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> As a society, we need women to bear children. Why do we force her to choose between work and family? That's not strictly true. We need some women to bear chi
by curun1r 12y ago
> As a society, we need women to bear children. Why do we force her to choose between work and family?
That's not strictly true. We need some women to bear children, but we don't need nearly as many as currently do it. We have a shortage of many things on this earth, but human beings aren't one of them. Why should society be encouraging women to have children when it's objectively better for society if most of them don't?
Strict population controls, like China's one-child policy, are probably a step too far, but not encouraging parenthood seems like a reasonable middle ground.
- prawn 12y agoI suspect the argument there is that not offering maternity leave discourages working women from procreating while there is no such disincentive for those not working. And so those often without the means of supporting a child will be the ones having the children.
- e12e 12y agoEh... while I agree that overpopulation (on a global scale) is a real problem, it is also true that most highly educated/industrial societies have problems with too few children being born. I seem to recall that the average needs to be around 2.4 children/family for population to not decrease. The US overall might not exhibit the typical traits of an educated society (family planning) -- I've not looked up the numbers. But with poor social mobility, there would still be a problem. As for looking at the issues from a global perspective: do we really think importing children from third world countries is a viable, moral and/or sensible approach? If not, the sane plan for the future, is to encourage sustainable family planning everywhere: more children in the rich/highly educated part of the world, better access to contraceptives etc in the poor/less educated parts.