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Should there be limits set on the amount of children parents can have?

Rather than state-sponsored kidnapping that favors the rich and tearing apart families, wouldn't it be far more prudent to simply spend more money on sex education in and out of public schools and make condoms and other contraceptives more widely available?


It doesn't favor the rich, it just favors whoever is prepared to look after children properly and can afford to do so. Why, do you think it would be fine to give a child to someone who is homeless and out of work?

In my country we have tons of sex education- you have to be living under a rock in the middle of nowhere not to know that unprotected sex can lead to pregnancy and STD's. Everyone in school gets sex education and even if you mess up at school, there are dozens of other resources you can go to for free to learn about contraception and even get it for free (NHS).

It is really naive to think that in my country, people get pregnant because they don't know about contraception or don't have access to it. Contraception is unbelievably widely available- its in your supermarkets, pubs, hospitals, schools, newsagents etc. There is no excuse in my country in this day age about not having access to contraception- it is so easy to learn about it and have if you want to.


How would your plan save the government money? It sounds like they would need to increase costs to build orphanages for all the children you advocate kidnapping. Taken away from their families, these children will still need to be fed and clothed. They will also need to have a new home found for them, which will require lots of new social workers and caretakers. This would be a huge expenditure.


By the government enforcing the policy, it would deter people from breaking it- if people obeyed the policy, then less kids would be brought into the world, and so the countries population would be lowered and less kids would need to be taken away from their families etc.


This is just your opinion. I know people who grew up with lots of siblings and had a great time. I also know people who grew up without siblings wishing they had some. These are the sort of decisions that need to be left up to families, since there is no objective way to analyze the issue.


So would you have been happy growing up with 8 brothers and sisters and being considered lucky if your mum got to spend 30mins quality time with your mum a day?

We're not talking about families with a few kids, we talking about parents producing huge numbers of kids.


How does this help the environment? You seem to be advocating that children should be removed from their parents and taken into state custody, where they are processed for adoption. This doesn't serve to decrease the population or reduce the strain on natural resources. All it does is tear apart famlies.



It does serve to reduce population because when the government shows that it means business and is enforcing its laws, people aren't going to want to break the policies laws and so human population/birth rates lower overall.

Your theory that these sorts of child policies don't work at lowering population are silly because we have a huge example of them working, and that is China (their system does have problems, but that isn't the systems fault but rather their corrupt government and outdated culture's viewpoints on women fault).

Honestly, would you want to live in a wold where China didn't have the 1/2child policy to control its 1.3billion people population?

You may think all of this stuff unfair for the individual, but its a necessary evil. If Africa was able to control its population better, then its poverty problems wouldn't be half as bad. You might be against a child policy program being put into a country like Africa, but then do you prefer that children just starve instead because the country and people cannot afford them?
Your theory of people having lots of kids as investments is an outdated medieval one that should not be encouraged or tolerated in this day and age, because it simply just doesn't work for the greater good.
 
I agree. We should choose quality instead of quantity.
Don't people realize that morals cannot be eaten when there are billions and billions of us?
"Poor kids suffer yadda-yadda."
Would you rather have the whole bloody planet suffer?
Besides MadamePapillon is right, after all, we really do resemble a virus.
Also, note. We humans are not really aware of our worth. Our value isn't more than a tree or a fish or any other life form. We invade in nature's domain, we do whatever we wish, why are we the only exception? Why can't we control our own population? We go kill wolves and other predators because we find it wrong that they eat our chicken and lambs, bloody hell, thats stupid, we eat everyone's chicken and lambs, but no, there should be no sanctions 'cause we're so fu*king high and mighty.
Yet again this issue reeks of hypocrisy.



Yeah i totally agree with MadamePapillon and you as well on this. Humans are so selfish in nature, while people like Orochi think "That would be a sad day for humanity" when we finally do more to control our population, i actually think it will be one of the best days for the planet and lead to a better era for people.
We need to stop being so selfish as individuals and do more things for the greater good instead of our personal good. Human behavior can be very parasitic when it concerns this planet at times.
 
I don't want somebody telling me how many children I can or can't have. It's my choice. Plus I always feel that this is against women. It tends to be the women who are sterilized (or mutilated) to prevent pregnancy, but usually not the men. Men are allowed to stay fertile.

extra children...what is that? It's not like they are a surplus commodity to be taken away. These are humans not "extras".



Who's saying women need to be sterilized? Its up to women as adults to take responsibility for their birth control, just as much as its mens responsibility. I don't care how exactly they go about this and long as they do something about birth control.

IMHO, its self-centered to say "I don't want somebody telling me how many children I can or can't have. It's my choice."- its like saying "f*ck humanity, i'm just going to do whatever i want anyway", seriously, how is it different from that? What about the world you're bringing the kids you create into?

IMHO, too many people just have kids because they want to have them, because its "their choice", and don't care or put enough thought into the reality of having kids, like where they're going to live or how they're going to get the money to afford them etc.

With that largest America's family couple, do you find nothing morally wrong with a couple having 24children together with more on the way? No..you think that the mother can do whatever she wants and it would be "against women" to try and make her stop having babies.
 
Should limits be set on amounts of children one can have?

Absolute not...

It's every womens god given natural right to determine how many she wishes to have...
 
Absolute not...

It's every womens god given natural right to determine how many she wishes to have...



So you don't find anything morally wrong with that couple that produced 24 children with more on the way even though her kids didn't want anymore brothers and sisters and were suffering because of having so many brothers and sisters etc? You think what a parent wants is more important that what is best for their current children?

Absolute not...
It's every womens god given natural right to determine how many she wishes to have...
So you think what the woman wants is more important that whats in her current children's best interests? How self-centered.

IMHO, when a parent brings children into the world, the parent doesn't take the priority over the kids they produced.
 
This world would be a better place is we all just minded our own business. My reproductive life is no ones business but my own.
 
This world would be a better place is we all just minded our own business. My reproductive life is no ones business but my own.



Um no. You are aware that we live in society yes? And that when living in a society, our actions shouldn't be completely selfish, but rather those that also take into consideration the effect of your actions on other people etc? And that the glue which holds society together, the essential essence of society, is to do things that aren't selfish/self-centered, but ones which are for the good and concerns of other people too etc?

The world would be a terrible place if we just let people do whatever they wanted to do and didn't step in when they would doing things bad for society. Saying "This world would be a better place is we all just minded our own business" would be like saying "this country would be a better place if the government didn't butt into our lives by imposing its laws".
Do you want to live in a completely lawless and self-centered society?

edit: You don't have the life you do because you made it all yourself. Millions of other people in society contributed to you having the life you have, you live in a society created by all and not just yourself, so the government and others do have a right to discuss and have say over what you should and shouldn't be doing etc.
Democracy in essence is doing what is best for society. If you don't want to live in a society that concerns for others, a society which you benefit from, a democracy, then perhaps you should consider moving to another country which doesn't care less about what other people do or what happens to them and which you can do whatever you want in regardless of others etc.

edit If you don't want people to take mind in your business, then why don't you stop sticking your nose in other people's too yourself (i can come up with plenty of examples of this "cough-dolphin hunting-cough")?
 
Animals can't stick up for themselves....so um *cough* it's not the same.
I think I'll have 13 kids.



Oh but the kids you bring into this world will have an effect on such animals. Are you not aware of the fact that the human population is having a terrible toll on the environment and its wildlife and that the main cause for the large majority of water animals going extinct is the masses of pollution that seeps into their habitats that our population creates, and that the more people there are the worse this pollution gets? Are you not aware of the fact that if there were less people on this planet then the environment wouldn't be under such strain?

But i guess you don't consider the dolphins and other animals when it comes to you bringing in more people into the world. No, your choices are more important than the consequences your actions will have on the environment and its wildlife. But i guess you fail to see these connections between human population and strain on the environment. Human population and pollution is a far greater threat to dolphins than what dolphin hunting is.

Don't you care about the effects our massive and increasing population is having on the environment because it is so massive and increasing? I guess you don't, either that or you have failed to connect these things.
edit: I guess if you really care about wild animals like dolphins, then you won't bring another 13children into the world. But i take it your choices are more important than the consequences you'll have on the environment and its wildlife?
 
I think I'll have 14 now. It's my choice.


Well there we go then. You've shown no real concern whatsoever in this thread for the effects your choices will have on society, the environment and its wildlife and the world as a whole.
If being hypocritical is something you don't want to be (trust me, its not a good/admirable thing), then you should restrain yourself from now on from commenting on world issues that don't concern yourself (unless you change your opinions on what you've said in this thread dramatically).
Democracy gave you these choices in life, its funny how you try to dictate what other people say only when it suits how you personally feel about stuff. Democracy isn't just about you, we're all a part of this and IMHO its time you started concerning more about your effect on other people on issues like this rather than just yourself.
 
So you say no one has the right to decide about your body?
Say, your offspring is hungry as hell, he has nothing to eat because his 13 brothers ate all the... corn, yeah corn, in the area. Now this child ventures into my land where I grow my... eggplants. The starving child decides to eat my eggplants. I notice him eating my eggplants, I get out of my hut and tell him to GTFO... HOWEVER, he dramatically turns around and spits at my direction...
WHOA! I go and give him a nice slap, right after that he hits me in the face with his fist.

Lets analyze the situation a bit. He came into my garden, ergo he is the aggressor. You are giving birth to children that will most likely make their living at the cost of others. He has no other chance, we all know, but nonetheless, an aggressor is born because of you.

Now lets see what may happen.

1, I hit back, but too late, the child already stabbed me with his knife. I die lol.
So, now the child killed me. Thanks to your actions a person died so you can have one more child.

2, I run away, get my scythe and cut your child in two. He dies.
The child was preventing the eggplants from entering my body (he was messing with the state of my organism, bad boy). Following your logic my deeds are justified.

Lets return to society for a bit. Tokis-Phoenix put it very well. Society lets you raise the necessary amount of children, 1, 2, 3, or even 4 in the worst case. It enables all of you to lead worthy lives, its not like everything falls from the sky for free. What the society expects from you (apart from the small compensation that your existence and deeds are) is not to do something absolutely stupid.
I mean, one would have to struggle to do something so stupid. He says "Ok, try not to do these things: littering, smoking, drinking, fighting with your neighbor, etc."
And sometimes he says "You MUSTN'T cause a nuclear catastrophe, you mustn't kill your neighbor over the possession of a bush, you mustn't hit someone in the head and take his money, you mustn't have an army of children, etc."
You surely see the difference right? You say its not an issue?
Well, imagine if I pissed right on the ATB thingy in the bank. The piss would evaporate, yes, but if only 20% of the clients followed my example, surely the whole bank would smell like a pit. and its only 20%! Only! Lets not forget that people can piss there multiple times, since we're comparing it to having children.
Why do you think that only you have the right to decide about the amount of children you wish to have? I mean, can you prove it that its this way? Did God tell you to have as many children as you wish? What is the source of your confidence?
During my short life I learnt that there's hypocrisy all around. Right is often "not good", only good is good, right is simply idealistic.
I might not be in a woman's shoes, but surely, I find it that nothing is more humiliating for a woman than serving as a walking, breathing hatchery for no apparent purpose.
 
This just reminded me of this program I watched once where these fanatically religious couples moved to the country so they could have 14 or so children...the basic idea was that they would out breed the 'sinners' so when god finally came they would have a nice big 'army' to fight for him.
And yes, this was in America. 😌

Anyways, yes, I think a limit should be set. 3 sounds good (for us less populated countries at least) , most normal people don't want to have more than three children anyways. It's all a matter of thinking ahead for the future and using our bigger-than-normal brains for good, if we all had 14 children we (humanity) would be completely and utterly screwed. And not just us but those 14 children I imagine wouldn't be too thrilled about inheriting a grossly over populated, over polluted and not-so-green world.
 
This just reminded me of this program I watched once where these fanatically religious couples moved to the country so they could have 14 or so children...the basic idea was that they would out breed the 'sinners' so when god finally came they would have a nice big 'army' to fight for him.

HAHAHAHA. Thats so amazingly dumb. A big hungry army can't do much lol.
 
Well, I decided to have just one child, but consciously and from the one, I really wanted to have it, and facing all the according responsibilities.
(Those days I thought, if every couple would stick to 2<1 also as for quality, we would have a better world soon)
Having a child these days is hard enough, because you realise very soon, that you are often opposed to public pressures from ideologic and marketing sides etc. that step into every corner of your "education". Breathtaking, to keep the inner connections awake, if you ask me. Definitely in a big city!

It just turned out, that any other child would weaken my attention about this.

Yet my daughter is far from being a typical only child, because she is very communicative and was often and from the very beginning in group situations, bigger than any family with 14 or so, and doing just fine. Social learning can come any way, if you are aware of this.

It was, before I even heard about the chinese example, that I conscioulsy decided for "quality" by having exactly the image of us humans being like viruses. I often said so, esp. after some flights over the globe, from where you can see, how much we look like an uncontrollable desease of the planet. . .you can say, it looks beautifull, but thats only one part of the story.
If you know, that a skin desease can look exactly the same, incl. spreading out as a circle, then dying out, but until then leaving empty patches in the middle, as we know for example about New York. . .
My daughter promptly once had such a desease, when very young, not seriously though, but I then remembered my according view full force.
And now the overall pollution. . .

I am still very happy about my choice, but thats just me.
I would never blame anyone for their choices though.

And it turned out that my daughter got a half brother, which she loves very much, also, because she always wanted to have a brother, she got it, her way. . .hehe

Who am I to say. . .whats right or wrong in all this. . .
 
I think it's wrong to dictate the amount of children a person/couple should have. However, I believe that under certain circumstances there should be limits on the amount of children that parents can have. If a family is on welfare, then I think that a limit should be set. Since welfare is meant to help people get back on their feet, not support them for the rest of their lives (exception of disability) - which people sadly take advantage of - I think that once they are able to support themselves and are not dependent on the government for money then the limit would be lifted. Having children only slows the independence process.

Also, a higher population would make a plague or disease harder to control. Thus, eliminating much of the human race. All it takes is a "super germ" to develop or a single form of bacterium to mutate into something that our vaccines can't stop. I do believe that in the future a plague will occur, and we won't have to worry about population control, since the "Selecting Agent" acting against us will "help". Also, this may sound very cynical but, thank god for earth's natural disasters, another form of nature's selecting agents.

So I think that birthing limits are justified in the presence of welfare.
 
Also, a higher population would make a plague or disease harder to control. Thus, eliminating much of the human race. All it takes is a "super germ" to develop or a single form of bacterium to mutate into something that our vaccines can't stop. I do believe that in the future a plague will occur, and we won't have to worry about population control, since the "Selecting Agent" acting against us will "help". Also, this may sound very cynical but, thank god for earth's natural disasters, another form of nature's selecting agents.

Its true imo. We're like fleas in dog. If there are too many, the dog will start to scratch itself, if he's itching, he owns a few and won't scratch himself until there are too many fleas sucking his blood again.
The situation is the same with this planet.
Besides, isn't time that people stopped self-worship? I mean come on, families being torn apart, protection of life, human ethics and morale. Come on people, what is our superiority based on? Hehh?
I refuse to consider humans more than another species of animals.
 
:D:D:D That is funny. Screw Earth, I'm going to go live on Mars. :giggle: I'm sorry but as far as we've gotten in space exploration, we are years and years away from being able to successfully colonize another planet.

Maybe so, but we are also years away from flooding our planet with overpopulation. Besides, that's why we should concentrate more so we can speed up the process.

And before Earth and the Sun cease to exist I'm sure humanity will have had it's day and have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

More of an opinion than anything else. It would take a combination of man learning to better take care of his planet and improving space exploration to move on to other planets. It's just a difference in opinion: you believe man should favor "quality over quantity" and never leave Earth, whereas I believe man should take better care of the Earth and branch out.

But more importantly, I like Earth, it's (at least where I'm living) green, clean, beautiful and full of potential. The idea of making plans to abandon Earth is scary, to say the least, not only for our own planet but for what it means to humanity as a whole.
To utterly strip our planet of all resources and life and move onto a new planet to do the same...doesn't that strike anyone as sort of viral behavior. To keep multiplying and consuming and growing ever immune to anything that might kill us, using our planet like a Host until it is completely tapped and then moving on.
I hate to think of humanity as displaying 'disease-like' or viral behavior but with talk of abandoning our 'host' because we've basically killed it, humanity is ever more looking like some sort of great disease.
Sort of depressing but I do often think of humanity as some sort of disease that landed on Planet Earth and is slowly killing her. Unless we stop multiplying and consuming that's exactly what we will become: a great big cancerous plague on the Earth. And to think, we are already looking for new 'compatible' planets to migrate to. :mad:

Certainly not, and I never made any mention of this in my post. I certainly don't think man should become a "virus" stripping every planet of its usable resources and then moving on to its next victim. I simply think you should not tell a person that he cannot have a certain amount of children. You should rather concentrate on "fixing" Earth, making it cleaner, and branching out into other worlds when the planet cannot physically hold anymore human beings.
 
Take better care of Earth? In a couple of years, the great minds leading us will say: "Oh hey, guys, we need more land, we need more food, we need more water. Lets take it, there's plenty!"
What do you think at whose cost will it happen? At the cost of every other animal, EVERY. Some cretin head honcho will say that "Human life is the most precious of things etc." and the masses will nod, in the end we will drive thousands of species to extinction, leaving only those that serve our purposes. When people think about an issue to solve great things come true, but its disastrous when we attempt to solve the issues of our existence.
Nature isn't there the be "utilized" by us, its to let us coexist with other species.
Evolution gave us brains so we realize that we have no real enemy, and no other creature above us in the food chains, so we must be careful.
 
Take better care of Earth? In a couple of years, the great minds leading us will say: "Oh hey, guys, we need more land, we need more food, we need more water. Lets take it, there's plenty!"
What do you think at whose cost will it happen? At the cost of every other animal, EVERY. Some cretin head honcho will say that "Human life is the most precious of things etc." and the masses will nod, in the end we will drive thousands of species to extinction, leaving only those that serve our purposes. When people think about an issue to solve great things come true, but its disastrous when we attempt to solve the issues of our existence.
Nature isn't there the be "utilized" by us, its to let us coexist with other species.
Evolution gave us brains so we realize that we have no real enemy, and no other creature above us in the food chains, so we must be careful.

Again, I'm not sure where you got in my post that I meant we should use the Earth until all its resources are used up. Yes, take better care of the Earth. Pollute less, use less, conserve more, and coexist with nature. Why not try to better the Earth instead of going on about our ways and just limiting the amount of children people can have?

Nature isn't there the be "utilized" by us, its to let us coexist with other species.

Exactly what I said. I can't help but get the impression you briefly skimmed through my post, found what displeased you, and ranted on it.
 
I might have put it in the wrong way, what I mean is that humans have a too big share of it all.
 
IMHO, at the end of the day i still think that at least in my country there should be some limit set on the amount of kids parents can give birth to. I think a 7 child limit is reasonable enough- the majority of parents would not want to have that many children either way, so such a limit would only effect a minority of parents.
 
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