From: jbrock@csfb1.fir.fbc.com (John Brock)
Subject: Baby Factories -- Was: Ignorance - Was: VOTE, BABY, VOTE!
Reply-To: uunet!csfb1!jbrock
Organization: First Boston Corporation
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 06:26:51 GMT

Since the subject has come up -- and these *are* political newsgroups
-- a couple of thoughts on people who have more children than they can
afford to support.  (My subject header is deliberately provocative, and
refers to a phrase used early on in this thread).

I actually have no problem with the single wage-earner household with 3
kids and a $30K income.  Part of our largely unacknowledged national
tragedy is that is used to be possible to raise a family on a single
modest wage (my mother did it alone with four kids).

Things are different today.  I know a number of middle class people who
feel that even though they would like to have a large family they
simply cannot afford to have more than one or maybe two children.  The
thing is, to remain middle class *both* must work, which leaves no one
to care for the children.  If the choice is between raising one child
well or four children in poverty, well that leaves them really no
choice at all, does it?

These people are *extremely* resentful that their tax dollars are going
to welfare mothers with six children.  I know, I know, this is not the
"typical" welfare family; I know that people end up on welfare via many
routes, and that for many it is a temporary, lifesaving crutch.  But
don't you dare tell me that the stereotypical welfare family doesn't
exist!  Again and again I read in the paper of criminals from poor
families of six or eight.  How many middle class families do you know
with that many children?  In order to avoid giving offense people try
very hard to pretend that the problem doesn't exist, but it *does*
exist!

Our society makes it very difficult for successful people to have
families.  Not only are both parents pretty much required to work, but
they also face the enormous and skyrocketing expense of college for
each of their children.  One the other hand, if you are on welfare,
your life isn't going to be easy, but having a large family isn't going
to make it that much harder, especially if you are irresponsible and
put little effort into raising your children.  If you are on welfare,
you have plenty of free time, the government is expected to pay for
your children's food and clothing, there is little thought of college,
and certainly no thought of college without a full scholarship.  You
may not have much money, but then you never did, and nothing much has
changed.

Of course many welfare mothers are not irresponsible.  Such a woman
might have two children, invest a lot of effort in rasing them right,
and quite possible end up with two decent and productive citizens.
Meanwhile her irresposible next door neighbor has pumped out six more
problems.  And which one does the next generation look like?  (Again, I
know there are exceptions, I know there are "miracle families", but I'm
not interested in the exceptions here, I'm interested in the rule).

I'm edging my way toward a very sensitive issue.  I don't know that my
analysis is the best possible, and I am sure I'm going to get flamed
royally, but I think there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
The thing is, our society is set up so that the people with the deepest
and most engrained problems also have the most children, while the most
successful people have the fewest.  Whatever your politics, this can't
possible be a good thing!!!

For all our efforts, children tend to be like their parents.  My mother
taught high-school, and growing up I would hear of the difficulty of
teaching students whose parents didn't read, not books, not even
newspapers, and who had no idea what an education actually involved.
My mother taught in a fairly good school system -- I have talked to
teachers from inner-city schools who have told me much worse.  We hear
from the media that the problem in those schools is bad teachers, or
not enough government money.  What I hear directly is that the students
themselves are deeply bad.  If you ask, they will tell you that yes,
they want to get a good education and get ahead in the world, but they
seem to have no clue that this actually involves studying and doing the
work assigned.  Instead they are intensely resentful of "the system",
resentful of Asians and Jews who do well, resentful even of those among
them who study hard and "act white".

These students, teenagers, have the highest birth rate of any major
group of Americans!  On the other hand, according to the Wall Street
Journal, American women with post-graduate degrees have an average of
1.2 children in their lifetime.  This is well below the 2.1 which is
necessary to keep a population from declining.  In effect, we are
culling out our our elites, while subsidizing the growth of the
underclass with tax dollars.

I really do think we have a problem here, and yet it is a problem we
are forbidden to acknowledge.  The party line is that we are all
equally worthy, essentially interchangeable, and that it doesn't matter
who has children and who does not, that it is immoral even to talk
about it.  We talk of "advantaged" and "dis-advantaged" children, and
yet refuse to admit that the advantages actually count for anything.
And above all, we are not allowed to blame the victim, for anything,
ever.  I am sure to be called a racist for this, because today the most
racist thing one can do is be colorblind, and and insist on holding
people responsible for their behavior despite the color of their skin
or the way their grandparents were treated.  And yet this problem hits
the blacks harder that anyone.  If a generation of blacks fights and
claws their way into the middle class, and then is unable to afford
children while the chaotic underclass they left behind proliferates,
then their progress is undone, and the next generation is worse off
than the first.

So what do we do?  I think the most important thing is to acknowledge
the problem.  To insist that it is in fact a problem, and refuse to be
intimidated by accusations of Racism, Elitism, and (shudder)
Insensitivity.  You may not agree with my analysis, and I would not try
to force it on anyone.  This is a hard problem to get a handle on, in
large part because nobody will talk about it, and I won't pretend I
have it licked.  But one way or another, it *_is_* a problem, and it
*_will_* matter.

Beyond acknowledging the problem, who knows?  Perhaps the government
should pay for all college education, for anyone who can find a college
that will admit them.  This would take a crushing burden off the backs
of the middle class, and I'd willingly pay the taxes for that.

We may have to do something about social security.  As I understand it,
originally there were to be five or six workers paying taxes to support
one social security receipient.  Soon it will be more like two, because
people are living longer, and because the baby boom generation has had
so few children.  It will be terribly ironic if the demands of the
older generation upon their too few children ends up diminishing even
further the generation after that!

As for welfare, I favor a plan put forward by one of the editors of The
New Republic (whose name escapes me right now).  We would get rid of
welfare entirely, and replace it with a guaranteed government job at 90
percent of minimum wage.  To begin with, the jobs might be meaningless,
but people would still have to get out of bed every morning and show
up, just like the rest of us, or not get paid.  People who worked a
second job would face no penalty.  Single mothers would have to show up
just like everyone else, just like working single mothers have to do
today!  Perhaps some of the government jobs could be in day care
centers.

All of this would be enormously expensive, and there are endless
pitfalls that would have to be carefully thought out and avoided.  The
alternative is to continue pretending there is no problem.  I don't
think that's much of an alternative.