Kids today.

[mrissa]

Oooookay. I went away and you-all started talking about having children and when to and getting sniped at and so on. So:

1. The grass is not, in fact, greener: there is no number of children an adult can have that will make other adults leave him/her alone about it. You go straight from, "You should have more kids!" to, "Sheesh, don't you know what causes it?" without any pause in between. Individual people may think they know an ideal number of kids for another person to have, but there is not a social consensus, so you just will not be able to universally escape busybodies on this subject.

I don't know if the childless or the people with ten kids have it "worse" as far as social pressure goes. Nobody appointed me judge and jury there. (Nobody appointed you judge and jury there, either, so please do not weigh in. Pain is not a contest, nor is annoyance.) I suspect that people who are unsatisfied with the number of children they have probably have it worse than people who are satisfied with the number of children they have, but as people vary, that doesn't mean I can say, "On the average, people with 2.875 children have it the worst."

2. Different personalities err in different directions. Some people are overplanners. Some people are underplanners. The existence of one does not negate the existence of the other. You cannot say that "the problem is," because we humans are so talented at coming up with problems that there is no one single problem. There are lots.

3. Not everyone has to behave the same way. Sure, humanity would have a tough time if each of the women currently in childbearing years had zero children. Probably would also have a pretty tough time of it if each of the women currently in childbearing years had ten children. That doesn't mean that individual women aren't reasonable in choosing to have zero or ten children or some number between. Personalities vary. People vary. We don't have to set out a policy that is universal on this subject. markgritter's parents were happy to raise four loved, wanted children. My parents were happy to raise one loved, wanted child. Forcing them to switch families or to average out to two and a half each would not have resulted in happiness for everybody -- possibly not for anybody.

4. Saying that every child should be loved and wanted does not dictate specific policy for what someone should do if they find themselves pregnant and do not want a child or do not want a child at that moment. It does not specify that adoption, abortion, some kind of parental support and/or mentoring program, living with extended family, or any other specific thing is the solution, either universally or specifically. It also does not tell the listener what the speaker would do or, indeed, has done in that situation.

5. Not everybody has the same resources. Telling people that they can do something does not make them able to do it. Be very wary of sentences that start out, "You can." Whether those are, "You can have kids later," or, "You can leave the kids with your mom," or, "You can go back to college later," do not presume on what other people can do. Sometimes they really, literally can't, no matter how reasonable it sounds to you.

Comments

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

THANK you.

I don't want kids. Never have. Don't enjoy much of anything about the kid experience. Do enjoy some of the kids my friends are raising. Doesn't mean I think that everyone should stop having them.

I do believe in ZPG, but I think there are enough people like me that it balances out the bigger families. Though yeah, the parents in the news a few months ago who just had their 16th baby boggled my brain a bit. She sheer logistics of bathroom time must be insane. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think that some people are well-suited to raise one child well, some to raise two well, etc. I am willing to postulate that there are people who would raise 16 children in a way that I would consider "well" in our current social context. I'm not sure I've run into them, and I won't make any claims about how numerous they might be, though.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

The parents in Cheaper by the Dozen (the book, which is nonfiction - not sure how far the movie departed) seem to have done a reasonable job with 12. (11 actually. One died young.) I don't suppose there were lots of heart-to-heart chats except perhaps with the youngest after the the others moved out, but they seem to have instilled values, produced decent human beings, and so on. So I suppose parenting 16 well could be possible.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My maternal grandmother, shown, was one of 13. All of them survived to adulthood, although two died moderately young (one in WWII and the other of a heart defect that would be corrected surgically today, or even a decade after he died -- but he had already married and fathered children). My paternal grandmother was one of 11. All of them survived to adulthood as well.

But theirs was a different world; being a huge farm family was an asset, not a liability, when my oldest great-aunts and great-uncles were born. And the Cheaper By the Dozen children were, if I have the math right, even a little older than that.

I also don't know how much it scales up. My maternal grandmother's mom had children no closer than two years apart. By the time the youngest two were born, the oldest two were married and out of the house. As you approach a number like 16, it's hard to space them out that much with a normal human span of fertility -- Great-Grandma and the other women in my family were early bloomers who kept going a long time -- and having them closer together might change the quality of the whole shebang rather a lot. I have evidence that people can do well with kids born 10-15 months apart if they have to, and I have evidence that people can do well with 13 kids, but I don't know much about combining the two.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

The Gilbreth kids hit adolescence from the 1920s to the 1940s. On the other hand, they weren't a farming family; the parents were the first motion-study engineers. (Lillian Gilbreth is often credited with being the first woman engineer, which is pretty impressive for someone raising that many kids too.) They apparently did it by having a strict system and by assigning older children to help the younger ones.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

With regard to point 1: people seem far less ready to say these things (i.e., you have too many or too few) to people who adopt, though I think they do say them to those who adopt many, many children.

When we announced that we were in the process of adopting our third child, Steve Glennon said jokingly to us, "But then the kids will have you outnumbered!" My answer: When we had one kid, he had us outnumbered.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, our rule on numbers of kids vs. numbers of adults is the same as in baseball: a tie goes to the runner.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Probably would also have a pretty tough time of it if each of the women currently in childbearing years had ten children.

We can swap out internal combustion engines for nice sleds pulled by a ten of children though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And then you don't have to plow as much in the winter!

[lutin.livejournal.com]

And then the children won't be obese!

[ckd]

"On the average, people with 2.875 children have it the worst."

I think it can be generalized to "if you have a non-integer number of children (and I'm talking about neither shared custody nor amputation, not that those can't be problems too) you're probably going to have a tough time somehow". See also the character of .58 from The Phantom Tollbooth.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hee. Yes.

Seems disturbingly fitting

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051500875.html

Re: Seems disturbingly fitting

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Why not just treat women as though their bodies were worth taking care of regardless of age, fertility, or personal plans for children?

Pre-pregnant, my ass! Nevermind the voluntarily (or involuntarily) celibate among us.

I'd also like to know what counts as infant mortality and what the reasons really are (I'm guessing it has less to do with prenatal care than postnatal care.)

Re: Seems disturbingly fitting

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, and the "worth taking care of" part is only part of the problem, because taking care of some people and keeping their bodies reasonably hospitable for babies can be mutually exclusive goals. Already I've read three people on lj talking about how they have difficulty getting the meds they need for serious medical issues, because they're females of childbearing age, and the meds in question would harm a baby if baby there was. Bah.

I've also seen a long list of factors that might cause sperm-related birth defects, but of course we can't go into that....

Re: Seems disturbingly fitting

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

When I was in college, I thought I could always get healthier later, that only "old" people had been around long enough to really have significant health risks or problems. As a result, I didn't take very good care of myself (though if anyone had asked me, I would have SWORN I took *excellent* care of myself, and honestly, compared to most other young women I knew, I really DID).

Women SHOULD be treated as though their bodies are worth taking care of regardless of age, fertility, etc. - you're right! But, unfortunately, some of us - even the not so very young - don't always take our health risks as seriously as we should until we realize we are pregnant. I was guilty of it myself when I was in college, and I saw others guilty of it more often than not when I was on OB rotation. It's amazing there are so many healthy babies. People procrastinate taking care of their health problems, and there are lots of unplanned pregnancies out there. It's a real issue.

Re: Seems disturbingly fitting

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But as I said in my other comment to zalena, sometimes taking care of a person's health and making her body hospitable for a fetus or his body good at producing healthy sperm are goals that can't be pursued at the same time. For basically healthy, average people, the two goals often do coincide: eating a balanced diet, getting moderate amounts of exercise, etc.

But, for example, yesterday I was reading a friend-of-a-friend who was talking about how the only meds that worked for her epilepsy were very hard for her to get because she's of childbearing years, and they cause birth defects. Never mind that she's celibate: just in case. "You never know." Except that sometimes you do know, and what you know is that she is a person, too, and her actual health matters, too, not just the potential health of someone who might come along if she happens to stop being celibate and have a failure of birth controls.

Re: Seems disturbingly fitting

[one-undone.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why the medication is difficult for her to get simply because it's fetotoxic. Lots of medications are. Accutane is fetotoxic and you must sign a waiver and agree to be on 2 forms of birth control, but they'll still give it to you. It just requires your signature. Is your friend unable to obtain her medication? This is very concerning! Is it the insurance company or her doctor that's causing this difficulty? This sounds like an issue for the ethics board. Someone is crossing the line on her case and may need to be reported.

Re: Seems disturbingly fitting

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's a friend's-friend, so I don't know how much of a problem she's gone through in getting her medication, whether she can't get it or whether she's in waiting-hell. But I do know that some doctors do cross that line, and some patients are not in a situation where they can switch doctors.

It's not a culture I'd like to encourage, and I wish cousin Julie hadn't done it this way.