual revolution with the advent of the pill seems like shallow journalism now: at the most an accelerating factor, not a revolution.

Are the social effects of technical changes always cumulative, do you think?

if you raise your kids to be conservatives, you're a bad parent?

More a bad person in general, but now we're quibbling over details.

but as a practical matter, it's not terribly earth-shattering

You forget how much easier it is to shatter a six-thousand-year-old earth than a four-billion-year-old earth.

I'm not sure 21st century conservatism has as much to do with individual freedom as sometimes advertised.

38: We'll happily bait you if you like, but the use of liberal and conservative in the post is a loose shorthand. I read "conservative" to mean "having a rigid, ideological belief in the importance and immutability of gender roles in the family." This obviously doesn't describe many people who are, or consider themselves to be, political and social conservatives. In theory, it might describe people who vote as or with political liberals, although I don't know any.

If you're unhappy with that idea of conservatism, we're not the people to complain to.

42, 43 -- I guess there are the "Four Freedoms" in modern form:

Freedom to die of a treatable disease for lack of funds.

Freedom from science.

Freedom from uppity people of color (especially those born in another country).

Freedom to follow a cult of personality.

And the great bonus catch all: Freedom to regulate other people's reproductive lives.

Whether you think this is old news depends on the time frame you're considering--I think of this and the mainstreaming of same-sex parents as occurring in basically the same moment--it's part of the same social upheaval that we haven't really begun to deal with (if it helps to add "as humans, and not just as elite Americans," then go ahead). And, in any event, I think, as I said, that the "no big deal" talk disadvantages liberals and that IDP is right that this is an excellent hook to change the terms.

As for how unsettling this is, I think y'all are seriously underestimating how important being rendered irrelevant to reproduction is going to be for men generally. But time will tell.

how is promoting belief in free trade and individual freedom "an implicit rebuke to conservatism"?

James, I'm thinking of the vocal evangelical/fundamentalist minority in the US, which values things like order and obedience more than it does openness and tolerance.

We're going to be reduced to mere sex toys!

I think y'all are seriously underestimating how important being rendered irrelevant to reproduction is going to be for men generally

Men are hardly being rendered irrelevant, what with heterosexual couples comprising, at minimum, 90% of the population. That's like saying that The Rocketman has rendered commercial air travel irrelevant.

Sorry, was imprecise: irrelevant in the sense of "no longer necessary," not in the sense of "no longer involved."

We're going to be reduced to mere sex toys!

[hands in the air] Hooray!

I agree with Ogged - if implemented, this would tend to erode the installed base of men. However, it's hard to imagine men being phased out in less time than it would take for some sort of reciprocal technique (i.e. men making eggs) to reach the market. It's also hard to imagine such a major demographic change completing during my own lifetime, so I'm not worrying. If the future wants to be all women, why resist? It'd be a good way of deciding the proposition that men are the cause of violence.

In any case, the first ethical issue you'd get to would be the welfare - in health terms - of children conceived using this method.

If the future wants to be all women, why resist?

The joke's going to be on the womyn when there's nobody to kill bugs and open jars.

the welfare - in health terms - of children conceived using this method

There are going to be animal studies of this, aren't there?

99.999+% of births are still going to be the old fashioned way because it's much easier, I don't really see this taking over the primary role in human reproduction and eliminating the need for men. Unless it's pushed by both lesbians and people who want to be sex toys.

What's of utmost importance is that we maintain our societal respect for The Cock. I'm somewhat concerned that developments like this could eventually undermine that. And then where would we be?

I'll volunteer to be a sex toy for lesbian couples. You know, because I'm a feminist.

So, is anyone clear on whether children of a woman donating her own sperm would be genetically identical, or if they would have more recessives? I would think it would be the latter, by far. Homozygous recessive locii on the parent would remain recessive in the child; ditto for homozygous dominant. But each heterozygous locus would have a 25% chance of becoming homozygous recessive. Or is my remembrance of genetics all screwed up?

Each chromosome has a 1/2 chance of remaining heterozygous or becoming homozygous in one of two ways. So there's a 1/2^23 chance that the offspring will be a clone of the self-impregnating parent- the same chance that two natural siblings will be identitcal twins, ie., ~0% chance. On average you'll have half your chromosomes heterozygous, 1/4 going homozygous to one copy, 1/4 to the other copy. Whether bad traits come out depends on that chance and on what recessive genes you have hiding due to 1) inheritance and 2) random mutations that normally wouldn't come out because no one else you could mate with has those same random mutations.
And I'm shocked no one has mentioned hermaphrodites yet.

What's of utmost importance is that we maintain our societal respect for The Cock.

Precisely. Vaginae wouldn't make a very good skyscrapers.

We're all going to live in caves instead of skyscrapers.

Vaginae wouldn't make a very good skyscrapers.

On the other hand, there's China's stadium for the 08 Olympics.

Vaginae wouldn't make a very good skyscrapers

Maybe not to start with, but then there'd be that whole pseudo-phallic development, like the hyenas we talked about sometime last year.

2003 US census data says 10.1 million households with children under 18 are headed by a single mother, compared to 26.4 million two-parent households with minor children.

No real way to know, of course, how many of those 10 million households now enjoy irrelevant fathers.

Of course, it pleases Ogged to know that they were necessary at conception.

I don't feel threatened at all. I strongly agree with the last few lines of the post. Frankly, I would think that men whose only attractive feature is their ability to produce sperm have more serious problems.

58: Recombination actually takes place at the level of the chromosome? I thought it was more fine-grained than that, with crossovers on each arm and such.

China's stadium for the 08 Olympics.

Superexcellent scheme!

65: I think you're right.

China's stadium for the 08 Olympics

Wow!

58: Yep, though the chance of getting an identical child is way way lower than 1/2^23 since genes cross over between the parent's two copies of each chromosome during meiosis.

So basically, no identical twins, but the main way differences would express themselves is through degrees of trait expression (as sometimes two copies of a gene will reinforce one another instead of only one copy being used) and a fair number of random recessive traits coming out.

You'd be better off with two mommies, in my relatively uninformed opinion.

Yeah, I was just counting the Medelian statistics, in reality it's much more complicated than that. But in this case I'm not sure what meiotic processes will be involved so I don't know if you'll get crossing over- if they go to stem cells them mature them into sperm cells, I guess you'll get the usual results.

Medelian = Mendelian

70: It doesn't matter if they only take the bone marrow chromosomes as they are and do not touch them. So long as they use an egg cell for the fertilization, at least one of the cells will have been created through meiosis and thus contains a random set of genes from the person's genome. Two sets of randomization instead of one set of randomization does not affect the probabilities (assuming you do not know what's on the chromosomes you take from the bone marrow).

At least Leon Kass might burst an aneurysm from this or something. Hopefully.

The woman with the large family of self-produced girls could name them "Mary Catherine", "Mary Elizabeth", "Mary Ellen", etc.. That would be less Pythonesque than calling all of them "George Foreman".

You could introduce them by the specific recessive genes that they had. "Here's my daughter Mary Elizabeth, who we call "Hairy Marry" because of her rare hirsutism gene".

Presumably the bone marrow cells are diploid, they must be making them into haploid cells in some way?

Or does this take place in the process where the stem cell becomes a sperm?

It's really odd to me that this thread has, almost completely, missed what I took to be O's main point, as contained in his closing lines.

Look, of course this technique isn't going to become the norm, or even 1/100 as common as old-fashioned artificial insemination (although let me tell you that my sister and sister-in-law are looking at big bucks to pursue any child-having route, inc. adoption; if spending bigger bucks and getting a kid related to both of them was on the table, you'd better believe they'd be interested). But it is going to be a huge debate. The Right loves to gin up controversy over minor-occurrence bullshit (partial birth, anyone?), and we get our clocks cleaned every time, because all we can say is, "it's no big deal."

The fact that gay parents have, in a relatively brief time, become common (in some places) doesn't mean that the discussion has really happened, or the debate won. The default setting for probably 2/3 of non-coastal-elite Americans remains just what O said: "a good family as a man and a woman with X dollars spending X hours with their kids and an inchoate sense that anything different from that is inferior." The only way to change that setting is to challenge it head on, and I think O's formulation is pretty damn good.

What it lacks, however, is backing. So if you know anybody that could help it out....

The bone marrow stem cells can be turned into "sperm progenitor" stem cells, which are diploid, and which are the ones that can then be induced to undergo meiosis to become sperms.

I never heard this term before, but it seems that the term is "spermatogenic cells" for the fast-dividing cells that can undergo meiosis into sperms. I don't know much about that part of biology.
http://www.bioeng.auckland.ac.nz/physiome/ontologies/male_repro_system/cells.php

There's an interesting ethical debate to be had here, perhaps, but the post misses it. Not that the nature of families isn't an interesting question, but that this new technology doesn't affect our answers to it unless we held already the method of conception of the child as constitutive of the family.

I don't think even the most conservative traditional models weight the value of the father qua sperm donor highly; and if we're just arguing against that, then there's millions of counterexamples already: infertile couples who use artificial insemination, gay & lesbian couples, single parents. The tiny percentage that will eventually use this technology to have kids barely count as a data point.

So, I agree with McGrattan that the interesting questions are in the implications, if any, of one gender of the species becoming theoretically irrelevant to the survival of the species. My first unconsidered impulse: women are not going to put up with as much of your shit, guys.

Lesbians go fuck themselves, and the patriarchy loses.

Those who are talking about super-elite lesbians aren't talking about the same thing Ogged is. It's technology—it will become cheaper and more widely available over time. (Who ever thought we'd be having a debate about whether fertility drugs should be covered by health insurance?)

Lesbian sperm is a big deal, and an awesome phrase to write. But it's only one part of a genetic revolution that's going to completely obscure same-sex marriage. (Which, in the first place, seems like it belongs under Civil Rights, a logical followup to miscegenation.) There will be the Sexual Revolution in the 20th c. and the Genetic Revolution of the 21st c., assuming the Cylons don't attack in the next few decades.

Or does this take place in the process where the stem cell becomes a sperm?

If I understand (ha!) the science (read: magic fertility smoke), they'd take the bone marrow tissue (which spits out stem cells), and convince (with magic fairy dust) those stem cells to turn into sperms.

Ooh, meiosis. That's science for fairy dust.

But you need a meiosis step at some point, or you end up with diploid rather than haploid sperm, which wouldn't work. (I think. From my memory of 9th grade bio.)

the Genetic Revolution of the 21st c.

Gattaca!

Never mind, I seem to have somehow missed most of the last couple of dozen comments.

I also have various unconsidered emotional responses to this, responses that I wouldn't want to try base any kind of argument upon, and which derives from a suspicion of medicine as a form of consumption. However, that's probably just me.

women are not going to put up with as much of your shit, guys.

Oh, see, I think they will -- that's the beauty of it. In my experience, women who "put up with guys' shit" aren't generally solely after the impregnating power of guys' sperm.

There's an interesting ethical debate to be had here, perhaps, but the post misses it

That's because the post isn't concerned with the ethical debate, but the political/social/rhetorical ones. I figured I'd just been totally unclear, but JRoth gets it exactly right, and I'm a bit disturbed by how quickly the thread has dismissed the importance of this. But hey, this battle isn't going to be won or lost at Unfogged, so....

suspicion of medicine as a form of consumption. However, that's probably just me

Not just you, laddie.

A physicist friend of mine says that he thinks there are still biological obstacles to this (although obvs. it's not his field). Something about the genes that govern placental development being only found on the y chromosome, or along those lines.

I do think it'll be a fairly major social difference if lesbian couples, at least, don't have to go through a bunch of legal hoop-jumping in order to both have parental status w/r/t their kids. Right now, the non-bio mama has to adopt, if the sperm donor is a friend they have to sever his parental rights, etc. Not having to deal with that stuff--if people go the two bio-mommies route--will be one less set of obstacles for those families.

Well, I did say that it could be used as a teaching moment (or, rather, an inspiration for public discussion of related issues). The thing is, talking about the political/social/rhetorical implications requires some knowledge of how people generally are going to react to this; the primary reaction among Unfogged commenters seems to be 'no big deal, maybe some ethical issues that the bioethicists should pick through.' To discuss the social importance, we've got to come up with reactions to other people's primary reactions to the news, which is tough when we don't have those primary reactions yet.

It's not that your main point isn't interesting, it just doesn't seem to connect up with the technology well, and most of us took you to be saying something like 'Because of this new technology, we have to re-evaluate the traditional model of the family' and we're saying 'You're only getting to this now?'

The monuments of the future will be pits, as Kafka prophesied, like the commonly-overlooked Martha Washington Monument.

Raising kids as conservatives is, in fact, bad, if by "conservative" you mean "unaware of simple facts like evolution, how sexual reproduction happens, how to prevent pregnancy, the existence of gay people and lesbians, the knowledge that their parents will love them if they themselves turn out to be gays or lesbians," and so forth.

Not to mention the damage done to kids if their parents don't believe in funding public sector things like oh, say, education.

""put up with guys' shit"" s/b """put up" with guys' "shit"""

Although it's not really the topic at hand, I like that scientists in this field are also working on ways to make marrow-derived stem cells grow into livers and kidneys, not just sperm. I'd hate for all the effort to be spent just to find ways for even more people to have kids. I think we've got enough of those already.

But, to refer to the pill example again, changes afoot for decades in sexual mores, driven by social changes including the nature of work and who was doing it, and for which the pill was not necessary, were focused and brought forward in society with the pill as symbol.

Maybe lesbosperm can have the same sort of effect on the public debate of an issue.

a suspicion of medicine as a form of consumption

It's best not to think of it as medicine at all, just medical means to carry out somebody's whim. Like cosmetic surgery.

It's funny, but what hits me more than the lifesaving liver/kidney/whatever potential is the orthopedic potential. I know a whole lot of people with bad knees or whatever, many of whom have had unsatisfying surgical repairs. Once you can grow your own cartilage, tendons, or whatever, that's going to be a big difference for a lot of people.

we've got to come up with reactions to other people's primary reactions to the news, which is tough when we don't have those primary reactions yet.

Judging by past debates, the main objection will be something along the lines of "it's against nature!". So the reaction to that attitude should be either "no, it's not" or "it doesn't matter because that's a meaningless characterization".

But hey, this battle isn't going to be won or lost at Unfogged, so....

Hey, all the big media mavens read this site. Wehttam Saiselgy...Dr. Cire Yawhcuar...that other guy...

re: 98

Yes, and that's where all my dour Scottish calvinism cries out in anguish. Or rather, sits grumpily, in anguish.

86: Me three.

Here's one downside to ongoing reproductive technology stuff: more and more it buttresses the idea that pregnancy is somehow a voluntary act, and that women who get pregnant without planning it in advance are by definition* bad mothers.

*Did I use that right?

Are you bothered by medicine as consumption, or medicine as expensive consumption available only to a small elite? The latter doesn't bother me, but the former does. (I've got a niece with horrendous buck teeth -- while that wouldn't be a problem in the UK, in the US it marks her as poor; anyone from a financially secure background would have had them fixed. This drives me nuts on her behalf; we've tried to pay for braces for her a couple of times, but the money's always been more necessary for something else.)

As with the cloning debates, I always thought it would be worthwhile to take a look at animals who already have this option - sexual reproduction when it's handy, parthenogenesis when it's not. What happens across a population when there's more or less of one kind of reproduction going on? I don't know, but it's a doable experiment, and maybe somebody's done it.

As for the social & political effects of this, I'd agree that it's the kind of symbolic threat to patriarchy that's likely to get the family-values types spluttering about the end of everything good, but in practical terms, the real action on the changing status of men is elsewhere, and has been going on for a long time (and is really fascinating to watch and talk about). This particular step is a drop in the ocean.

I've got a niece with horrendous buck teeth -- while that wouldn't be a problem in the UK..

Now there's a backhanded compliment.

It's consumption in general rather than anything specifically to do with inequity.

Again, I haven't thought about this enough to express exactly what it is I am uncomfortable with, but it's something to do with the rather inchoate notion that medicine is in the business of 'making it so' where 'making it so' is about satisfying some broader class of desires beyond mere health. I'd want to argue that 'making it so' is NOT part of what medicine ought to be in the business of doing.

**If by "mother", you mean "woman who plans out her fertility", yes, but your sentence works without "by definition" and might work better with "irresponsible."

And I think your point is largely right, though I'd argue that we're already there with the birth control pill. It's very hard to advocate both that a pregnancy is a natural part of life that should be accomodated, and a choice.

I was trying to forestall the "Silly Americans with their cosmetic dentistry" conversation. The only reason it's important here is that it's a class marker, and one that has real potential to screw her vocationally -- my understanding is that weirdlooking teeth wouldn't do that in the UK.

The latter doesn't bother me, but the former does

I think you mean the opposite of what you said -- am I wrong?

Remember the deaf thread way back when it was asked what happens when gay people decide to genetically determine their children woudl be gay? So we could have a population of lesbians separating from the rest of the population, who under the theory [the one that suggests that since birth control is weeding out those hedonists who don't cognitively want kids, and weeding out the cads, leaving conservative, tradiontionalist, large-family-wanting people to outbreed the rest] will be becoming more conservative, when does wwIII happen.

Also, fwiw, my doctoral thesis is on defining health, so I have thought a lot about what 'health' is, but rather less so on why I am uncomfortable with particular non-health (on some account of health) driven medical intereventions.

104: A little bit of both. I'm bothered by medicine as consumption full stop, but I also freely admit that if *I* were the one with x or y problem, I'd probably try to take advantage of my wealthy person's right to (say) experimental treatment for my M.S. I've had warts cryogenically removed without a second thought.

I'm more bothered, though, by arguments about medicine-as-consumption that seem to accept it as okay that rich people can afford, say, IVF but argue that it shouldn't be available for the poor or that health insurance shouldn't cover it. Even though I admit--and I know this is the kind of thing that really upsets women with fertility problems, with whom I have enormous sympathy--that the amount of energy and resources that (seem) to go into assisted reproduction technology really does bother me.

when does wwIII happen

Haven't you been paying attention? I think we're up to V by now.

Rene Dubos staked out a position in the fifties against the consumerist approach to medicine, in books like The Mirage of Health.

107: I have some intuitive pull in that direction, but I find it very hard to define. My first pass at it would be that medicine should fix what is wrong, and not aim for creating what was formerly impossible. But that won't hold up for more than a minute.

It's very hard to advocate both that a pregnancy is a natural part of life that should be accomodated, and a choice.

I really don't find it so. The former is true; the latter isn't. Pregnancy isn't a choice; trying not to become pregnant is.

Even though I admit--and I know this is the kind of thing that really upsets women with fertility problems, with whom I have enormous sympathy--that the amount of energy and resources that (seem) to go into assisted reproduction technology really does bother me.

yeah, I feel this way too.

I was trying to forestall the "Silly Americans with their cosmetic dentistry" conversation.

Made me laugh because we have a lot of Simpsons on DVD, and just the other day we were watching the episode where the orthodontist sells them braces for Lisa by pulling out "The Big Book of British Smiles".

BPD, does it bother you because it will be expected that pregnancies will be planned and controlled, or because natural, cavewoman-style birthing shouldn't be socially punished? It sounds like the argument about whether men should be able to opt-out of parenting duties if the woman they were with becomes pregnant.

Other than for inequity, I'm not bothered by that now. I'm poised to become incredibly bothered by it when any kind of detailed genetic manipulation of prospective children becomes available -- I'm still not sure in any specific sense exactly why.

re: 116

Yes, that captures my own intuition. I do intend to write a paper about this, but it'll have to wait until i can get my ideas on it in order. I do have some theoretical apparatus (my account of health) to bring to bear upon it, though.

since birth control is weeding out...the cads

How's that project coming along?

re: 115

yeah, I've written a bit about Dubos in some of my academic work. Only in a very superficial way though -- I've not actually read much of his stuff [including that book].

I do think we're getting to the point, with end-of-life decisions and so forth, where we're barely beginning to reconsider some of the medicine-as-consumption issues.

Example: my aunt, who is only in her 60s, and who has fairly advanced MS. She's incontinent, she can't walk, she's in a nursing home. She can still carry on a conversation and remember Shakespeare plays, but she can't read and her short term memory is very poor, so her conversations are often very circular. She still has some quality of life, but that's entirely dependent on her best friend and me going to the nursing home to visit her and take her out for meals, for the Shakespeare reading group, to church, etc.

Honestly, if I were in her shoes, I would rather be dead. Part of this is because the other people in the nursing home are even worse off: many of them can't talk at all, many of them are bedridden and demented. If more of them were like her, the nursing home itself might not be such a horrible place, but as is, she can't even have a conversation with anyone else in there. At some point, even treating something as basic as pneumonia seems like a really bad idea, both from the cold pov of resource allocation and from the better pov of the patient's own quality of life.

I think that the Pope-worshipping Irish here should avoid referring to the British with stereotypes and derogatory slurs.

Honestly, if I were in her shoes, I would rather be dead

I wonder if, in her shoes, you might feel differently?

BPD, does it bother you because it will be expected that pregnancies will be planned and controlled, or because natural, cavewoman-style birthing shouldn't be socially punished? It sounds like the argument about whether men should be able to opt-out of parenting duties if the woman they were with becomes pregnant.

I don't understand the question. It bothers me that people (now) think that pregnancy should be planned and controlled, not as an economic practicality, but as some kind of moral requirement. The argument about whether men should be able to opt out of parenting is a non-argument; they can, and often do. FWIW, I think that state-mandated child support does more harm than good, at least as it's practiced now.

When did we quit ragging on Ogged and go all NPR about this? Bo-o-o-o-r-i-i-i-ng.

127: It's hard to say, in part because it's hard to tell if she's really cognizant of her condition. For instance, she still claims that she can read, and that she was walking just last week.

FWIW, I think that state-mandated child support does more harm than good, at least as it's practiced now.

Really?? That's an argument I'd like to see elaborated...

I wonder if, in her shoes, you might feel differently?

The obvious solution is for B to ask about it, next time she goes to take her aunt out for a visit. Tactfully of course -- perhaps she can lead gently into it by speaking of older, dead relatives.

117: It is a choice when you have highly effective, readily available birth control methods. There's some fundamental sense in which becoming pregnant is default; it's what happens if you don't take measures to prevent becoming pregnant and you have sex.

But there's a very large sense in which having kids *is* a choice. I'm getting married. No one assumes that this means I'll be dropping out of graduate school because I'll be having a baby. Friends who are married get asked if and when they want kids.

I think it would be good if society would treat children and pregnancy as something that happens in life just like getting older. But the availability of birth control does cut against that. That doesn't mean that it's decisive, but that the answer just isn't as simple as 'pregnancy isn't a choice.'

122: I'm probably reading way too much into this but the subtext just screamed 'Honestly, I have a chapter to back this up!' Teehee.

BPD, I'm asking why it bothers you; i listed what i thought were two reasons why it might, but you didn't choose either.

I don't think even the most conservative traditional models weight the value of the father qua sperm donor highly

Wha? Isn't this teh entire rationale for patriarchal enforcement of restrictions on women's freedom? To ensure that men don't end up supporting other men's children? Because if your wife leaves the house some other patriarch is going to knock her up?

Well, the reason it seems like a choice to me is that even if one becomes pregnant, keeping it seems like the departure from the status quo of one's life. And while it doesn't seem morally wrong to do so, it does seem kind of impractical, and would be easier on the parent(s) if they did it at a time that fit into their plan for their life, whether it was having a big enough house, or finishing school, or having a long-term relationship with a partner who also wanted a kid, or any number of htings.

But this seems like one of those "you'd feel differently if you had ever been pregnant' things, plus you actual view is different than mine, so I was asking for more explanation.

re: 133

yes, that subtext would pretty much be exactly right!

131: Having the state require men to pay child support (1) gets used to deny single moms benefits on the grounds that the child support is part of their income--which is a real hassle if the guy isn't fucking paying it; (2) forces single moms to be dependent on the good will of men who often don't have very good will towards them and are sometimes actively abusive; (3) reinforces a lot of guys' belief that child support is something they pay to the mother, rather than to the child, which reinforces misogyny; (4) sometimes results, I'm sorry to say, in custody battles that are motivated by a desire to pay less (or no) child support rather than by a desire to actually spend time with the children; (5) buttresses the idea that money=parental "rights"; (6) helps perpetuate some men's anger at women for getting pregnant; (7) provides an incentive for men to abuse their pregnant girlfriends or try to force them to have abortions; (8) creates extra bureaucratic hassles for women who have to appeal inadequate child support decisions, or ask the state to garnish the wages of a man who isn't paying, or to track down a man who isn't paying, or to change the child support payment if the guy gets a different job; (9) creates hostility between first and second wives over whose children "deserve" financial support; (10) creates an incentive for men to work under the table, quit jobs, or otherwise hide income and assets in order to keep from paying.

If the state is going to require child support, the state itself should collect and distribute it. And if a guy disappears and doesn't pay it, the state should keep doling out the checks to the mom regardless.

133: Ah, but if you have super reliable birth control, you still can't choose to become pregnant. You might find that when you go off it you have to wait a while, or even that you can't get pregnant--that's why people say they're "trying."

136: I just finished a book called "Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Choose Motherhood Over Marriage" that I *highly* recommend as a corrective to the idea that having kids is something people should plan for--in either the moral or the practical sense.

138- Oh okay. I agree with all that. I think, on balance, these negatives are outweighed by the positive fact that child support provides many women with some much needed assistance with the costs of raising children. But the system obviously could be improved. I thought you were saying the idea of mandatory child support itself was a net negative.

corrective to the idea that having kids is something people should plan for

From my observations of people who squirt out a few kids without putting much thought or planning into it, I'd rather this idea not be corrected at all.

140: Women who need assistance with the costs of raising kids should be able to get it from the state. Problem solved!

141: See, that's just obnoxious. Read the damn book I mentioned in 139.2.

No one's going to read the book, so summarize for us.

I'm thinking of the vocal evangelical/fundamentalist minority in the US

Fair enough, although a more precise word choice might have been warranted. I'm an anti-theist and probably not even a "conservative" in the sense that Hayek wasn't a "conservative," but we use that word so broadly nowadays that it's basically synonymous with "right-of-center," including classical liberalism.

On the child support question, it's very easy for a careless guy to end up with higher child support than he will ever be able to pay. I knew a guy whose take home after child support (2 kids) and taxes was about $300 a month. He eventually left the state.

It's a multi-layered problem and I don't have an answer. I've often been amazed and shocked at the casual attitude skeezy guys (including many educated, middle-class guys) have about their kids, and also by the willingness of some skeezy women to have kids by obviously skeezy guys -- "casual parenthood".

I *highly* recommend as a corrective to the idea that having kids is something people should plan for--in either the moral or the practical sense.

I second the recommendation, but the book is more about women making the best of a disadvantaged situation (being poor, I mean, not having kids)--it shouldn't be held up as an ideal, I don't think.

139: Mmm. Non-sequitur there. I'm certainly choosing to try to become pregnant.

I'm agreeing with your overall conclusion, mind you, that having children is something that should be regarded as a natural part of a woman's life rather than a choice like deciding to climb Everest or buy a yacht. I just think that there's a deep tension among these three premises, and that saying 'pregnancy isn't a choice' is going to be a non-starter when premises 1) and 2) make it a choice.

1) Birth control should be inexpensive, reliable, and readily accessible to any woman who wants it.
2) Abortion should be inexpensive and readily accessible to any woman who wants it. seems to entail (with a few little premises)
that 3) Pregnancy (better: carrying a child to term) is a choice.

I don't think that denying 3) is plausible. Of course it's a choice. In what sense isn't it one?

Better, I think, to argue that it isn't a frivolous choice, and when society doesn't provide a supportive environment, that it's a false choice, and I can see arguing that with all the hurdles surrounding reproductive rights that it *isn't* a choice currently. But presumably you're not pro-limiting abortion and contraception, so I think framing it as 'not a a choice' is false and ultimately unhelpful.

Most of the actual conservative movement of today, including some non-fundamentalists (e.g. Bruce Chapman and Norman Podhoretz) seems to be committed to the idea that The Nuclear Family is the foundation of civilization. It's really spread beyond the religious.

I've often been amazed and shocked at the casual attitude skeezy guys (including many educated, middle-class guys) have about their kids, and also by the willingness of some skeezy women to have kids by obviously skeezy guys -- "casual parenthood".

Yes. This relates to what I'm talking about in 141.

The jist of it is (I should post this at my own place, and maybe I will after I write the comment) that the authors are sociologists/anthropologists who did a study of poor single moms.

What they found is that the moms have mainstream, even conservative ideas of what marriage should be, and they don't want to get married if they don't trust that the men will be faithful, help provide for their children, not be abusive, etc. And that these fears are quite reasonable, given the men they have to choose from.

*But*. The women also have mainstream, conservative ideas about the value and importance of children--so much so that they often think of abortion as irresponsible.

Plus, and this is the key thing, the women report that having kids is *good* for them, in that it forces them to straighten up their lives, grow up, and become responsible themselves. It also (the authors observe) provides a source of love for women who often have little or none in their lives. The middle-class argument, that having kids damages your economic prospects, doesn't hold for these women, whose economic prospects are demonstrably no better if they postpone childbirth. In fact, there's some evidence that their lives, economically and otherwise, would be worse, as kids provide them an incentive to stop using drugs, to end abusive relationships, to get jobs, to further their educations, and so on.

Of course (the authors don't say this, but I do), in terms of what they're able to provide for their kids, it isn't much. But a lot of that failure isn't theirs--it's not their fault that impoverished neighborhoods are dangerous, that poor schools are appalling, that there aren't many job prospects, and so on.

The upshot is that from our middle class point of view, postponing children is a smart thing to do. But from the point of view of the poor, it isn't. In fact, the opposite may be the case.

re: 149

The problem is, that there are now children, who weren't the people making the choices (such that they were).

144: I'm curious. Did you just ignore my 43?

Right. I'm not sure how I come down on this, but I can see that mandatory child support, rather than other forms of aid to needy children, can have the effect of damaging the welfare of the children in order to provide an incentive for men to act responsibly. Better they should act responsibly, of course, but at some point the welfare of the children involved is more important.

coming in way late....

2: couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

re: 150

Fwiw, pretty much the majority of the people I grew up with had kids really young for very similar reasons.

The upshot is that from our middle class point of view, postponing children is a smart thing to do. But from the point of view of the poor, it isn't. In fact, the opposite may be the case.

This makes quite a bit of sense. I think some of the confusion above was that it was not at all clear that you were saying specifically that poor women shouldn't necessarily plan for pregnancy. Certainly for our firmly middle class family, careful planning is critical to ongoing stability and sustainability. We're really tempted to just start trying now, but that would result in a (potential, obv.) due date in the middle of a teaching semester, and we rely on that teaching for both income and health care. So the idea that we shouldn't plan is beyond absurd. But, as is now clear, that's not what you were saying.

The problem is, that there are now children, who weren't the people making the choices

I'm not advocating we cut the kids loose into the wild or anything, that's bad times on many levels. I'm objecting to the notion that we should "correct" the idea that kids should be planned for.

In fact, there's some evidence that their lives, economically and otherwise, would be worse, as kids provide them an incentive to stop using drugs, to end abusive relationships, to get jobs, to further their educations, and so on.

But a hell of a lot of people don't do these things, and they end up churning out Future Felons of America. I'd like to address poverty issues by means other than, "hopefully a kid will make this unemployed junkie straighten up and fly right."

I feel like the state-as-intermediary child support scheme has been tried (or at least proposed) somewhere recently. Wisconsin?

147: Because your (3) doesn't follow from your (1) and (2).

Birth control and information should be available, check.
Abortion should be available, check.

Nonetheless, "choice" implies something that requires conscious decision-making and actual action. Pregnancy requires neither. You can choose to avoid it, or to abort it, but you can't choose pregnancy itself; just like you can choose to try to avoid heart disease, or to treat it, but it would be ridiculous to say that someone with a bad diet "chose" to have a heart attack.

156: I would argue against putting much weight on the idea that you're going to be able to pick a due date to within a month or two -- even if you're perfectly healthy, it can happen instantly or not for months. You can try to plan a birth in the middle of summer vacation, but I really wouldn't count on it.

And to clarify, I understand why the poor wouldn't have an incentive to postpone. But having kids young isn't the same thing as "not planning".

153: Yeah, it's a tough question for me, too. On one hand, I see the point of all of B's arguments, and there are some horrible things that happen to mothers (and to a much lesser extent to fathers) who are unlucky enough to have a child in the middle of a bad situation.

On the other hand, I am extremely uncomfortable with any system (such as government-paid child support) that eliminates a major monetary incentive. It's a lot easier to understand monetary costs than almost any other type.

I guess it comes down to my fundamental belief that wanting to have a child is a choice, but not a right. If someone wants a child, I don't think the state should be obligated to make monetary sacrifices that they aren't willing to make themselves (admittedly this is an incentive argument, it is irrelevant if someone gets knocked up through very bad luck and does not want to have an abortion).

39: Is it possible an early finding by this/these authors appeared as either a feature story or op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about ten years ago? iirc the author, a middle-class black sociologist who had postponed kids in what for us would be the normal mode, used the girls she knew growing up as a counterpoint, showing how rational and sensible the very different course of their lives with early, often-single parenthood had in fact turned out to be.

BPD, i think you're getting hung up on the pregnancy half of the pregnancy/"carrying to term(or not putting for adoption)" distinction

159: Medical analogy employed deliberately, to point out that pregnancy, like heart disease, is something your body just *does* (or doesn't) do, regardless of your wishes--though you can, of course, attempt successfully to prevent your body from doing that thing.

157: But a hell of a lot of people don't do these things, and they end up churning out Future Felons of America. I'd like to address poverty issues by means other than, "hopefully a kid will make this unemployed junkie straighten up and fly right."

Talk about blaming the victim. *They* don't churn out future felons of America. Poverty churns out future felons. The way to address poverty is to fucking provide education, jobs, and health insurance to the poor, such that dealing drugs isn't a smarter economic choice, that kids actually have some fucking prospects, they have safe neighborhoods just like we do, and so on.

159: It's a near absolute negative choice, but a faulty positive choice. You can choose to avoid pregnancy with nearly 100% certainty through various contraceptions and (worst case scenario) abortion. You can't choose to have a successful pregnancy (though it's relatively likely, even if the timing is tricky). It's still a choice, and if you are talking about the choice to not have kids, it's one that can be made with almost complete accuracy.

wanting to have a child is a choice, but not a right

Excuse? In what sense are the facts of one's biology less valid than, say, the "right" to speak one's mind?

164: Absolutely. Because my contention is that pregnancy itself--not birth control, not abortion, not adoption--cannot reasonably be considered a "choice."

i'm not sure that makes sense. I'm talking abotu the affirmative/passive distinction. Either way you have a choice, for which the default isn't determined by what doesn't require action, but by societal norms.

Look, no one here wants to say that poor people shouldn't have kids, but we shouldn't take the fact that planning is difficult and less important for poor people to make the claim that planning isn't, when available, a good thing. This seems pretty basic. Of course planning for a kid is good, and it's bad that poor people are often unable to do it.

163: No, completely different authors.

166: Absolutely you can choose not to have children. I've never said anything different.

The way to address poverty is to fucking provide education, jobs, and health insurance to the poor, such that dealing drugs isn't a smarter economic choice, that kids actually have some fucking prospects, they have safe neighborhoods just like we do, and so on.

Not disagreeing with this. But unemployed heroin addicts having kids? Still a bad thing.

Talk about blaming the victim. *They* don't churn out future felons of America. Poverty churns out future felons. The way to address poverty is to fucking provide education, jobs, and health insurance to the poor, such that dealing drugs isn't a smarter economic choice, that kids actually have some fucking prospects, they have safe neighborhoods just like we do, and so on.

Flagged for circular reasoning. If people in poverty have all these opportunities (especially steady low-skill jobs for the current generation with poor education), they will be in a situation closer to the middle class. I.e. they will be better off not having kids early, as they will be able to spend their younger years getting work experience and an education with their new and improved prospects.

It's only because they're all so screwed by the current state of things that some people are not much worse off from having kids during what should be prime work/education years.

169: I didn't say it's good that poor people can't plan. I'm just saying that stating that they "should" plan (by which people mean "postpone," let's be honest) as a moral imperative is not only obnoxious, it actually seems (based on this one study, which is the only one I know about on the subject) to be wrong in a practical sense.

159: The analogy doesn't work.

But take your earlier part: if I can choose to avoid pregnancy, and I can choose to end pregnancy, and I instead choose to do neither of those things, then it seems that I've made a choice to be pregnant. It doesn't mean that we should say 'Lala, it was your choice to have a kid, therefore we don't have to help you', but denying that it's a choice doesn't seem to be right.

Or, rather: saying it isn't a choice doesn't help address the underlying problem, which is that society doesn't really seem to value children or motherhood beyond lipservice.

Saying it isn't a choice doesn't mean that I'm going to get health care and day care and a flex time schedule; it more likely means that I'll get someone saying 'oh, since it isn't a choice and you can't control it, then we really should hire a man instead, it's better for business.' Saying that it is a choice isn't going to do that either.

So why not make the case for valuing children and motherhood on its own merits? In our ideal society, women can choose to become pregnant or continue a pregnancy, and if they do so, they will find themselves in a society that values it.

171: Being an unemployed heroin addict is bad. Having kids isn't, in and of itself.

172: By "poverty" I mean "not having enough money to meet basic expenses." I don't think that poverty has to mean "not having any prospects, not having access to a decent education, not having any hope of someday making enough money to meet basic expenses." It is quite possible to be poor while living in a functioning community.

re: 172

It's not as clear cut as that. I know people who had kids at 17, and then went to college part-time in their mid-20s to gain some qualifications and who are now in their early 30s. Those people have kids who are in high-school and they are able to pursue any course of action they want.

I, on the other hand, am also in my 30s. I have no kids and am barely finishing my education. If I have kids some time soon, I'll be in my 50s before I have the same freedom to make choices that my peers who went down the scorned 'single mother/early childbirth' route.

174: It's a "choice" only in the sense that "not to decide is to decide." I don't see what your problem with the analogy is: if you have sex, you are likely to get pregnant. If you eat fatty foods, you are likely to develop heart disease. You can take precautions against pregnancy, and you can take precautions against heart disease, but neither one of those is 100% guaranteed. If your precautions fail, you can have an operation to correct the problem. Nonetheless, it does not follow that developing the problem in the first place was a choice.

You have a much more stable social services system where you are, don't you, ttaM?

Being an unemployed heroin addict is bad. Having kids isn't, in and of itself.

Gah. And the kids with these parents will be raised by what, leprechauns? There are situations where having kids is bad. I can't believe I'm having to explain this.

160: Oh, obviously the timing is a crapshoot. But she only teaches 3.5 months a year - it seems pretty stupid to go off the pill 9 months before the beginning of the semester. And, frankly, we're putting a fair amount of weight on having had instant success last time - not that we expect to duplicate that, but there's no real reason to think it'll take 6 months next time.

165: I'm pretty sure that people in their 20s having unprotected sex have a massively higher pregnancy rate than people with even the worst of risk factors have for heart disease. Which isn't to say that your point's completely invalid, but the analogy doesn't get you very far. Our bodies are built to make babies. If they never take action to prevent it (and abstinence counts as an action, IMO), 99+% of straight women will get pregnant at some point. Once you start to take actions, then you get into lower percentage territory, because you're eliminating some high-fertility years. I'm just not sure your argument has sufficient grounds to sway a lot of people.

Ah, and now I see that JAC covered this much more concisely in 166.

I object to the concept of using childbearing as an incentive to get off drugs. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't. When that method fails, you end up with a horrible mess. There's a case in my extended family right now, and it's disrupting a lot of lives (above all, in the long term, the child's).

A kind of choice which might be rational in the immediate term for a mother or group of mothers in bad situations can be harmful overall in the long term. I'm reluctant to make refusal to blame the victim and affirmation of the right to have children be the whole substance of the response to theis situation.

re: 178

Up to a point, yeah. In the sense that someone in that position will get some state child benefit, income support, and assistance with housing costs. They'd probably also be a priority for state housing, so would get a council house.

Someone in that situation still has almost zero dispoable income, though. They just aren't going to starve on the streets.

They just aren't going to starve on the streets.

Whereas here, they might, which forces people into some terrible situations.

179: Do you suppose that it's easier or harder to steal a pot of gold from a leprechaun hooked on heroin?

Our bodies are built to make babies. If they never take action to prevent it (and abstinence counts as an action, IMO), 99+% of straight women will get pregnant at some point.

That IS my argument. And sure, abstinence counts as an action, but it's a highly unlikely one and certainly not something we should start assuming as a basis for any kind of generalizations about pregnancy. Plus, you know, there's always the possibility of rape.

179, 181: I'm not saying it's the whole answer or solution. I'm saying that the way we conventionally think about these things is wrong.

1. Deafness is a disability.
2. Women do not want to have big asses.
3. Some people shouldn't have kids.

I'm off to work out and buy soccer shoes for my runts.

It's a "choice" only in the sense that "not to decide is to decide."

I think B just argued herself into the trolley problem. This is enough of a choice when the options are mutually exclusive and exhaustive and (in your ideal society) there's no costs associated with choosing or refraining to choose. I'll grant that as society stands now with limited access to birth control and abortion that having a kid isn't a choice, but presumably you want those to be available too.

And my problem with the analogy is that the correlation between fatty foods and heart attack isn't as strong as the correlation between sex and kids (i.e, there's a lot more that's outside of your control), and rather than quibble over that, I'd rather stay on the merits of whether pregnancy is a choice. I think it is, and I think where the feminist project is going continues to make it a choice.

wanting to have a child is a choice, but not a right

Excuse? In what sense are the facts of one's biology less valid than, say, the "right" to speak one's mind?

Ok, sorry, I now realize how that sounds. I did not mean anything like "pregnancy is a privilege, not a right" or something similarly god awful. If you want to have a kid, I don't think anyone should be able to stop you, no matter how bad of an idea it is.

Here's what I meant: If you have a child, you have made a choice to do so, since not having the child is always a potential option. If you are someone who does not have the time and/or money to properly raise your child (i.e. your jobs pay ludicrously little and you couldn't afford to feed another mouth, or you work 80+ hours a week and couldn't provide your child with enough time) even with the help of good free child-care facilities and education, then you are making a really really terrible choice and the government should not have to pay you enough to make it possible for you to have a child anyway.

Now, this is somewhat irrelevant in today's society given the lack of good government-funded childcare and education, but it does mean that I would much much rather see money shunted toward those two goals than toward directly paying mothers.

186: None of those statements actually does anything but state the obvious. I fail to see the point in seeing them as conclusions, rather than starting points for a discussion.

On the update, I'm probably pretty close to gswift's view on this.

176: And how many of those people you knew who had kids at age 17 are teaching at The Big Blues? How many of those who succeeded were able to do so because their parents bore the brunt of the child-raising responsibilities?

re: 190

I don't even know what the Big Blues are. But if it's some set of universities, or other, measuring success by that is a fucked standard.

And re: child-care -- none of them.

176: One of my favorite people had her first kid at 17, and her second at 19 - she was a grandmother at 34, but she had her shit together by then, was successful doing important things (intimately tied to her earlier life path), and by 37 had broad horizons before her. There's a lot to be said for that.

OTOH, the important things she did included working with middle schoolers from the inner city (you know, the Upper West Side) to convince them not to follow in her footsteps. I'm sure I discussed the apparent contradiction with her, but don't really recall her take.

Also, 30 is a bit late to get started on a high-flying career - 4-8 years of college, then 5-10 years of toil, and you're near 50 by the time you're established. That's not nec. a bad thing (where's bob to argue for lifelong slackery?), but it is a thing.

187: A trolley isn't a fundamental biological drive/act the way sex is.

not having the child is always a potential option.

This actually isn't the case. Once you are pregnant, it may be impossible to abort because of money, access, or physical coercion.

If you are someone who does not have the time and/or money to properly raise your child . . . even with the help of good free child-care facilities and education, then you are making a really really terrible choice and the government should not have to pay you enough to make it possible for you to have a child anyway.

Free child-care and good education are largely unavailable. Second, the government *should* have to support those who through no fault of their own cannot support themselves. This includes children in poverty.

would much much rather see money shunted toward those two goals than toward directly paying mothers.

If you can think of a way to provide for poor children without also providing for their mothers, then fine. I don't see any reason why one would want to do that, other than out of some idea that women should be punished for making decisions we disapprove of, but that's an aside. The facts on the ground as I understand them, though, are that the *best* way to ensure that children are well cared for is to make sure that their mothers have access to health care, money, housing, etc. I am also thinking of children's emotional needs; I don't consider removing kids from their parents to be an acceptable "solution" except in extreme cases. In theory I don't care if it is the mothers or the fathers who are provided for, but in practice I'm afraid that the mothers are by far the better bet.

I have no non-internetical knowledge of the matter, but I think there could be problems due to epigenetic inheritance. Epigenetic inheritance is inheritance due to non-genetic means. An example is the marking and folding of DNA due to methylation. Men and womens haploid cells are likely going to be marked in different ways that can cause problems if you don't get both sets of markings:

Inheritance of two copies of one of mother's genes and no copy of the father's (or vice versa) can produce serious developmental defects.
* Failure to inherit several nonimprinted genes on the father's chromosome #15 causes a human congenital disorder called Prader-Willi syndrome.
* Failure to inherit one nonimprinted gene (UBE3A) on the mother's chromosome #15 causes Angelman syndrome.

Here is an overview of epigenetics:

https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/b360905554fdb7d985256ec5006a7755?OpenDocument

Interestingly epigenetic inheritance can be Lamarckian. There is some evidence that kids whose parents were born in a time of famine are less healthy even if the parents have had good nutrition.

180: JRoth, going off a single statistic from The Third Chimpanzee that may or may not massively vary from couple to couple, there's a 28% chance of a fertile couple conceiving in any given fertility-cycle, assuming daily humping. That'd give you guys an 86% chance in 6 months, and I'd take those odds.

30 is a bit late to get started on a high-flying career - 4-8 years of college, then 5-10 years of toil, and you're near 50 by the time you're established. That's not nec. a bad thing , but it is a thing.

30 is also a bit late to get started on a family. 4-8 years to find a husband, and by that point your fertility is an issue. The way the professional classes do things is not perfect either.

191: I'm figuring that meant Oxford and Cambridge -- aren't they both shades of blue?

This actually isn't the case. Once you are pregnant, it may be impossible to abort because of money, access, or physical coercion.

I'm almost out of this conversation.

Yes, the point of 187 was that trolleys are like sex drives. I am hereby refuted because trolleys have wheels and women have ovaries.

My point has been this: there's a tension in saying 'pregnancy isn't a choice because of the costs associated with contraception and abortion' and saying 'we should reduce or eliminate the costs associated with contraception and abortion' and saying 'pregnancy still isn't a choice.' The more you reduce the costs (a good thing), the more pregnancy becomes like a free choice, and denying that is just going to seem more and more wrong.

And it's also fucking weird to say that the whole point of the pro-choice movement was to give women the choice to abort, or to use contraception, but not a choice to plan when to have children.

re: 197

Ah, they are both shades of blue. Never heard them referred to that way, though.

That IS my argument.

Alright, I take it back - I have no clue what B is arguing for.

Here is what I thought I understood her argument to be:

Between contraception and abortion, not-babies is a choice (setting aside godbaggery). However, since you can try to get pregnant without succeeding, babies is not a choice. It's a possibility. Or something.

But then she acknowledges that, absent the not-babies choices, pregnancy (and thus babies) is overwhelmingly likely. Which, to me, makes it just as much a choice as not-babies.

Is B's point simply that we shouldn't look at every baby and think, "that was a choice"?

Sorry to be dense.

You can talk about Halle Berry in a new! thread!

Re. pregnancy and choice, I'll concede this in the interest of comity:

Practically speaking, pregnancy is a choice for most middle-class women. (Exceptions include those who can't tolerate hormonal birth control.) Moreover, for those same women, childbirth is a choice, inasmuch as they have access to abortion. This is a desirable state of affairs.

But that doesn't mean that either pregnancy or childbirth are a choice for all women; and as long as this is the case, I think it is wrong to talk about either as if it is.

It would be difficult to overstate the depth of my commitment to the family-planning model.

I don't really understand B here. Is she saying that, among the things that can be done about these problems, encouraging poor women not to have children cannot be one? I agree that there are many, many things that need to be changed and that a lot of the TV discussion of these questions is toxic, but I'm unwilling to say that the behaviors of poor women are not among the things that should be changed, or that no one should encourage poor women not to have children.

The whole idea that having children is not a choice makes no sense to me. Lots of people choose not to. lots of people actively choose to. Many people also just let things happen, but I don't think that we should take that way of deciding as a standard.

I'm not completely sure of what B's arguing, or whether I agree rigorously. But I have a certain amount of agreement with what I think is a related, although looser claim -- that the choices involved in controlling fertility are constrained by so many factors, and the facts governing whether reproducing is a good idea for either the parents or the prospective child are complex enough and hard enough to evaluate from the ex ante perspective of someone making decisions about what steps to take to attempt to control her fertility, that referring to having children as a 'choice' misrepresents the amount of responsibility/blame it makes sense to place on a woman for having borne a child under non-ideal circumstances.

I think I'd rather say sure, it's a choice, but it's also an intensely personal choice that society isn't going to get a whole lot of input on, and society needs to deal with that and it sure would be nice if there were many paths to moderate success that didn't require choosing to delay having children.

Okay, I know the thread's moved on, but just to go back to the single-sex conception thing for a second, it's worth remembering that there's also been talk of male-only conception -- pooh-poohed at the time, but that was seven years ago and I wouldn't be surprised to hear about it again in the near future. (Wouldn't you still need surrogate mothers? Nope, just artificial wombs.) In general, technology allowing for biological same-sex parents is probably on the near horizon, and it's getting more and more technically possible for each sex to do without the other for reproductive purposes. In the short term that's not likely to change much of anything -- sperm banks and egg banks haven't rendered relationships obsolete -- but in the long term this is probably a Good Thing. The more generally available such technology becomes, the less fraught male-female relationships are likely to be... possibly, maybe...

191: I was looking for a less google-able way to refer to the major pair of universities on rivers, where I think you teach. I'm not saying its an absolute standard, I'm just pointing out that they probably had more limitations on high-level success than you did. Err.. what JRoth said.

I am impressed if they did that well without any grand-parent help though, who took care of the kids while they were going to school or working?

193: My last sentence of 187 explicitly states that my argument is not entirely relevant to the current state of the world given the lack of health care, education, child care, etc. However, I still insist that if universal healthcare is available, if there are good schools and childcare available to allow the mother to work and her child to advance, if there is reasonable public housing available for those who are direly-low-income, if abortion and contraceptive services are readily available, and someone still doesn't have the time or money needed to raise a child, then that person, at that time, should not have any kids! Thus, no offer of additional monetary support for that person's decision to have a child.

This mostly implies that, in my opinion, children will be best served and incentives will be properly aligned if government money goes toward education, universal childcare, improved and more widely-spread public housing, and universal healthcare (with widely-available contraception and abortion services) instead of toward supporting people who just managed to hump out a new person. If this wonderland comes about, I would be comfortable placing the few kids still born in unsustainable worst-case-scenario circumstances in foster homes. As for our current reality, I think the best improvements on the margin are made by giving money to the programs above, rather than to parents.

30 is also a bit late to get started on a family. 4-8 years to find a husband, and by that point your fertility is an issue. The way the professional classes do things is not perfect either.

Nothing about the professional track requires waiting until age 30 to start finding a husband. Whereas having small children around pretty well precludes an aggressive course of study.

But yeah, obviously, the post-30 family-starting model has its flaws. A friend of my wife's is an academic who, about 3 years ago, gave up on finding a husband for fathering purposes, and has pursued insemination (unsuccessfully) and adoption (still working on it, I think).

Unfortunately, our biology just didn't develop to promote us spending our first 15 years of fertility on study and/or child-free fun.

About those artificial wombs: it seems to me that researchers still aren't entirely clear about how the developing fetus interacts biochemically with the pregnant mother. Until that's better understood, my guess is experimentation with artificial womb environments is a long ways off.

209: Not necessarily. There are a number of couples I know, grad students, in their mid-to-late twenties who are married, and some are married with small kids, and they seem to be doing okay. It's probably worth keeping in mind that in quite a lot of the country people manage to have kids and jobs and relatively successful lives, and the academy is more flexible in some ways than working in an office.

We do live in a class society, and even rich people are forced to make hard choices sometimes. If some people end up never being able to afford kids, for whatever reason, they join the very large pool of people who have suffered deprival and unfairness at some point in their lives. I've known a lot of people in the very low middle class and sub-middle class, and they dealt with it in various ways, including choosing never to have kids. I think that what I object to most in B's argument is the idea that some people's choices are beyond examination -- either they're not choices but just things that happened, or else they're really rational choices after all, or else they're protected exercises of rights and cannot be questioned or criticized.

Nothing about the professional track requires waiting until age 30 to start finding a husband.

Really? Having to be mobile doesn't make it very difficult to form permanent commitments?

204, 205: What I am saying is that in my feminist mind, the biological fact of childbearing is exactly that, a fact, and therefore one that human societies should build into our systems. Saying things like "some people shouldn't have children" seems to me a way of denying that fact. Arguments about the timing of children are contingent upon the ability to control that timing and also contain a lot of unarticulated premises about not only people's goals and desires, but also social realities like jobs and education and health insurance. All of those things are human constructs, unlike having children, and are therefore mutable. We should build those things around the facts of childbearing, rather than the other way around.

"If the state is going to require child support, the state itself should collect and distribute it. And if a guy disappears and doesn't pay it, the state should keep doling out the checks to the mom regardless."

So late to the party here, but I *love* this idea! Even though it would seem generally likely to cut down on litigation, a result I would ordinarily oppose...

213: Didn't you get married pretty young for an academic?

213 continued: In other words, the usual middle-class ideology (which we're mostly demonstrating in this discussion) about childbearing takes for granted that the basic human is a man--i.e., someone who doesn't get pregnant or bear children. Therefore, we (society at large) talk about pregnancy and children as optional. Whereas a feminist world view, in which the humanity of women was central, would view pregnancy and childcare as part of the base package, and would require the entire system to be rebuilt accordingly--preserving, of course, the option of not having children for those who don't want 'em.

210: No doubt, but then all these technologies are still, ummm, embryonic to one degree or another.

B, that's loony. Breathing is a biological fact, and childbirth is a biological fact, but one can be chosen or not, and the other is necessary. Furthermore, one of the changes that's happened in the last century or so is that childbirth has become a choice (and without abstinence), when it really wasn't before. And that's a very good thing, but it does mean that we no longer view childbirth as just something that happens.

This sounds like the "boys will be boys" argument, and it also sounds like the archaic Catholic belief that people should just accept the will of God and not try to control things.

Really? Having to be mobile doesn't make it very difficult to form permanent commitments?

Having to be mobile? Is this an academic requirement? Most professional-track people stay in one place long enough to have a decent shot at meeting someone. No one's guaranteed to find a mate at any age. I'm just saying that single professionals & academics in their 20s have a better shot at finding a life partner than 25 yr old parents of 8 yr olds have of doing in well in, say, pre-med.

211: But aren't you talking about people having babies post-college, while still moving through academia? I was responding to a point way up there about people who have kids right out of HS, allowing them to be post-parents by their early 30s. People who have kids in their 20s are still, I think, the majority (or at least plurality). More and more professionals wait until their 30s, mostly for career reasons, but your grad student friends are in the mainstream.

hasnt it been established that you shouldnt get married until you are at least 30?

No no, John, I finally get what she's saying, and why she was arguing that babies is not a choice. Babies is the default setting for people (and other living things), and society should deal with that. It used to deal with that by keeping women at home, but now, thanks to the choice not to have babies, women aren't stuck at home. But society hasn't really adjusted - either women choose not-babies, and so get to be honorary men on the professional/academic track, with no home responsibilities, or women choose babies, and get kicked off the track: back to the 19th century with you!

So, by taking babies as, on some level, a given, society will have to cope with women in the workforce by actually accommodating mothers, rather than forcing women to choose professionhood or motherhood.

I think the issue of poor women having babies proved to be a red herring in this part of B's argument. I don't mean it's unrelated - society also has to adjust to the reality of poor women having babies but still participating in working life - bu that it was too much to grapple with at once.

213: I did, and I also spent three years living in a separate state from my husband. And when we did live in the same state, he was gone about half the time anyway. Both of which are major contributing factors to the evolution of the open marriage. Not exactly the kind of situation I'd blithely recommend other people imitate, even though it worked for us.

219: I do have one friend who is an older student with a teenaged daughter and a pre-schooler, and while she works her ass off, she seems to be succeeding. I wonder, though, if the problem isn't the timing of the kids but the support system. None of my friends with kids are single parents. A few of them have grandparents nearby. And it would, I think, be a lot harder to be an undergrad as undergrad culture, more than grad school culture, definitely presupposes that you're single.

218: Well, I am a Catholic. But JRoth gets it in 221. Except that I don't think that thinking about poor women is a red herring at all; I think that looking at the lives of women who don't fit into the middle-class (androcentric) model functions as a great check on the premises of middle-class identity, and helps make it a lot clearer that this whole "choice" thing is, in fact, androcentric.

"Some women have babies" is a fact, to be taken into account as B and JRoth say. But why does that imply that we shouldn't say that some people shouldn't have children? Some people will be bad parents regardless of how we structure our society, right? Or would a feminist utopia create a Wobegonian, above-average childrearing environment?

Alternatively, "Some people shouldn't have children" takes society as we find it and make a judgment about the here and now.

214: The one problem with that plan is that presumably men who didn't reimburse the state for child support would end up in jail, which opens a couple of other cans of worms.

But why does that imply that we shouldn't say that some people shouldn't have children?

Distinguishing who is qualified to tell whom whether they should or shouldn't have children would be an impressive trick, indeed.

The objection in 227 can be (and usually is) made to any defense of judging others' behavior. Yet we continue judging.

225: Of course there will always be some people who are fucked up and therefore bad parents. The problem with saying "some people shouldn't have children" is that it's always said as if it were a conclusion to something, which it isn't. Even people who will be bad parents are going to have kids sometimes. It's regrettable, but there's nothing to be done about it except, perhaps, try to figure out ways to mitigate the damage they'll do (things like removing kids from abusive homes, with or without severing contact with parents, providing strong public schools and social services, etc.). But the "children's rights" argument is, again, a whole other can of worms.

It used to deal with that by keeping women at home.

Correction: We used to deal with the fact of children by living in a mostly agrarian society, in which both parents worked, essentially, at home.

226: I'll admit I don't know what the penalties are at present for evading child support obligations -- but I'm reasonably confident there are legal consequences, and under the present system the mothers not receiving the support are left to try to enforce those obligations. Under your proposed system, the state (which is far better equipped to do so) would be enforcing the obligations (or determining at what point it is more efficient not to). I like this. It'll never happen, mind you. But I like it.

229: I probably agree with you on most of the policy implications -- child care, social services, generally restructuring society so women aren't penalized for having children, etc. But I think keeping open the question of who should/shouldn't have children can be a useful corrective to the middle-class "entitlement parenting" model that is so pernicious -- children as just another item on one's life checklist, as a fashion accessory. (I live in Park Slope, so maybe I'm a little sensitive to this.) It's true that it's often said, counterproductively, "She's too poor, she shouldn't have a child" when in fact we should look at why she's poor and why she doesn't have access to child-rearing resources. But let's keep asking, "She's a self-absorbed yuppie; why do we think she'd be able to provide emotionally for a child?"

224, 229: Oh, I didn't mean it was a red herring in your thinking - it was a red herring to us trying to suss out your meaning, b/c it wasn't clear how - or whether - it tied together. The presence of "should poor women have kids" discussion indicates the off-trackness. But I think you're exactly right that it was that prism that illuminated your very good point.

Also, good correction about agrarianism. We also used to deal with it by letting kids work and/or run loose, and having 10 year old older siblings care for infants.

Comity!

Thesis: framing the decision to have children as a women's "choice" helps make politically feasible a society lacking the support systems and accomodations that many mothers need. If people took seriously the idea that child-rearing was simply a fact of life, rather than a willful "choice", pressure for a generally more mother-friendly (and consequently father-friendly, and child-friendly) would intensify.

(Or is that what you've been saying all along? I've only skimmed.)

228: We also continue (or should continue) to recognize the limits of certain forms of judgment in crafting useful policy. JAC's argument above, for instance, requires subjective judgments about choice and whose actions should and shouldn't be rewarded or supported that I wouldn't trust even the most progressive government apparatus to render competently.

I think that's both absolutely right, and closely related to what Bitch was going for.

I think the notion of "kids are a fact" as a reason for directly supporting individuals who have kids is a rather poor one.

Yes, kids will come from some people in order to let society perpetuate itself. That's a good reason for schools and other programs accomodating them. The parents will both still be capable of making contributions to outside society during some time that might otherwise be spent with a child, without causing any harm to the child (i.e. if both parents work, that won't cause problems so long as at least one of them and preferably both are still around enough to parent and influence their child). Allowing people who have always been productive to remain so by taking care of children during a reasonable work week is a great reason for universal childcare... I could go on with other rights, but this comment is long enough as is.

I think that these policy choices arise because there is a fact that society as a whole will have children, and those children will happen to have parents who are productive members of society with lives that should be allowed to continue as much as possible. I do not think there is a further fact that kids happen for any particular individual, so there is not much problem if very specific individuals in very specific circumstances can not responsibly have a child.

And if they do anyway, despite the fact that you think it wasn't responsible of them?

236: I don't understand the basis of your objection. I believe that countries that do provide direct support to parents of children have much better outcomes in terms of child poverty than we do; that right there is surely a net gain. And I don't see how you can say that "there's not much problem if specific individuals cannot responsibly have a child"--surely there is indeed a problem, for the child (who is, after all, a member of society) if their parents are incomptent.

231: Not entirely comfortable with that. Still sounds an awfully lot like misogyny to me.

236: I do not think there is a further fact that kids happen for any particular individual, so there is not much problem if very specific individuals in very specific circumstances can not responsibly have a child.

Without some means of telling who can responsibly identify these very specific individuals and by what criteria, that's not very interesting.

234: I'm not seeing where the judgement needed in my proposed system is any greater than that required under the current system, or under B's.

Every service I mentioned would be universal, so there would be no scope for systematically discriminating against individuals. The only room for judgement arises in which kids are in such terrible parenting situations that they should be removed from their homes, and that's a judgement that is necessary under any and all systems, unless you think that B's idea of handing money to anyone who has a kid will stop terrible/abusive parenting from ever happening.

The choice of whether or not someone is capable of having a child ex-ante would be subjective, and entirely up to the individual. However, I think that if someone has all the supports of government childcare, housing, food, education and healthcare, and their child still seems abused or starved for attention/resources, that person must have so completely screwed up the decision as to whether they could manage a child that I am comfortable saying they can't handle it.

On the whole choice thing. Maybe this is a bit of a stretch, but what the hell. For some people, perhaps parenthood is or isn't a "choice" in a sense similar to saying homosexuality is or isn't a choice. That is, yeah, you can "choose" not to get or remain pregnant (or many people can) just like someone who is gay can "choose" not to ever actually engage in a same-sex relationship. But in both cases, basically biological impulses and, I don't know, impulses for personal and spiritual fulfillment dramatically alter the choice.

Now, that probably doesn't hold well for alot of people who choose to become parents -- like the self-absorbed yuppie in 231 for whom a child is the appropriate yard ornament for the perfect suburban home. But I know plenty of people for whom pregnancy and parenthood are just sort of an inherent part of who they are, something without which life would be incomplete.

Oh, but now I'm just getting mushy and I think probably veering from the original point.

241 is nice, I think.

Well, the choice not to have children applies both to men and to women. I have one child (30 y.o.), and would have liked more, but decided that for a lot of reasons I should make a point of not doing so. And it was not a painless choice at all.

I have been mostly responding to B's reference to "Promises I Can Keep" and related posts, which I objected to.

In terms of the way mothers and fathers in general should be treated by society, I think that childraising should be regarded as a meritorious way of giving to the community, and should be socially supported (in defiance of the child-free claque). But this doesn't require the affirmation of casual parenthood by men / women who just let nature take its course and hop for the best.

To clarify the last part of 240, I mean that there would be enough of a margin of error thanks to the government supports that I feel safe supporting child services's decisions in which children need foster care.

240: I don't understand why the desire to build all sorts of complicated support systems (most of which, btw, I agree with you are important and would be government-provided in a feminist utopia, same way roads and infrastructure are now) *rather than* provide direct financial support to women (or men) with children. Surely providing direct financial support to parents is both a more efficient and more effective way of taking care of a lot of these things, especially given that every person and every child's own circumstances is best known to themselves?

I think that thinking of childraising as a meritorious activity is a far superior way to think of this question than the passive "part of nature" way. We really don't want to say that "kids happen", when actually they do have a choice about that.

hop for the best.

Go, Peter Cottontail, go!

246: Why does it have to be either/or? Kids happen, and raising them well is extremely meritorious.

Because "X happens" is hardly ever the best way to think of anything, and some childraising is highly non-meritorious.

So does this imply that if the technology existed to make parenting a positive choice (some hypothetical perfect, permanent contraception), it would be considered a bad thing because of the effect that the "choice" thinking would have on social support?

(It's an interesting difference in that mythical future whether we need to replace humans at the current rate or not. A lot of interesting SF has been written on the premise of a society of much longer-lived people, and at least occasionally mentioning how this affects the practice of childrearing.)

I wouldn't say that the technology would be a bad thing -- the 'choice' formulation might still be a bad one where used to place blame/sole responsibility on the parents at the expense of the welfare of the child (which includes the welfare of its parents), given the complexity of factors that go into deciding whether having a child is a responsible idea.

248: Because in a very important, we-invented-the-pill kind of sense, kids just don't happen. It is a choice, and if the feminist project doesn't lose out to the forces of crazy, it will continue to be a choice. Much better just to say that whether it's a choice or not is irrelevant: it's a choice a lot of women are going to make, and it's in our best interests to support them, because it's ridiculous to try to change their minds.

Of course it's a choice, I wasn't trying to deny that. Just noting that framing the discourse in that way puts the blame for any troubles a mother has -- financial struggles, trouble balancing a career, etc. -- squarely on her shoulders. "Why should we care about her problems? After all, it was her choice."

Suddenly I think you weren't responding to me.

Yeah, I'm thinking that 'choice' as a descriptor of how people come to have children, is almost always true on some level, but not useful.

253: But not all women/girls have access to affordable birth control. Not all women/girls have access to quality sex education. Not all women/girls are fortunate enough to be in personal/social circumstances that allow them to excercise real choice.

But at the end of the day, you're right that whether or not any given child was the product of carefully reasoned planning, sheer stupidity, casual carelessness, etc., is irrelevant. Once the child is here, how s/he got here is not what matters. What matters is how we as a society care for the children. As the pro-life lobby would say (somewhat sooner in the equation... ), it's a child, not a choice.

I believe that countries that do provide direct support to parents of children have much better outcomes in terms of child poverty than we do

Of course. Child poverty is measured by how many children live in household that has income below a certain threshold defined by the ability to afford housing and food. Pay people for each child they have, and of course the income of households with children will tend to rise above the poverty line (depending on how much you pay). Alternatively, money put toward food and housing for households with very low incomes makes the relevant poverty level much much lower (since extra income needed to house and feed your household gets close to zero).

What level are you talking about? I know that I motivated myself to get on hormonal birth control with a stern self-talking-to about how letting pregnancy just happen was stupid and irrational and unfair. That was a good thing on a personal level, and it's the advice I'd give to my children or to anyone asking me about birth control. It's certainly the default position of student health services nurses and of Planned Parenthood people: they're pretty humorless about it.

On a political level, as in "the political economy of the nation," yes, people are going to have children. On a moral level, again, judging strangers is a parlous exercise, best left to the hatred in one's heart. Holding these conversations on the level of the "cultural imagination," on the other hand, that great "là-bas," tends to generation aggravation and circular reasoning. ime.

253: But not all women/girls have access to affordable birth control. Not all women/girls have access to quality sex education. Not all women/girls are fortunate enough to be in personal/social circumstances that allow them to excercise real choice.

Read some of my earlier comments. I don't deny this; but even if every woman did have access to contraception and birth control, we still wouldn't think we'd solved the problems of child care and work/family balance, even if pregnancy were something that every woman could choose to continue or not to continue. Even if it *was* a choice, it's completely irrelevant.

I haven't read the last fifty or so comments, but has B said "it's a child, not a choice" yet?

What level are you talking about?

Me? The 'almost always' was intended to allow for the possibility of rape or other coercion, unavailability/unaffordability of contraception or abortion and so on. "Some level" was meant to acknowledge that for those people for whom circumstances made controlling their fertility practical, some don't think of themselves as having chosen to have children, but inaction is a choice of sorts in itself. And 'not useful' should speak for itself.

they're pretty humorless about it.

But to balance that out, the STD people usually have puppets and skits.

261; No, but Di Kotimy said it in 257. I'm ready for Dr. B to give him/her a thwack any minute now.

260: Hey, I was agreeing with you. In alot of cases, it's technically a "choice." In some cases, it's not. The choice part ultimately becomes irrelevant. Children and childrearing are just plain a fact, however they came to be; figuring out how to make it work best is the hard/important part.

And the condom people have bananas.

While the businessman slowly gets stoned.

264: Um, why?

264: No, Dikotomy's right, and the pro-Life people are partly right too--which is part of why they've been so successful, duh. I simply don't understand 253 and 259, which seem to me to demonstrate a lack of imagination. Yes, I too have been religious about birth control use since the age of 17; but I'm well aware that the education, family support, class standing, and social structures that helped me be that way don't exist for everyone. Having PK was a choice for me, because I am lucky enough to have spent my life in circumstances where the ability to avoid pregnancy was available to me. The simple fact that birth control exists, though, doesn't mean that every women has that option, except in the strictest libertarian sense.

249: "X happens" is the best way, imho, to start thinking about social policy. Because things that happen are facts which we need to take into account.

250: My problem with the artificial womb scenario and its ilk is that there are two options there. In one, the artificial womb *replaces* women's uteruses, and that's the only way to have children--in which case yes, having children is purely a choice. But what are we going to do with all those uteruses?

In the other scenario, the artificial womb supplements the existence of women's uteruses--in which case, having children becomes a choice for a lot of people who couldn't do it before. But for the posessors of uteruses--i.e., women--it remains, as always, a biological fact that is beyond conscious control. Ovulating is not a decision we make every month. We can't egg on (heh) the sperm in their search for the ovum. We can't force a zygote to implant. Those are things our bodies do (or don't do) without conscious input from us--all we can do is try to keep the ovum and the sperm outta there through one means or another, but once they get going you just cross your fingers and hope for whichever outcome you prefer.

To me "X happens" is a passive approach, and it seems to assume that the thing happening is either neutral or else bad, but unavoidable.

I was really thinking about the individual level, though. "X happens" shouldn't be a personal philosophy, and the people I've known and heard about who thought that way tended to have and cause lots of problems.

270: But if you view this stuff from the perspective of the child, the "passive approach" is accurate. We can debate all day about who has what choice, but I have to think it's pretty indisputable that children have no choice about being born. So rather than making policy decisions based on a judgment as to which parents' choices to have children were or were not responsible, the focus should be on doing right by the children who, for whatever reason, happen. Maybe Mama and Papa X should have planned better, but once Little X happens, we should do our best by Little X.

Will I be thwacked if I say "it takes a village"?

271:

Will I be thwacked if I say "it takes a village"?

Maybe, but it will be by SCMT, because he loathes HRC so. Come to think of it, I do too. The basic point is a fair one, though.

Not by me.

Don't be fooled. B is one of the promiscuous feminists. She'll thwack anybody.

245: One reason it'd be better to do it that way is that even if parents/families had more money, the services (like good childcare, or early childhood education) still might not be available to them, due to a lack of 'infrastructure' such as daycare centers and the like. Focusing on service provision would help ensure that the services would be available, and would also make it easier to start and fund new programs/initiatives if necessary.

On the teen childbearing front, Frank Furstenberg has done a lot on it, and has an article about the (lack of) consequences of teen childbearing, called "Teenage Childbearing as a Public Issue and Private Concern," here: http://tinyurl.com/29hgcs . Arline Geronimus has also written a lot about the issue.

I think that while women shouldn't be professionally penalized because they 'choose' to have a child, it's still a really good idea to approach having kids as a planned process, especially since it increases the chances of having good birth outcomes. Take neural tube defects, for example. They occur in roughly the first month of pregnancy and are (largely) prevented by taking folic acid--'use contraceptives until you want to get pregnant, and then start taking folic acid' seems like a much better prevention strategy than 'take folic acid when you start having sex and continue for the rest of your childbearing years'.

I don't think that this approach should be mandated or imposed on people, of course; I just think it's a really good approach to take.

275: Yes, it's preferable, all other things being equal, to plan on having a kid for a lot of reasons. (Though really, folic acid isn't a huge problem for women who are getting an adequate diet anyway--which, thank god, because most of us don't know we're pregnant in the first month anyway.)

I still maintain that there's no reason why providing a social safety net and decent entitlements to children and those who raise them needs to be at odds with paying child support to single parents.

acid isn't a huge problem for women who are getting an adequate diet anyway

You know, my kids are seven and five, and healthy as anything, and I still feel bad about not having gotten organized to take folic acid supplements when I was trying to get pregnant. I should probably let that one go.

I took your 245 to mean you favor privileging direct child support payments over infrastructure/service provision--is that not what you meant?

No, I think that infrastructure and services are necessary. I just think that cash is necessary for raising kids, and I think the government should provide it to poor single parents and then the feds can worry about chasing down the dads for child support, rather than trying to make the damn moms have to do it.

Although, since you asked, I'm quite willing to go to bat for an entitlement that provides parents whose income falls below a certain level with a cash stipend, sure.

What exactly did you mean by 245, then? I thought that was talking about the best way to provide gov't supports to families/children, not about child support as such.

In the UK all families get state child benefit. Even wealthy ones. It's a non-means-tested benefit. It's about 35 dollars a week for the oldest child plus around 25 dollars a week for each additional child. Again, ALL families can claim this.

Families on low incomes but who are working receive also a 'working family' tax credit to raise their income level enough to ensure that people are always better off working than they are claiming unemployment benefits. This can be quite a substantial amount of money for people on very low incomes with several children.

245 was a response to 240, which was part of a larger argument against cash stipends. I was merely saying that I don't see why the argument was so firmly based on the idea that one could have either social support or cash stipends, but not both.

282: I did not know that, but it's awesome. I knew that there were some state benefits, but not that they weren't means-tested. Although obviously having them be universal is politically smart as hell. Go, Brits.

"I still maintain that there's no reason why providing a social safety net and decent entitlements to children and those who raise them needs to be at odds with paying child support to single parents."

Isn't it because some proportion of parents will not be capable of properly managing it, due to drug addiction, abusive situation, mental disease, etc? other than that i'm not sure we aren't just arguing about a linguistic oddity

284.2: that and my misunderstanding of what B. meant--it's been a long week.

284: I think you think I'm saying cash stipend *instead* of social safety net. I'm not.

re: 283

That general reasoning, that most state provision be presented as non-means-tested was the basic principle of the post-war Labour government. Hence, the National Health Service and any number of other benefits. They believed that means-testing stigmatized the poor and, also, benefits that the middle classes and wealthy paid for, but didn't receive, created social division that they were in the business of trying to break down. To a degree, unfortunately, that ethos has been eroded.

However, child benefit, the state pension, and, I believe, disability living allowances are the remaining leftovers of that ethos. All are paid to everyone regardless of means.

You know, that's really interesting. Because I put in the means test thing because, being American, I think of this stuff in the frame of "how to minimize costs?" It's kind of bothersome that even a supposedly hard-leftie like me (I don't think I am, really, but everyone else does) has swallowed the "taxpayer's money" koolaid to the point where the idea of means-testing as a stigma that creates resentment, rather than as a way of saving money, doesn't even register.

Thanks.

Another problem with means testing is that it reduces a program's constituency, making it more vulnerable to funding cuts and so on. The maxim that "a program for the poor is a poor program" really holds true a lot of the time.

But while the government shouldn't license childbearing, each individual still has a God given right to be cranky and cantankerous. Emulating MADD, I'm thinking of forming a group called Crazy Old Men Against Badly Brought Up Kids Who Run Across Other Peoples' Lawns, to help stamp out this scourge.

It may need a catchier name.

290: "The National Rifle Association"

It's not a choice, it's a target.

The NRA called me not too long ago asking for money to help pass more laws like Florida's 'no duty to retreat' law. Perhaps I should have contributed. "Yes sir, officer, that pack of rabid six year olds ON MY LAWN were threatening me. I could tell by the saliva, the slavering jowls, that many were rabid. I was afeard for my life. Of course I didn't retreat. Thank God for semi-automatics with 20 shot clips"

Meanwhile, today in China, due to sex-selective contraception and abortion - that is, due to a simpler but no less human-volitional reproductive technology - the ratio among children of males to females is something like eleven to ten. So spare us the "ZOMG this is UNPRECEDENTED and AWFUL!!!" shock-face.

#52: The joke's going to be on the womyn when there's nobody to kill bugs and open jars.

That's what you think.