From: cwinkler@oregon.uoregon.edu (Celia Winkler)
Subject: Re: Maternity Leave and Child Benefits
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: University of Oregon
Date:  6 Apr 1992 08:38 PDT  

In article <1992Apr4.050725.2274@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>, ash@sumex-aim.stanford.edu (David Ash) writes...
>In article <3APR199219340575@oregon.uoregon.edu> cwinkler@oregon.uoregon.edu (Celia Winkler) writes:
>A poor young man (of any race) should certainly have the opportunity
>to do something with his *own* life.  As far as his having kids, I guess
>I have to say that he's on his own.  If he can do something with his
>own life that is sufficiently high paying that he can afford to raise
>a family, then all power to him, but the world is too overpopulated for
>me to thrilled with anyone being given help in this process.

(Let's just change that to "a poor young man or woman (of any race)...")
This should mean that the poor person in the inner city and the 
privileged person from the suburbs should both be able to attain a
quality university education.  They should both have the same chance
to become lawyers or doctors or whatever.  But the reality is they
don't.

Secondly, you are assuming that all the costs of raising a child should
be borne by the parents.  Shall we include education in there?  So, I
shouldn't have to pay taxes for the public education or for a local
library I don't use (because I use the university library).  Where do
we draw the line?

And the concept of financing the raising of the child is extremely
reified.  Say that Mr. X owns a shoe store.  From the profits of the
shoe store, he buys clothing and food for his children.  In order to
do that, he raises the prices of the shoes enough so that he can.  If
Mr. X had no children, he might be able to charge less for the shoes.
So everytime I buy a pair of shoes, I pay a little something toward the
raising of his children.

This is an overly simplistic example of my point, but what I'm trying
to get you to see is that we DO pay for the children of our society.
No one EVER does it on their own.  Not unless that person has retreated
to the hills and is a survivalist.  And even then...

> 
>I know the system I'd like to see is unfair to the poor (of any race)
>relative to the rich (of any race).  I guess I just can't think of a
>better one but I'm open to suggestions.  Any alternatives which I
>can think of involve either cruelty or excessive government involvement
>in people's lives.

Before I reply to this, I want to know your major beef.  Is it,

  1)  Overpopulation; or

  2)  Taxes.


> 
>>On the issue of young women having babies, a friend's dissertation
>>involved in-depth interviews with teenage moms from African American,
>>Native American, and low-income white backgrounds.  Some of the major
>>reasons, she found, for having babies was 1) the availability of
>>relative or neighbor support; 2) wanting to be a mom; and 3) not
>>seeing anything else worth doing.
> 
>In a properly structured society, having a kid should be absolutely
>the last thing a poor person would think of doing.  Anything else
>should be more worth doing.  A kid is a really major expense, and
>a system which helps poor people afford this expense is really
>twisted in my view.

ARGH!!!!  But this ISN'T a perfect society, and these women DON'T
have other options, and they're NOT doing it for the welfare!!!!!
In many cases, they had the same dreams as a suburban girl--home and
family and hubby coming home to a nice casserole.

Whether you like it or not, David, the kid is born.  People have
passions and they dream about children because it's a hell of a lot
nicer dream than having to serve fried eggs to a**hole lawyers and
doctors who don't even notice that you exist.  

The point of my friend's research was that UNTIL society changes
such that people REALISTICALLY have other choices, they'll continue
to have children at young ages.  

So you would have good programs for single people.  I agree.  But
why don't we make it possible for EVERYONE to go to college?  And
we still have an obligation to support the children who somehow get
to be born.  Wishing won't make them go away.

> 
>I'm quite concerned about world overpopulation, and I'm afraid I don't
>see a compelling reason to help anyone have kids no matter how laudable
>the social goals.  The overpopulation issue simply takes precedence.
>Incidentally, I'm a Stanford *grad* student, not an undergrad, mired in
>an interminable PhD program.  

Excuse me, I pulled "Stanford undergraduate" out of the air.  I was
trying to make a comparison between two different classes of the same
age group.  19 year old Black kids who have a high mortality rate
and an over 30% unemployment rate, vs. 19 year old kids in a posh
university.  I chose Stanford because it was the closest posh university
to the town I grew up in.  It wasn't meant as any kind of a slight.
I may have unconsciously noticed your mail address, but any similarity
was strictly unintentional.

>By the time I have graduated and have a
>stable enough financial life to consider having kids (not easy in today's
>academic job market) I may be too old to have kids (assuming I marry
>a woman approximately my own age).  I'm not applying any standard to
>anyone that I don't apply to myself.

So, just because you suffer, you're going to make sure everyone suffers?
Don't we get to choose our own particular ways to suffer?  I have single
parent friends who may get more public assistance than I do, but I don't
begrudge them a dime of it.  When they go home after a bad day, they
can't just say to a kid, "Leave me alone.  I need to recoup.  And it
may take a couple glasses of schnapps and a trashy novel to do it."
They can't just throw on their jogging clothes and head out into the
rain to clear their heads.  THOSE are the hardships one chooses in order
to obtain the joy of having kids.  I don't see that they should have to
incur further financial harm.  Believe me, their financial assistance
is hardly enough to cover the costs of the children, especially when 
you throw in childcare costs.

>As far
>as needing a large number of younger people to support me in my old age,
>all I can say is that when I'm so decrepit that I can't support myself,
>I'm willing to follow the guidelines outlined in Final Exit.

So, David, you'll commit suicide rather than retire?  What do you mean
by "support" yourself?  Does this mean that you'll never live off of
investments?  Never take a penny of interest?

I agree that overpopulation is a problem, but you are too stuck on
blaming it on social welfare programs.  They are not the cause of
overpopulation.  Really.  We should also look at the amount of
resources we individually use, because the problem is not JUST
overpopulation.  Every time I go down to the Bay Area I get sick of
the conspicuous consumption down there.  Mind you, I'm not a typical
Eugenian--I love my pot roast.  But there is a limit to what we can
ask from the earth, collectively and individually.

cw