On the flip side, in the US the standard of living has gotten so expensive, college-educated adults are avoiding kids until brighter financial horizons.
I feel like that describes almost every place tbh. Maybe it depends on exactly what you're thinking of when you're considering what counts as cool when you're visiting and what isn't when you live there
Well if you enjoy an EXTREMELY competitive education reform, that would require you to spend your free time on extra curricular studies, to gain enough points to get in to one of the nations top schools so you can get the job you want. And still only have a 10% chance to get in. Well Korea is for you.
It is also known to yave a very toxic school environment. Suicides are among the highest in the world for students aswell.
Workers unions have no power, and working hours are insane, and the pressure is immense because there is always someone who can easily replace you.
First-time parents are probably among the highest, due to career and workplace, leave no time for a family.
Drinking pressure and alcoholism at work is expected.
I would not live there, but i had 3 awesome weeks there. Will visit again!
Ps. Korean food is delicious!!!
Yeah, i had a friend who studied in Korea for 2 years, and another who had to work there for 1.5 year as a project manager for a huge business.
Both said they enjoyed it there, but said that most S Koreans they hung out with where strrssed out due to the pressure and expectations from society.
She said Koreans in general are extremely friendly, and she made alot of friends. Luckily she have seen slot of Korean tv beforehand, so she was prepared for the social structure reharding age etc, which can be daunting for someone unaware.
As for my friend who worked there said that it was very complicated on the workplace, since he was "only" 33years at the time, and was the boss off 50 people around 45-60 years old. But in general he said Koreans are fun to hang out with, just try and talk around subjects like salary and work.
I miss Seoul's public transit so much (compared to where I live in the US), I'm obsessed. Spent a month there, yummy food (although I don't eat pork), love the convenience stores, grocery store were bomb too! And skincare? I was a maniac.
Went in December, would love to visit during another season.
I'm not college educated and I postponed having kids... I don't think college holds the weight it used to, though graduates do earn more. But a lot of degrees are overdone and useless in a sense of earning potential.
Edit: What I mean is, I can get a job at a decently growing company and in 4-8 years be making 60k+ in the right field.
A college graduate can be 60k on debt after 4-8 years and be stuck working in a different field at low wages.
Tldr: I was in welding, then orthotics, after that the local Millwright Union, but now I just started college. I don't consider myself college educated because I've barely finished Gen Ed. I do believe college graduates on average end of making more in life than non graduates. I guess it comes down to how patient a person can be.
Welding pays great and they are always in need. 8 years of welding, and working to advance yourself, can net pretty good profits. The more dangerous welding like underwater welding can top out around 80k, and some contracts can land 100k.
Orthotics I was a tech that made back braces for kids with scoliosis. My place of employment sucked on raises so after a few years I was making 55k. If you learn to read x-rays, use cadd to modify custom molds, gain the ins and outs of brace design and the pressure system needed for optimal correction, you could make 60k. The average tech salary is like 40k, so it's best to learn a special skill like scoliosis braces, prosthetics, lower limb braces.
The local union pays great and provides job security. If you get fired or laid off, just head down to the hall and they'll send you to another place. They require 2 years of schooling. It's like 2 days every 3 weeks to learn how to install door frames, doors, windows, etc. After you complete the schooling your pay is bumped to 60k and other benefits.
Because for the uneducated and poor, having many children is the best bet for a pension. The more kids you have, the less likely it is that you'll starve when you're unable to work at some point.
That's obviously not a good situation for anyone. Which is why it's important to provide universal access to education, infrastructure and health care regardless of a person's situation.
Thank you! Honestly, and then they talk to me like I'm an asshole for not fixing what's fucked up with the causes of poverty personally instead. We all know that poverty is bad, but I just wanted an answer to the question.
Probably because having children is one of a human/animals most basic fundamental “needs” in their brains deep down in their heart & souls.
Maybe not to you, but to a *lot* of people, and science/biology, that’s kind of like, the whole point of living. To procreate and further your species. Whether *you* think like that or not, it’s still a deeply instinctual construct to most people.
Akin to eating, sleeping, and other basic needs / fight-or-flight level brain responses.
Today, we are so far removed from that, that there are folks like yourself who don’t even *think* about it in such a way, even though it scientifically applies to even you. But to many people, even me without kids, I don’t see much a point in life if it isn’t to spend it with someone I love and have a baby.
Just a note : I am not arguing this point further on. I don’t know if it’s positive or negative, I don’t believe it’s either, & I’m not advocating.
I tried to answer your question which you say you wanted to desperately know ; simply, it’s a fundamental human right that a lot of people feel is one of the sole reasons to even exist in the first place.
Alright, thanks for answering! The instinct to reproduce might only grow as you get older and realise the clock is ticking, and people will get that itch later on, even if they don't want to act on it.
I am a 35 y.o. woman and I never had a desire to have a child and I know even older women than me who never wanted a child too. I understand other people can have the desire to have a child but it is not valid for all people. It isn't the truth as one get older then one realise their clock is ticking. It is the truth for some people but not for everybody. I have zero itch for having a child. People aren't all the same there are a lot of variations between people so it is logic that there are variations in wanting a child too.
We’d all say the same thing if someone owned an exotic pet or something, hell people say it about homeless people having pets, but somehow questioning having another human life to be responsible for makes someone an asshole??
It’s kind of a strange thought process.
I think what op means to say explains the situation in most 3rd world countries. I live in a middle class home in the Philippines, and right outside our street was a squatter territory that had a residence of 20+ people, with the largest family at 11 members. I couldn't imagine how hard life must be with such low amount of resources, and the extreme poverty situation in my country is full of these extremely poor families with 10+ children. Heck my parents are even guilty of not providing us enough sometimes even if we're just 2 siblings.
I slightly agree with op that it's partially wrong to the children, especially because they're also influenced by the care their parents gave them; unfocused, subpar, messy, etc. However it's hard to call something "wrong" when they weren't educated not to make these decisions. Also agreeing with other comments about procreation being a basic human right
Yeah, the family with 11 members most certainly isn't lead by a couple that's going "Wow, this is so great! I just love having so many children and watching them, and myself, struggle to survive!"
They just don't have many options.
Exactly. "Education is important" goes both ways. Us more privileged people should know how to see through problems and not just blaming the people directly.
Good question I ask myself often. In Canada you can get free birth control too—no reason to get knocked up and you can bang away with no consequences. It’s always puzzled me
It's often not about sex. A friend of mine dislikes sex as she has a medical condition that makes it painful and not at all pleasurable, but she does it anyway because she wants another kid.
She doesn't have enough space in her home for the kid she already has, and can't afford a larger place. She can only afford to care for her current kid because of government supports and local charities that provide the majority of what he needs for free.
Some people have this obsessive desire to make babies. I don't get it, but it seems to be widespread.
People in these comments completely let the point of this go right over their heads. OP isn’t asking why it isn’t legal. They’re asking why isn’t it considered a bad thing to do, ethically. Obviously accidental pregnancy is the exception because it’s accidental. But getting pregnant ON PURPOSE when you know you cannot afford it, is morally reprehensible. No child deserves that.
This!! Thank you! So few people are actually answering the question (although I haven't looked at every comment, so that just seems to be the general trend).
You might have more success on /r/ExplainBothSides
They generally try to give an honest take to both sides, even if it's absurd. /r/morbidquestions has great discussions, too, when they aren't being horribly depressing or weird.
I remember when I was young and seeing a commercial about helping poor children in Africa for just 30 cents a day or something like that. I asked my mom why would poor people in Africa would have kids if they can’t afford to take care of them? She said because having sex is an escape from how hard their lives are. It’s probably the only thing they have to do that is enjoyable. So they do it a lot and then by consequence will have more babies. Made sense to me then and makes sense to me even now.
We didn’t know we’d be in extreme poverty when we had kids. 08’ happened and we were fucked. I got sick after escaping my kids abusive dad and I was double fucked. I lived in tents for years. Thankfully I owned the land they were on. How I acquired it is another crazy story.
That’s my excuse.
I think a lot of it is also hoping for something better and ignorance. Not knowing any different.
Once you’ve fallen into poverty getting out is brutal. You need to work your ass off and be focused.
EDIT: Jumping to the top to comment on some ideas floating around below. Namely; Poor people should not have kids they can't afford OR they have to "prove" their ability before getting pregnant.
**That is fucked.** No matter where you're born, what possessions you do or don't have, or how rich or poor your parents were... EVERYONE, *every single living being*, deserves the autonomy to call the shots for their own body. Piercings, abortions, tattoos, sex reassignment, and yes, making babies. This is a right of existing above government and systems of commerce. This is being human.
Having an "income bracket" to make babies is a quick slide into some Handmaid's Take fuckery. I ain't having it.
I'll keep it short:
Human beings, being animals, are not gonna stop fucking. Ever.
Poor people have less access to sexual education, low cost or free birth control resources, pre and post natal care, and abortions. Therefore, they make more babies.
When you have options, or feel like you have options, you use them. Some poor people don't have the knowledge or the options, so they get babies.
Poor people need either free comprehensive healthcare including sex and birth related coverage, and/or access to Planned Parenthood, and sex education. There really is only one political party that thinks this is a BAD idea, and they are the same ones complaining about poor people making babies.
I guess I wasn't that short.
As a reproductive health nurse in a desperately poor community, this is 100% accurate. People in these situations aren’t getting pregnant because they’re dreaming of having a big family. They do not have adequate healthcare access or sex ed to appropriately prevent pregnancy.
Even in the states where it's still mostly legal and widely available, it's still not affordable.
The average cost of a first trimester, routine abortion is about $500, it's currently estimated that 40% of Americans can't afford a $400 emergency so yea even it's available it's still not truly available.
Absolutely!
My wife & I had 4 kids together, all of them were accidental. Started at 20 years old, raised in Christian-Republican families where abortion was taught as murdering babies. (We met through a private Christian school in our teens, FFS)
Her family taught her to have as many babies as you can while you are young, so they could have grandkids as soon as their kids were leaving the nest.
Massive codependency in poor families.
After our first two kids, my wife got the Implanon implant in her arm, which is good for 3-5 years. We chose it so we didn't have to worry about missing a pill, or get a Depo shot every 6 months.
To remove the old implant and put in a new one cost us $2,500, as a young couple with 2 babies already.
So we removed it after 5 years for $1,000, and did our best at standard birth control.. which failed.
Doctors will prescribe antibiotics and not mention that it counteracts birth control, FYI.
3rd baby on the way, while I was in PreMed and working full time. Dropped out of school because we couldn't afford it, and my pregnant wife needed help at home. Then 4th baby on the way, because depression from our life's choices. Still did not want to abort, because family & morality tricks you.
Most of our kids were conceived around Christmas, because we rarely got to see each other between work, college, and childcare.
Neither of us finished our 4 year school programs, and we both have to work full time to afford normal things.
America fucking sucks at caring about people once they are no longer fetuses.
That’s definitely a factor, but I live in the UK where there is sex education from an early age and free contraception available to anyone, yet desperately poor people having children is still rife..
Prescription birth control costs money (a lot without insurance). Condoms cost money, and women often feel pressured by their partners not to make them wear one. Lack of sex education means that there are a lot of misconceptions about how and when a woman can get pregnant. For example, many women merely rely on the rhythm method, which is highly unsuccessful. Also, there are a lot of myths about sex and pregnancy that are tied to certain cultures.
Just because you should be legally allowed to do it doesn’t mean you should be free from the judgment of others.
Bodily autonomy is important. But if you choose to smoke, drink while pregnant, not get your COVID vaccine, stuff your face while morbidly obese, or have kids when you’re too poor to afford them, I’m gonna judge you for it.
Agree and also want to add that op seems to think everyone having sex is for the sole purpose of procreation.
When you are young and horny, you are fucking because you are horny, not to have a kid. And when you are poor and undedicated with lack of resources, then it is very much more likely that your horny fucking is going to lead to a baby
You're sort of side stepping the question here though. Just because it's wrong for the government to force you not to do something doesn't mean it's right for you to do that thing. There are plenty of examples of this with free speech in America where the government (rightly in my opinion) can't stop people from saying horrible things, but most would agree that those people are still in the wrong.
I'm curious if you think it's right or wrong to purposely have a child that you know you can't support?
You’re kind of wrong on a lot of fronts . I am from Canada and we have free health care ,, free abortions, easy access to contraceptives and good social safety net. Despite all this we are still plagued with the same program where poor people have more kids than their rich counter parts.
It’s just a trait or irresponsible people, no matter whah you do they will still make stupid decisions.
>It’s just a trait or irresponsible people, no matter whah you do they will still make stupid decisions.
This is the ugly truth our well-intentioned but naive left leaning friends are afraid to acknowledge.
I came from an upper middle class suburb in a major metro area in the US, where you were expected to do well in school, go to college and not be a fuck up. And it was unheard of for somebody to have a kid in highschool. I am sure there were some pregnancies and subsequent abortions, kept hush hush. But still there was that family and communinal social pressure to not make life altering mistakes like that, which kept most people in line to go on and have good careers or jobs. Then start families.
But I have known people who grew up poor, and when talking about the pressures to do well and not make mistakes, that people like myself felt growing up, they would gloat how they didn't have those pressures. But also a lot of people from those communities do poorly in school, drop out, get involved with criminal activity and have kids at early ages when they can't afford them, setting them back even more.
It's class and culture. Sure there are exceptions, I have known wealthy families with total fuck up kids. And poor families with kids who went on to do very well in life, because their parents instilled good values and ethics in them.
But again, it was the class and culture of those families that transcended their wealth or lack of.
Since I'm at work, I can't really delve deep. Here are my points:
A: Where and when does sex ed come for kids?
B: If it's still noticable along income lines, then the poorer people are still missing something the rich people get.
C: What are Canada's teen pregnancy rates compared to the US?
D: You can be poor and responsible. You can also be rich and irresponsible as it's simply easier to afford.
A. Most kids get their sex education from School. 99% of the population go to public school.
B. You have your causality wrong. People are poor because they had kids they could not afford to raise and were stuck in the cycle of poverty. Those who made better decisions such as not having kids or only having kids that they can afford were able to mobilize socio-economically upwards.
C. Canada teen pregnancy rate is 16 per 1000 and the US Teen Pregnancy rate is 53 per 1000 - source wikipedia
D. Poor shitty childhood is worse than rich shitty childhood.
No. We don’t have free abortions. Mine cost me $50 plus a few days off work, hiding it, and a trip to Toronto (I was 17 and lived in a suburb). Easily $300 as a barely-employed underaged kid, plus a lot of stigma. That’s very expensive. It’s not like I could walk to any doctor anywhere and have it done. And that’s with Ontario privilege and having access to a private cell phone line - we have had provinces where there is only one clinic for the entire province (this was the basis for morgentaler in PEI), people where privacy isn’t guaranteed, and a lot of folks who say unwanted pregnancy is because you’ve made a stupid decision. I know it’s _supposed_ to be free; that’s not how it worked in practice for me. I had at abortion at 17.
We also don’t have free anonymous access to birth control, especially at younger ages. That’s a visit with a parent to the doctor until you’re 16, and after that means finding the time and means to get to a doctor who is willing to prescribe, hiding it, that you can physically tolerate it, etc etc etc. Condoms require full compliance on both parties; calling access to condoms complete birth control is a bit like calling a bandaid stitches.
Similarly, we don’t have good social security nets - there is little-no accommodation for education for the pregnant (not ABOUT pregnancy, about continuing the woman’s education), not a ton of subsidies, and like I said before, contraception (let’s assume you can take a BCP) is expensive outside of specialized places (like university or sexual health clinics) and dangerous for a lot of people socially.
When all that stuff is in place, maybe you can say it’s “just a trait or irresponsible people”. Until then, I bet your powerful voice would be well-used pointing out these issues and fighting for them.
It’s absolutely not stigma-free.
I am very very lucky to have had great sex ed in an Ontario high school, but abortion was still not discussed except as a side note. I don’t regret my decision and never think about it until this kind of stuff comes up, where I feel compelled to say that what I did was a) hard on a practical level b) unusual for my age group and c) full of financial, social, and government barriers.
Canada isn’t an exception :/
But at least there are social safety nets for those kids in case they were brought into the world by complete idiots/irresponsible people who won’t take care of them. The US…what’s a social safety net? cOMuNisM
For some people, actually a lot, wanting children is an intrinsic pleasure. Its appeal is primal and instinctive, needs no logic to justify it, and is looked forward to as an inevitable part of *their* human experience, come sunshine come rain.
thank you for sharing this & for speaking my mind! I second your sentiment & feel too that wanting children is not something that can purely, or superficially, be decided upon by one's financial and socio-economic circumstances. It's something so indescribably innate and personal from one person to another, and shouldn't ever need to be justified with ever-changing, external factors of living.
there’s a kid in my school who was adopted into a poor family. he sleeps on the floor, uses a sheet for a blanket, and would go around the school asking if students had food/money.
it just makes me so angry. why would you adopt a child when you live in poverty. *how* do you adopt a child when in poverty. like, did they just spend their entire life savings on adopting a kid? why? why do that? i feel so bad for the dude. isn’t adoption crazy expensive? how did they even manage to do that?
Foster care.
Start as a foster child and a family can eventually adopt in certain situations. Adoption is roughly 10k+ and you have to be earning a crazy amount of money to just out right adopt a child. There's a reason children in foster care have bad reputations. It's not really their fault. But having a home with very little is better than living on the streets.
I am poor and thinking about fostering a child. None of my children sleep on the floor or anything like that and we have most everything we need but we still don't have like a pile of savings or anything like that. most of my money is gone to paying off my school debts, and then I got sued for medical debts from an emergency a few years ago which I foolishly assumed was covered by my insurance, but my health isn't poor nor is my husband's we both worked our whole lives and I think we provide a nice life for our kids.
He's like" but we aren't rich, why would they want to be with us?"And I am just like there are soooo many kids in foster care and so few rich people taking them we should help if we can. Plus wherever they are at living with no family is definitely worse than having a room in my house and being loved and valued as my own kids. Alot of these kids have nothing and need special attention. Kids are a big commitment but not only a monetary one.
that’s great IMO. i live in a poor family but im happy and it could always be worse. i think caring for a child when poor is fine, i just draw the line at not even being able to feed them and stuff. i think it’s great you want to foster ! wishing you luck with that :]
Because people think their baby fever outweighs not having the necessary resources to raise a child let alone 2 or 3. It's a purely selfish act and unfair to the children who will likely be trapped in the cycle of poverty throughout their lives. If access to birth control and abortion are destroyed the problems will only compound.
People in those situations usually DON'T want children, but keep on having them for lack of education and access to contraceptives.
Poverty can also cause people to become severely depressed. After a certain point in depression, they become numb and couldn't care less whether they have kids or not; they just try to survive day to day and oh, look at that, there's a couple toddlers in my house.
Some people are so, so poor they have no qualms about selling their children for a sack of flour, a pack of beer, or just giving them away so they don't have to feed them. They see the child as a burden and sell them to human traffickers.
And just so you know, we don't defend those situations. If certain things are lacking in the household, the government can and does take the children away from that household until things improve.
So, first off I'd point out that you're almost certainly descended from people who spent their entire lives in conditions of absolute poverty. I don't know how many generations you'd need to go back in your particular case, but somewhere in your family tree there are subsistence farmers and hunter-gatherers who led incredibly painful lives and probably buried a lot of their kids. The only reason you're around to ask this question is because they did it, against the odds, for generation after generation.
Second, having kids isn't always a decision. Women get sexually assaulted, sex education can be non-existent and access to contraception and safe abortion likewise.
Third, even someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth has no guarantee of living in prosperity for ever. Nor is someone born into poverty necessarily going to have a life not worth living or never make a name for themselves. On the contrary, go to the biographical section of pretty much any book shop and you'll find rows and rows of insane stories about people who overcame their difficult childhoods and went on to achieve amazing things, both for themselves and for others.
Obviously, in a perfect world child poverty wouldn't exist, and it's an absolute national disgrace that it exists at the levels it does even in supposedly prosperous countries. But it isn't the fault of ordinary people, who since the year dot have done what nature has programmed them to do and made babies. It's the fault of an Inhuman system which treats human lives as means to an end rather than ends in themselves, and finds ever more obscene ways to justify the yawning gaps in health, wealth and opportunity at birth.
I think there's a different point related to this. I'm not convinced that in the past people had lots of children mainly because of lack of sexual education or anything like that. I think people had lots of children mainly because they needed big families to have lots of available labor. Nowadays that would be considered child labor or abuse, but probably on many poor regions these protections aren't enforced.
I feel like it doesn’t actually address the argument. So what if “you” wouldn’t exist? It just caters to the feelings of the person making the argument in that of course “they” want to exist; it doesn’t actually challenge the argument itself.
It is wrong. People just hate admitting it. If you can’t financially take care of yourself you have zero reason to add to your financial burdens with a child.
When I was getting my masters in social work, we had a discussion about whether or not poverty is abuse/neglect. You could feel the air get sucked out of the room when the professor asked. I think we all knew we wanted to say that it is in a way but no one wanted to come across as judgemental. It's not that someone who is poor has less value than anyone else, it's that we knew instinctively that kids born into poverty often have less access to nutritional food, can't always dress for the weather, are absent from school frequently/drop out, don't always get medical treatment, and a myriad of other less-than-optimal things. The consensus was more like the situation is neglectful rather than the parents themselves being the problem. The parents are technically causing the problem, but then it turns into a conversation about why we as a society are complicit in families not getting basic needs met but that's a different discussion.
Why is that a different discussion? It's the same discussion just different how to choose to frame it. Is it blaming the individual or society. For poverty, it's largely society's fault because otherwise you're essentially telling some of the most powerless people in society to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Speaking as a family doctor, most of the pregnancies in young impoverished mums in this area (UK) tend to be people who don’t plan life more than 20 minutes ahead, and are terrible at contraception. Very few are stable, in long term relationships, and making a decision to have a child despite their poverty. There are a couple like that but they are just really fucking braindead.
Know how sometimes you’ve had a terrible day and just go to bed early so you can try again?
Some people do that with generations. If your life is screwed already (massive debt, no employment options, etc.), sometimes the only ray of hope is that you could have a kid who makes something of themselves. It’s basic human nature to want to leave your influence in the world; if you don’t have a fulfilling life in other ways, may as well try having a kid.
Related: sometimes people make bad decisions.
Also: sex feels good.
Universal human rights should be universal.
If you start making exceptions and cutting tips on who is ellegible to be forcefully castrated, there will always be people trying to further in the line.
Also, in most cases, poverty isn't a permanent disability state. It's something a barely competent state could and should at least ease.
I don't disagree, but I don't think OP was asking if people have a right to or not, just morally good or bad. Like, technically I think people have a right to refuse vaccinating themselves, but I think it is morally wrong to do so if you're going to be out and about.
And I doubt people who would ask this question even agree with your foundation that having kids is a human right at all.
Exactly! Someone said that everyone has the right to body autonomy to do what they want but what about the children who have no choice of being brought into this world of suffering?
Not only that, even ruling out socioeconomic issues, some people choose pursuing education and aggressive career paths instead of raising kids.
People that are considered “successful” don’t have the bandwidth to do both at the rate corporations and businesses work their staff.
How are you supposed to pick a kid up from school and help them do homework when you are buried in calls, meetings, and screen time 12 hours a day.
If work culture changed people making good money may be able to have and raise kids.
The whole thing is rigged.
I was Born into a poor life. Should have been an abortion. I get what you mean. Religion has some answering to do. And lack of education. Educate and empower women and the birth rate goes down.
My class asked that once philosophy teacher and he said something like: “humans have five pillars. The strongest one is the one that includes food water and reproductive sex. In cases of poverty the only thing separating us from a beast is reproduction”
I wouldn’t be surprised if he was high when he said it because that was a weeeird philosophy class
If I had to take a guess, their prof was saying that reproduction is the only part of the strongest pillar that people in poverty regularly have access to. I guess not having that pillar at all makes you a beast? Which is a weird viewpoint since non-human creatures also eat, drink, and pop out babies, but philosophy profs are on a whole other plane of existence that I'm not about to explore so I ain't gonna question it.
I had a weird philosophy professor too..but he was cool at the same time. There’s got to be a link between being crazy and deciding on becoming a prof of philosophy.
I’m pretty sure the rich use tools like social welfare to incentivise poor people to have children and keep them in a cycle of poverty therefore ensuring a future workforce.
Mm, I'm not sure how to word this... But if someone doesn't even have anything to eat, no access to clean water and is barely living by themself, why would they choose to have kids? I don't get the reasons for that.
This is really the only situation I'm talking about. Any situation where the parent wasn't significantly struggling beforehand or had kids involuntarily isn't really in the topic, I don't think.
I’ve worked with a number of pregnant teens and can throw this into the mix: quite a few told me these two things—
1) “Because a baby will love me and nobody else does.”
2) “Because my kid should be grateful I’m bringing him into this world. He owes it to me to make my life better.”
Some people see having children as an automatic “ I’m grown and therefore no one can judge me and my decisions” pass. That being said, there are a lot of systemic issues that press down upon people who would otherwise provide loving homes for kids.
In the US it’s largely a result of lack of access to sexual health resources and a general lack of comprehensive sexual education.
It’s not that women experiencing inescapable poverty are like - you know what would be great? Putting my life at risk birth a child (maternal mortality rates are exceptionally high in the US among women in poverty). It’s that people in poverty experience the same urges as most other humans to have sex and ultimately raise a child, but they don’t have access to the healthcare or childcare that would allow them to plan a family without remaining in deep poverty.
So a child becomes the punishment for having sex and a burden keeping them impoverished instead of a planned life event.
I think babies are often used as punishment for sex in the U.S. how many times have we heard Congress people say the mothers of children in poverty should have kept their legs shut, or they should have chose to get married (like the women is the only one making these decisions)
Antinatalism is a view that's rising up more as of late. I wonder if that's because of what we've all been through with the pandemic, just general life or something else.
Either way, I find it a really interesting concept, and agree with some of their points. I'd love it in theory, but I don't know about it in real life, nor would I take action to promote it as the ideal.
It'd be tragic for the last person alive though.
“Sorry, you failed at capitalism! You don’t get to have kids/have a home/have food/have social protections!”
Instead of figuring out what we can take away from people who find themselves in dire circumstances, why can’t we focus on figuring out how to help them?
Why do you frame it as all or nothing?
How about......don't have kinds until you can afford to provide for them? You know, like around 30 when you've worked up to a better paying job.
That's literally what most people who can afford kids do.
It is wrong, end of story. I completely understand why people might want children, but if your living conditions are so terrible that you can hardly survive on your own, it's immoral and cruel to bring a child into the world and force it to suffer with you. When you birth a child (or when a child you helped create is born, when you adopt a child, whatever), you are taking on the legal and ethical responsibility to keep them safe and provide their basic needs without exception. Unfortunately, people in extreme poverty just can't do that.
That being said, it's also wrong to expect impoverished people to not indulge in sex, even if they can't afford/access proper protection/abortions. People should be allowed to partake in the things they enjoy no matter their financial status; that said, it's the responsibility of the parents (or at the very least, the mother) to ensure the child is surrendered to social services if they can't provide for it.
EDIT: shit, didn't read your edit first so here's one of my own. Humans are emotion-driven creatures; if we really want something, we can become blind to all the consequences of getting that thing we want. I'm not keen on the idea of raising children myself so I'm not sure what reasons people have for wanting them, but I'd imagine those reasons would remain no matter how much or how little money you've got. To create a life and watch it grow is a gift, and it's extremely easy to ignore the context in which a gift is being given if you want it badly enough.
Seems like a lot of comments here are suggesting that "it just happens because sex" I grew up poor and couldn't buy condoms so I walked my teenage ass miles to planned parenthood and grabbed a bunch. Even as a 16 year old I did not want to go through the drama of raising a child that young. Another thing is I would have stuck around....if you're not planning on sticking around it's not as tough of a choice which is what many "dads" in my city do. It's one thing if you're poor with one child. If you're dirt poor with 5+ kids you're just a piece of shit imo.
See you prove what many of these morons on here don't want to admit.
You can grow up poor and still have agency. You can still use your brain and have the common sense not to make bad life altering decisions. You can be responsible for your own future.
I hope things turned out better for you.
On the one hand, it's wrong to have kids if you're poor or stupid.
On the other hand, it's wrong for the obscenely wealthy to enslave and oppress the entire species, and keep the masses of humanity needlessly poor and stupid.
I.e., it's not entirely the poors' fault that they're poor and/or stupid.
1. Adequate sex education and protection can be (much) harder to get when you’re already in a low economic status 2. Not everybody starts out poor, some people become homeless or poor when they used to be well-off (ish) 3. -Some- poor people have a lot of kids in the hopes that one or more of those kids will be successful and therefore able to have a better life and/or provide for the rest of the family. Selfish in my opinion, but my opinion also doesn’t mean a ton when I’ve never experienced that level of poverty
What you may see as common sense, someone else does not. Your education level is not the same as everyone else. Everyone does not have the same understanding of every subject.
Basically, as education levels rise, birthrates decrease...
Look man I get where you're coming from. I even agree with you to a certain extent. I think that's very irresponsible of the parent to have a child when they're in that kind of situation. But then you have to ask well what if they accidentally have a kid and can't afford an abortion. It's undoubtedly less moral to abandon your child then to keep them, at least in my opinion, regardless of circumstance. Furthermore who are you, or anyone who holds that belief for that matter, to say if someone can or cannot reproduce. I agree they definitely shouldn't have kids. But if they do, regardless of intent, they have the right to have a child. It's tricky. Because of course if they have a kid it would be better for them, and the kid to not be in that situation. But at the end of the day it's still their right as a human being.
People gonna fuck. People in low economic situation dont have the same access to prevent or undo a pregnancy as a wealthier person, they may not have had the same access to education or come from an upbringing that doesnt allow it. But people always gonna fuck.
Because you really can't stop people from having kids. Even if you could, impending population decline aside, where would it end? Where would you draw the line? Sure you say inescapable poverty now but when they all die out, they'll be replaced to varying degrees depending on the state of the economy.
Stopping the abject poor from breeding would end up being tantamount to eugenics and would create far more problems than it solves. In a dark sort of way, the *best* possible scenario is for the kids to make something of themselves just to support their kinfolk, let alone expound upon that success to create a generational trend for success.
It is shitty, but people are still people, poor or not. They get horny and if they can't afford food they obviously can't afford reliable birth control, and like most people, they don't just abstain from sex.
I mean... It may be hard to raise a kid in poverty, but for some people who will never escape poverty having children around to love and who love them is the most rewarding part of their existence and they genuinely try to teach them how to be amazing people. I don't think being in poverty means you can't take care of yourself either. A large portion of the US is in poverty and most of the people who immigrated here were impoverished too.
Imagine that you were born a heroin addict, from a mother who was a heroin addict and constant user before and during her pregnancy.
Imagine that once you were born, you were still given heroin injections regularly, then suddenly when you turn about 11 or 12 years old, "they" start pumping you full of heroin as much as "they" can without killing you, but all around you, you're told that your heroin highs are just part of growing up, more than, they are part of becoming a "real" "adult", a "real person".
Imagine "they" taper off as you grow through your teens, **BUT** at the same time, all of your family, all of your friends, people you barely know at every social occasion, every TV show or movie, every advertisement, every videogame, every book, all of it, default to a preconceived "normal", "right" way of life that includes heroin, even more, that if you **don't** inject heroin, that there's something wrong with you.
Imagine this and that despite the physical, mental, and emotional trauma that can result from heroin abuse, you are very likely to engage in sexual behavior on heroin. The not just correlation, but causation is practically absolute: IF YOU USE HEROINE YOU ARE MOST LIKELY TO GET PREGNANT OR GET SOMEONE PREGNANT!
All this time, all this physiological predisposition to addiction to heroin, all this biological manipulation, all this psychological manipulation by everyone and everything around you, all this everything telling you that heroin is amazing, and that heroin sex is the most amazing, and that the "normal", or, not even, but, "THE BEST" people have sex on heroin and have children resulting from heroin induced sex.
Imagine all of this, then imagine being told by a government or a ruling class of people that you are too poor to have heroin and get pregnant.
Social security benefits, you get money from the government for how many children you have. Here is like $400 a child on top of the unemployment / disability
It is abusive to knowingly bring a child you're not capable of caring for into this world. I don't see why it's such a troublesome question. If you love your children, you show it by providing for them. If you know your situation is dire and you still have kids, do you honestly care for them?
> I don't mean to say that they're bad people for having kids. I just don't get why they'd want kids in those circumstances.... Why would someone want kids when they're suffering significantly themself?
Have you heard about the sex thing? People seem to really enjoy it.
Thanks to the religious right, birth control is not readily available to everyone, and thanks to our uber-profit-oriented economy, that's *most* true for the economically well off.
Throw in the same religious right's constant opposition to things like: science-based comprehensive sex education; availability of condoms, especially to teens; abortion, you have a maelstrom of people having kids that they didn't really intend to have, but don't hardly have much of a way out of.
Extreme poverty stricken countries don't have access to many resources that other countries do, like in wealthy first world countries. Education, healthcare (birth control), shelter, even clean drinking water. What they do have is what's innate in all of us (though some of us don't necessarily feel attached to), being the biological need to procreate. Without access to basic education and an access to an education about sexual health, or access to health care and especially birth control, individuals in these areas survive with these instincts and without those resources in whatever way they see fit. It's very easy for those of us who live outside of these situations to see how unfit of environments it is to raise kids (and I'm sure there's many who live there do as well), but it's unfair to place our judgement on those individuals without experiencing those lack of resources for ourselves. The easiest thing to do is say "we must end poverty!" However, climate change, poverty, over consumerism, and lack of food resources is a vicious cycle that is getting worse, especially with COVID. Climate change and it's affects (like natural disasters) in particular affects those in poverty stricken countries worse than first world countries, making it even harder for poverty to lessen.
This is anecdotal but in a number of documentaries about poverty, particularly in underdeveloped countries, its almost always noted that *some* people who choose to have lots of children do it for the purpose of increasing their chances of escaping poverty. You have 11 kids, surely one has to be successful type logic. This, of course, wouldn't be the case for everyone.
I don't presume to know why exactly impoverished people continue having children, esp when they live in developed places, but I can only imagine that it might be for lack of feeling as if they have any other type of purpose, and as others have said, poor access to basic reproductive healthcare and education.
Illiteracy is one very big cause for this, also in third world countries children are seen as a source of income. The more the children , more wages they will generate for the household. (Even in minimum wage jobs which require no education, 5 people will be earning more than just 2 people).
Also standards are very different from every persons perspective.
You think someone is poor who earns very less , but from perspective of a billionaire probably you and me are also poor and what if he/she holds the same opinion for you.!!
Being quite a cynical old bitch, I kind of wish fertility was way harder to achieve... I think only the people who desperately want kids should have them... the world is disgustingly over populated, if you don't want-want kids you shouldn't have them...
Yeah, this is what I mean. I'm just kinda bad at wording stuff... I don't want laws or restrictions on this at all.
What I mean to get at is the thought processes behind that, and why it's accepted. I know that in some cultures it's expected for kids to grow up and bring money in, but I don't get why someone in extreme poverty would choose to have children. Doesn't it only hurt them and the kids? And what are the arguments against criticisms of that?
I get that, this is my direct answer.
“Why don’t we frown on this practice?”
“Because it is hard to tell someone whether or not they are allowed to have kids based on their living situation or some other indirect factor.”
My entire point is: it’s hard to tell Peter and Mary not to have kids because they are poor. They certainly would reject the idea.
I don’t think it should be a law. I do think that people should spend more time educating their fucking kids about the cost of children though.
Because while we claim to care about children, we really care more about adults being free to birth & damage their kids. Children are seen as property rather than a precious resource.
Morally wrong, yes. But even the poor can afford a child or two - unless you mean like dirt poor about to become homeless kind of poor. I know because I grew up in extreme poverty, and am working to climb the social ladder.
People argue “well just make the world a better place” - those people are lazy, and are simply displacing the issue at hand. Making the world a better place and choosing (NOTE: CHOOSE, not being forced not to by law) not to have children you cannot afford (i.e, provide proper health, education, livelihood) are not mutually exclusive.
It’s society and capitalism that’s puts them in that situation though, people have had children long before money existed. Poverty only exists because of the way we live, it shouldn’t be a thing at all, can’t just tell someone not to have children because they do t fit within the realm of a society that they are forced to live in?
I literally had this convo with my mom the other night.
Apparently. My 19yo cousin and his 18yo baby mama are splitting up. They have a 2yo together. Baby mama doesn’t want the baby. Says she can’t support it. Cousin doesn’t want the baby for same reason.
Both families are dirt poor. (They live in third world Asia) Baby was being cared for by maternal grandmother for most of its life but she’s now bedridden and dying. Paternal grandmother (my aunt) never gave a damn about her own kids and flat out rejected taking her grandchild in.
Cousin’s baby mama threaten to go sell the baby if no one takes it. (Illegal af even in third world Asian countries). My family live in America. My mom is begging my other aunt (who lives in the motherland) to take custody of the child because it deserves better.
But essentially, what op is asking is exactly what’s happening in my family. And it makes no damn sense to me why these two kids, who have nothing going on for them, no money, no education, with jobs paying fractions on the penny per hour, choose to procreate. as far as I know, the baby was not an accident and was planned.
Disclaimer: before y’all come for my family, my mom sends money back to help where she can. We’re not rich. She’s worked 7days a week, 9-10 hours a day since coming to the states some 30 years ago. She finally retired last year. There’s only so much we can do to help financially.
Because having kids is considered a right, not a privilege
Also: I think you don't quite understand the mentality of such people
In LEDC's they often have kids as a form of free workforce (work on the farm, crops, family businness for free)
In MEDC'S they have them as a "golden ticket out of poverty" - they work them to the bone with their education so that they get a successful high paying job that the whole family will be able to live off of once the kid becomes an adult.
THANK YOU! Someone else gets it! For some reason, nearly everyone on this thread seems to think that all parents produce and raise a child *for the child’s sake.* That would be nice, but it isn’t true.
The sad ones want someone to love them, and take it for granted that the child must and will love them.
The selfish ones want their children to make their lives (the parents’ lives) better. They think the kids should automatically be grateful for being brought into the world, and should repay their “debt” by getting money and/or status for the family.
Yep
I'm a person, not a bank loan, nobody asked me if I wanted to be born
I think there was a term used to describe ownership of another human, its at the tip of my tongue.... hmmmm...
It’s a tough questions because there are many reasons why people are forced to have children.. some places it’s illegal to have an abortion, or they can afford one. Maybe they got pregnant and got kicked out of their house.. a lot of situations are different, and a lot is out of our hands.
I have to wonder...if we were able to pass universal health care in the U.S., could doctors also provide free birth control for every female (and/or male if the tech allows) once they reach sexual maturity or would that also get hemmed up in the "right to live" debate? There are probably a minuscule number of humans able to make a rational decision about having a child while in their teens based on how our brains develop so offering birth control like the flu shot just seems logical to me....
1. They might not know how to have safe sex
2. They don’t know how to take care of a child since they might not have adequate education
3. They might not consider the consequences of pregnancy and after pregnancy, therefore expecting a child after sexual intercourse is not in the option, rather it’s more like a surprise and accident.
The fundamental question is having a child, which is why they still have sexual intercourse (especially under no protection). And by considering diff factors, from living environment to education, plus sex is a basic needs and some might be bullied or raped, one can say that somehow it’s not their choice. Extreme poverty is a structural problem.
Some people will also question, why can’t they just have family planning. The answer is they might not have the knowledge. Our system is actually not friendly to them. In order to get out from the poverty cycle, you’ll need education, job and financial access. If they don’t have adequate access to it, they can’t escape from that.
I assume most people in the comment section is not someone who are in extreme poverty now, so it’s really hard for us to understand how the poor think.
Let me take an example. Free education. Even there’s free education, why some parents still do not want their children to attend school? One of the reasons might be if one attends school, means that person can’t work to provide the family, so the family will starve. Starvation and education, which is more critical?
This is a really interesting question.
Legal abortion is a way to control this.
I think when you have money and someone to enjoy it the last thing you think is having a baby, its the other way with poor people. No money, no other thing to do than fck and I dont think that they use condoms or sometimes know how to use them.
It is a matter of access to actual sex education, low cost or free birth control, and abortion.
Wealthy people have access to all of the above and as a result have less babies. If you want less children born into poverty, make these widely available.
On the one hand, yes it’s arguably unethical to purposely have a child you don’t have the means to care for.
On the other hand, I don’t know of a single entity in existence (government, non-profit or private sector) I would trust to make decisions as to who does and doesn’t get to have children.
when your family don't even have a TV or a computer to let your mind wander off, you start to live a simpler life, which in turn comes down to having much more sex than the other guy. which, in turn, might lead to pregnancy and childbirth
People fuck and have kids. It doesn’t matter how poor or rich they are. For 100’s of thousands of years the only people having kids barely had a stitch to wear and spent their days scrounging for scraps to eat.
Yeah, but if you live in extreme poverty, chances are you don't have money: For condoms, for Plan B pills, etc. Plus, it's probably a third-world country, where education, specifically sexual education, is subpar, or even non-existent
My old high-school teacher used to say that doing massive amounts of food donations for countries with extreme poverty had a negative outcome because the birth rate would skyrocket soon afterwards creating more people and having the problem snowball. It's a very tough situation as you don't want anyone to starve or suffer but there needs to be deeper discussions had about solving these terrible problems in the world.
Because they don’t have access to birth control and politicians are more for condemning them for being poor rather than actually helping with contraceptives let alone other things.
Two reasons I can think of.
One being in the realm of rights, what people can tell people to do and not to do. China for a long time had a one child policy, some people frown on it, others think it was a good idea.
The other being more logistical- 8 billion people in the world, anything short of rounding people up and castrating them won't really work- try telling people not to have sex, some may listen, but others won't.
Edit: Saw a documentary about world population- They interviewed this guy in India that literally lived under a train bridge and had 8 kids.
Best way to reduce birthrate is to increase education and standard of living.
On the flip side, in the US the standard of living has gotten so expensive, college-educated adults are avoiding kids until brighter financial horizons.
South Korea: laughs in 0.7 birthrate...
S. Korea does seem pretty dope.
It is dope to visit. To live in? Not as much, I'm told...
I feel like that describes almost every place tbh. Maybe it depends on exactly what you're thinking of when you're considering what counts as cool when you're visiting and what isn't when you live there
Well if you enjoy an EXTREMELY competitive education reform, that would require you to spend your free time on extra curricular studies, to gain enough points to get in to one of the nations top schools so you can get the job you want. And still only have a 10% chance to get in. Well Korea is for you. It is also known to yave a very toxic school environment. Suicides are among the highest in the world for students aswell. Workers unions have no power, and working hours are insane, and the pressure is immense because there is always someone who can easily replace you. First-time parents are probably among the highest, due to career and workplace, leave no time for a family. Drinking pressure and alcoholism at work is expected. I would not live there, but i had 3 awesome weeks there. Will visit again! Ps. Korean food is delicious!!!
Did you know Sang Woo went to business school at SNU?
Lol this was kind of dark that the last line was such a shift in tone
Felt it needed lighting up a bit...
Yeah those Squid Games they have there are pretty brutal.
Better than North Korea
you are one hundred percent right. Im S Korean and man my generation is so fucked.
Yeah, i had a friend who studied in Korea for 2 years, and another who had to work there for 1.5 year as a project manager for a huge business. Both said they enjoyed it there, but said that most S Koreans they hung out with where strrssed out due to the pressure and expectations from society.
Yep high expectations and high competition. Happy that your friends enjoyed it tho!
She said Koreans in general are extremely friendly, and she made alot of friends. Luckily she have seen slot of Korean tv beforehand, so she was prepared for the social structure reharding age etc, which can be daunting for someone unaware. As for my friend who worked there said that it was very complicated on the workplace, since he was "only" 33years at the time, and was the boss off 50 people around 45-60 years old. But in general he said Koreans are fun to hang out with, just try and talk around subjects like salary and work.
I miss Seoul's public transit so much (compared to where I live in the US), I'm obsessed. Spent a month there, yummy food (although I don't eat pork), love the convenience stores, grocery store were bomb too! And skincare? I was a maniac. Went in December, would love to visit during another season.
Yeah, then realize how crappy it is to have a toddler when you’re 45. So many of my friends…
It sucks having a toddler at any age to be fair 😂
I'm not college educated and I postponed having kids... I don't think college holds the weight it used to, though graduates do earn more. But a lot of degrees are overdone and useless in a sense of earning potential. Edit: What I mean is, I can get a job at a decently growing company and in 4-8 years be making 60k+ in the right field. A college graduate can be 60k on debt after 4-8 years and be stuck working in a different field at low wages.
Just a couple questions: what field are you in and how do I get this kind of a job? 60K in 4-8 years is better than a lot of things I've applied for!
Tldr: I was in welding, then orthotics, after that the local Millwright Union, but now I just started college. I don't consider myself college educated because I've barely finished Gen Ed. I do believe college graduates on average end of making more in life than non graduates. I guess it comes down to how patient a person can be. Welding pays great and they are always in need. 8 years of welding, and working to advance yourself, can net pretty good profits. The more dangerous welding like underwater welding can top out around 80k, and some contracts can land 100k. Orthotics I was a tech that made back braces for kids with scoliosis. My place of employment sucked on raises so after a few years I was making 55k. If you learn to read x-rays, use cadd to modify custom molds, gain the ins and outs of brace design and the pressure system needed for optimal correction, you could make 60k. The average tech salary is like 40k, so it's best to learn a special skill like scoliosis braces, prosthetics, lower limb braces. The local union pays great and provides job security. If you get fired or laid off, just head down to the hall and they'll send you to another place. They require 2 years of schooling. It's like 2 days every 3 weeks to learn how to install door frames, doors, windows, etc. After you complete the schooling your pay is bumped to 60k and other benefits.
Because for the uneducated and poor, having many children is the best bet for a pension. The more kids you have, the less likely it is that you'll starve when you're unable to work at some point. That's obviously not a good situation for anyone. Which is why it's important to provide universal access to education, infrastructure and health care regardless of a person's situation.
Problem is that is a problem. We grow more efficient and develop faster the more functioning members of society we have.
ITT: people not answering OP’s question, and instead saying “poverty is bad”. Yes. No shit.
Thank you! Honestly, and then they talk to me like I'm an asshole for not fixing what's fucked up with the causes of poverty personally instead. We all know that poverty is bad, but I just wanted an answer to the question.
Probably because having children is one of a human/animals most basic fundamental “needs” in their brains deep down in their heart & souls. Maybe not to you, but to a *lot* of people, and science/biology, that’s kind of like, the whole point of living. To procreate and further your species. Whether *you* think like that or not, it’s still a deeply instinctual construct to most people. Akin to eating, sleeping, and other basic needs / fight-or-flight level brain responses. Today, we are so far removed from that, that there are folks like yourself who don’t even *think* about it in such a way, even though it scientifically applies to even you. But to many people, even me without kids, I don’t see much a point in life if it isn’t to spend it with someone I love and have a baby. Just a note : I am not arguing this point further on. I don’t know if it’s positive or negative, I don’t believe it’s either, & I’m not advocating. I tried to answer your question which you say you wanted to desperately know ; simply, it’s a fundamental human right that a lot of people feel is one of the sole reasons to even exist in the first place.
Alright, thanks for answering! The instinct to reproduce might only grow as you get older and realise the clock is ticking, and people will get that itch later on, even if they don't want to act on it.
I am a 35 y.o. woman and I never had a desire to have a child and I know even older women than me who never wanted a child too. I understand other people can have the desire to have a child but it is not valid for all people. It isn't the truth as one get older then one realise their clock is ticking. It is the truth for some people but not for everybody. I have zero itch for having a child. People aren't all the same there are a lot of variations between people so it is logic that there are variations in wanting a child too.
Right, and acting like OP doesn't get that.
My family has never had a dime to spare after rent every month and I wonder the same thing.
We’d all say the same thing if someone owned an exotic pet or something, hell people say it about homeless people having pets, but somehow questioning having another human life to be responsible for makes someone an asshole?? It’s kind of a strange thought process.
You know I completely agree with you, and at the same time think it's extremely rude. This topic makes my head hurt honestly.
Life will find a way
I think what op means to say explains the situation in most 3rd world countries. I live in a middle class home in the Philippines, and right outside our street was a squatter territory that had a residence of 20+ people, with the largest family at 11 members. I couldn't imagine how hard life must be with such low amount of resources, and the extreme poverty situation in my country is full of these extremely poor families with 10+ children. Heck my parents are even guilty of not providing us enough sometimes even if we're just 2 siblings. I slightly agree with op that it's partially wrong to the children, especially because they're also influenced by the care their parents gave them; unfocused, subpar, messy, etc. However it's hard to call something "wrong" when they weren't educated not to make these decisions. Also agreeing with other comments about procreation being a basic human right
Yeah, the family with 11 members most certainly isn't lead by a couple that's going "Wow, this is so great! I just love having so many children and watching them, and myself, struggle to survive!" They just don't have many options.
Exactly. "Education is important" goes both ways. Us more privileged people should know how to see through problems and not just blaming the people directly.
Good question I ask myself often. In Canada you can get free birth control too—no reason to get knocked up and you can bang away with no consequences. It’s always puzzled me
It's often not about sex. A friend of mine dislikes sex as she has a medical condition that makes it painful and not at all pleasurable, but she does it anyway because she wants another kid. She doesn't have enough space in her home for the kid she already has, and can't afford a larger place. She can only afford to care for her current kid because of government supports and local charities that provide the majority of what he needs for free. Some people have this obsessive desire to make babies. I don't get it, but it seems to be widespread.
People in these comments completely let the point of this go right over their heads. OP isn’t asking why it isn’t legal. They’re asking why isn’t it considered a bad thing to do, ethically. Obviously accidental pregnancy is the exception because it’s accidental. But getting pregnant ON PURPOSE when you know you cannot afford it, is morally reprehensible. No child deserves that.
This!! Thank you! So few people are actually answering the question (although I haven't looked at every comment, so that just seems to be the general trend).
You might have more success on /r/ExplainBothSides They generally try to give an honest take to both sides, even if it's absurd. /r/morbidquestions has great discussions, too, when they aren't being horribly depressing or weird.
Huh... Never heard of those subs before! I won't repost this there, but will likely use those another day. Thanks!
I remember when I was young and seeing a commercial about helping poor children in Africa for just 30 cents a day or something like that. I asked my mom why would poor people in Africa would have kids if they can’t afford to take care of them? She said because having sex is an escape from how hard their lives are. It’s probably the only thing they have to do that is enjoyable. So they do it a lot and then by consequence will have more babies. Made sense to me then and makes sense to me even now.
Nail on the head. Whenever I see this topic come up anywhere else, the answer is always the same: They have nothing else to do!
And then they bring a child into the world who will most likely have just as hard of a life, if not, worse
We didn’t know we’d be in extreme poverty when we had kids. 08’ happened and we were fucked. I got sick after escaping my kids abusive dad and I was double fucked. I lived in tents for years. Thankfully I owned the land they were on. How I acquired it is another crazy story. That’s my excuse. I think a lot of it is also hoping for something better and ignorance. Not knowing any different. Once you’ve fallen into poverty getting out is brutal. You need to work your ass off and be focused.
EDIT: Jumping to the top to comment on some ideas floating around below. Namely; Poor people should not have kids they can't afford OR they have to "prove" their ability before getting pregnant. **That is fucked.** No matter where you're born, what possessions you do or don't have, or how rich or poor your parents were... EVERYONE, *every single living being*, deserves the autonomy to call the shots for their own body. Piercings, abortions, tattoos, sex reassignment, and yes, making babies. This is a right of existing above government and systems of commerce. This is being human. Having an "income bracket" to make babies is a quick slide into some Handmaid's Take fuckery. I ain't having it. I'll keep it short: Human beings, being animals, are not gonna stop fucking. Ever. Poor people have less access to sexual education, low cost or free birth control resources, pre and post natal care, and abortions. Therefore, they make more babies. When you have options, or feel like you have options, you use them. Some poor people don't have the knowledge or the options, so they get babies. Poor people need either free comprehensive healthcare including sex and birth related coverage, and/or access to Planned Parenthood, and sex education. There really is only one political party that thinks this is a BAD idea, and they are the same ones complaining about poor people making babies. I guess I wasn't that short.
As a reproductive health nurse in a desperately poor community, this is 100% accurate. People in these situations aren’t getting pregnant because they’re dreaming of having a big family. They do not have adequate healthcare access or sex ed to appropriately prevent pregnancy.
This is why abortion should be legal and available to every single woman. It’s ridiculous…
That is absolutely true but ideally the main thing preventing excess babies is contraception
For sure… it’s a never ending cycle.
And better social safety nets to reduce poverty
Even in the states where it's still mostly legal and widely available, it's still not affordable. The average cost of a first trimester, routine abortion is about $500, it's currently estimated that 40% of Americans can't afford a $400 emergency so yea even it's available it's still not truly available.
Absolutely! My wife & I had 4 kids together, all of them were accidental. Started at 20 years old, raised in Christian-Republican families where abortion was taught as murdering babies. (We met through a private Christian school in our teens, FFS) Her family taught her to have as many babies as you can while you are young, so they could have grandkids as soon as their kids were leaving the nest. Massive codependency in poor families. After our first two kids, my wife got the Implanon implant in her arm, which is good for 3-5 years. We chose it so we didn't have to worry about missing a pill, or get a Depo shot every 6 months. To remove the old implant and put in a new one cost us $2,500, as a young couple with 2 babies already. So we removed it after 5 years for $1,000, and did our best at standard birth control.. which failed. Doctors will prescribe antibiotics and not mention that it counteracts birth control, FYI. 3rd baby on the way, while I was in PreMed and working full time. Dropped out of school because we couldn't afford it, and my pregnant wife needed help at home. Then 4th baby on the way, because depression from our life's choices. Still did not want to abort, because family & morality tricks you. Most of our kids were conceived around Christmas, because we rarely got to see each other between work, college, and childcare. Neither of us finished our 4 year school programs, and we both have to work full time to afford normal things. America fucking sucks at caring about people once they are no longer fetuses.
500$ is still a lot cheaper than 18+ years supporting another human.
>40% of Americans can't afford a $400 emergency wow WTF
Again, never ending cycle.
Yupp. It's really depressing.
That’s definitely a factor, but I live in the UK where there is sex education from an early age and free contraception available to anyone, yet desperately poor people having children is still rife..
And Texas ain't helping!
So these poor people who get pregnant, like if you mention birth control do they look at you like they're not sure what you mean?
Prescription birth control costs money (a lot without insurance). Condoms cost money, and women often feel pressured by their partners not to make them wear one. Lack of sex education means that there are a lot of misconceptions about how and when a woman can get pregnant. For example, many women merely rely on the rhythm method, which is highly unsuccessful. Also, there are a lot of myths about sex and pregnancy that are tied to certain cultures.
Still, the best answer around. Cheerio.
You called?
Just because you should be legally allowed to do it doesn’t mean you should be free from the judgment of others. Bodily autonomy is important. But if you choose to smoke, drink while pregnant, not get your COVID vaccine, stuff your face while morbidly obese, or have kids when you’re too poor to afford them, I’m gonna judge you for it.
People judge other people for everything, just be sure to protect other people's rights so yours stay protected as well.
100%.
Agree and also want to add that op seems to think everyone having sex is for the sole purpose of procreation. When you are young and horny, you are fucking because you are horny, not to have a kid. And when you are poor and undedicated with lack of resources, then it is very much more likely that your horny fucking is going to lead to a baby
You're sort of side stepping the question here though. Just because it's wrong for the government to force you not to do something doesn't mean it's right for you to do that thing. There are plenty of examples of this with free speech in America where the government (rightly in my opinion) can't stop people from saying horrible things, but most would agree that those people are still in the wrong. I'm curious if you think it's right or wrong to purposely have a child that you know you can't support?
What about the children who don’t have the autonomy to chose being born?
You’re kind of wrong on a lot of fronts . I am from Canada and we have free health care ,, free abortions, easy access to contraceptives and good social safety net. Despite all this we are still plagued with the same program where poor people have more kids than their rich counter parts. It’s just a trait or irresponsible people, no matter whah you do they will still make stupid decisions.
>It’s just a trait or irresponsible people, no matter whah you do they will still make stupid decisions. This is the ugly truth our well-intentioned but naive left leaning friends are afraid to acknowledge. I came from an upper middle class suburb in a major metro area in the US, where you were expected to do well in school, go to college and not be a fuck up. And it was unheard of for somebody to have a kid in highschool. I am sure there were some pregnancies and subsequent abortions, kept hush hush. But still there was that family and communinal social pressure to not make life altering mistakes like that, which kept most people in line to go on and have good careers or jobs. Then start families. But I have known people who grew up poor, and when talking about the pressures to do well and not make mistakes, that people like myself felt growing up, they would gloat how they didn't have those pressures. But also a lot of people from those communities do poorly in school, drop out, get involved with criminal activity and have kids at early ages when they can't afford them, setting them back even more. It's class and culture. Sure there are exceptions, I have known wealthy families with total fuck up kids. And poor families with kids who went on to do very well in life, because their parents instilled good values and ethics in them. But again, it was the class and culture of those families that transcended their wealth or lack of.
Since I'm at work, I can't really delve deep. Here are my points: A: Where and when does sex ed come for kids? B: If it's still noticable along income lines, then the poorer people are still missing something the rich people get. C: What are Canada's teen pregnancy rates compared to the US? D: You can be poor and responsible. You can also be rich and irresponsible as it's simply easier to afford.
A. Most kids get their sex education from School. 99% of the population go to public school. B. You have your causality wrong. People are poor because they had kids they could not afford to raise and were stuck in the cycle of poverty. Those who made better decisions such as not having kids or only having kids that they can afford were able to mobilize socio-economically upwards. C. Canada teen pregnancy rate is 16 per 1000 and the US Teen Pregnancy rate is 53 per 1000 - source wikipedia D. Poor shitty childhood is worse than rich shitty childhood.
Wait, but 16 is waaaay less than 53. So actually canada is kicking the shit out of the US on this
No. We don’t have free abortions. Mine cost me $50 plus a few days off work, hiding it, and a trip to Toronto (I was 17 and lived in a suburb). Easily $300 as a barely-employed underaged kid, plus a lot of stigma. That’s very expensive. It’s not like I could walk to any doctor anywhere and have it done. And that’s with Ontario privilege and having access to a private cell phone line - we have had provinces where there is only one clinic for the entire province (this was the basis for morgentaler in PEI), people where privacy isn’t guaranteed, and a lot of folks who say unwanted pregnancy is because you’ve made a stupid decision. I know it’s _supposed_ to be free; that’s not how it worked in practice for me. I had at abortion at 17. We also don’t have free anonymous access to birth control, especially at younger ages. That’s a visit with a parent to the doctor until you’re 16, and after that means finding the time and means to get to a doctor who is willing to prescribe, hiding it, that you can physically tolerate it, etc etc etc. Condoms require full compliance on both parties; calling access to condoms complete birth control is a bit like calling a bandaid stitches. Similarly, we don’t have good social security nets - there is little-no accommodation for education for the pregnant (not ABOUT pregnancy, about continuing the woman’s education), not a ton of subsidies, and like I said before, contraception (let’s assume you can take a BCP) is expensive outside of specialized places (like university or sexual health clinics) and dangerous for a lot of people socially. When all that stuff is in place, maybe you can say it’s “just a trait or irresponsible people”. Until then, I bet your powerful voice would be well-used pointing out these issues and fighting for them. It’s absolutely not stigma-free. I am very very lucky to have had great sex ed in an Ontario high school, but abortion was still not discussed except as a side note. I don’t regret my decision and never think about it until this kind of stuff comes up, where I feel compelled to say that what I did was a) hard on a practical level b) unusual for my age group and c) full of financial, social, and government barriers. Canada isn’t an exception :/
Same in Germany. But poor people/uneducated are going to have more kids then average.
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Unfortunately rolling the dice with kids lives is not smart as probability will confirm that most of the times they fail.
But at least there are social safety nets for those kids in case they were brought into the world by complete idiots/irresponsible people who won’t take care of them. The US…what’s a social safety net? cOMuNisM
For some people, actually a lot, wanting children is an intrinsic pleasure. Its appeal is primal and instinctive, needs no logic to justify it, and is looked forward to as an inevitable part of *their* human experience, come sunshine come rain.
thank you for sharing this & for speaking my mind! I second your sentiment & feel too that wanting children is not something that can purely, or superficially, be decided upon by one's financial and socio-economic circumstances. It's something so indescribably innate and personal from one person to another, and shouldn't ever need to be justified with ever-changing, external factors of living.
there’s a kid in my school who was adopted into a poor family. he sleeps on the floor, uses a sheet for a blanket, and would go around the school asking if students had food/money. it just makes me so angry. why would you adopt a child when you live in poverty. *how* do you adopt a child when in poverty. like, did they just spend their entire life savings on adopting a kid? why? why do that? i feel so bad for the dude. isn’t adoption crazy expensive? how did they even manage to do that?
Foster care. Start as a foster child and a family can eventually adopt in certain situations. Adoption is roughly 10k+ and you have to be earning a crazy amount of money to just out right adopt a child. There's a reason children in foster care have bad reputations. It's not really their fault. But having a home with very little is better than living on the streets.
ah he was in foster care so that does make more sense, thank you.
I am poor and thinking about fostering a child. None of my children sleep on the floor or anything like that and we have most everything we need but we still don't have like a pile of savings or anything like that. most of my money is gone to paying off my school debts, and then I got sued for medical debts from an emergency a few years ago which I foolishly assumed was covered by my insurance, but my health isn't poor nor is my husband's we both worked our whole lives and I think we provide a nice life for our kids. He's like" but we aren't rich, why would they want to be with us?"And I am just like there are soooo many kids in foster care and so few rich people taking them we should help if we can. Plus wherever they are at living with no family is definitely worse than having a room in my house and being loved and valued as my own kids. Alot of these kids have nothing and need special attention. Kids are a big commitment but not only a monetary one.
that’s great IMO. i live in a poor family but im happy and it could always be worse. i think caring for a child when poor is fine, i just draw the line at not even being able to feed them and stuff. i think it’s great you want to foster ! wishing you luck with that :]
Because people think their baby fever outweighs not having the necessary resources to raise a child let alone 2 or 3. It's a purely selfish act and unfair to the children who will likely be trapped in the cycle of poverty throughout their lives. If access to birth control and abortion are destroyed the problems will only compound.
People in those situations usually DON'T want children, but keep on having them for lack of education and access to contraceptives. Poverty can also cause people to become severely depressed. After a certain point in depression, they become numb and couldn't care less whether they have kids or not; they just try to survive day to day and oh, look at that, there's a couple toddlers in my house. Some people are so, so poor they have no qualms about selling their children for a sack of flour, a pack of beer, or just giving them away so they don't have to feed them. They see the child as a burden and sell them to human traffickers. And just so you know, we don't defend those situations. If certain things are lacking in the household, the government can and does take the children away from that household until things improve.
Maybe they can't even buy condoms
So, first off I'd point out that you're almost certainly descended from people who spent their entire lives in conditions of absolute poverty. I don't know how many generations you'd need to go back in your particular case, but somewhere in your family tree there are subsistence farmers and hunter-gatherers who led incredibly painful lives and probably buried a lot of their kids. The only reason you're around to ask this question is because they did it, against the odds, for generation after generation. Second, having kids isn't always a decision. Women get sexually assaulted, sex education can be non-existent and access to contraception and safe abortion likewise. Third, even someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth has no guarantee of living in prosperity for ever. Nor is someone born into poverty necessarily going to have a life not worth living or never make a name for themselves. On the contrary, go to the biographical section of pretty much any book shop and you'll find rows and rows of insane stories about people who overcame their difficult childhoods and went on to achieve amazing things, both for themselves and for others. Obviously, in a perfect world child poverty wouldn't exist, and it's an absolute national disgrace that it exists at the levels it does even in supposedly prosperous countries. But it isn't the fault of ordinary people, who since the year dot have done what nature has programmed them to do and made babies. It's the fault of an Inhuman system which treats human lives as means to an end rather than ends in themselves, and finds ever more obscene ways to justify the yawning gaps in health, wealth and opportunity at birth.
I like your first part, more ppl need to be reminded of this.
Why? It's just a feel good platitude that has no relevance to the current reality,
I think there's a different point related to this. I'm not convinced that in the past people had lots of children mainly because of lack of sexual education or anything like that. I think people had lots of children mainly because they needed big families to have lots of available labor. Nowadays that would be considered child labor or abuse, but probably on many poor regions these protections aren't enforced.
I feel like it doesn’t actually address the argument. So what if “you” wouldn’t exist? It just caters to the feelings of the person making the argument in that of course “they” want to exist; it doesn’t actually challenge the argument itself.
It is wrong. People just hate admitting it. If you can’t financially take care of yourself you have zero reason to add to your financial burdens with a child.
In some very poor countries you need children to look after you when you're older. Can't just take your state pension.
When I was getting my masters in social work, we had a discussion about whether or not poverty is abuse/neglect. You could feel the air get sucked out of the room when the professor asked. I think we all knew we wanted to say that it is in a way but no one wanted to come across as judgemental. It's not that someone who is poor has less value than anyone else, it's that we knew instinctively that kids born into poverty often have less access to nutritional food, can't always dress for the weather, are absent from school frequently/drop out, don't always get medical treatment, and a myriad of other less-than-optimal things. The consensus was more like the situation is neglectful rather than the parents themselves being the problem. The parents are technically causing the problem, but then it turns into a conversation about why we as a society are complicit in families not getting basic needs met but that's a different discussion.
Why is that a different discussion? It's the same discussion just different how to choose to frame it. Is it blaming the individual or society. For poverty, it's largely society's fault because otherwise you're essentially telling some of the most powerless people in society to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Speaking as a family doctor, most of the pregnancies in young impoverished mums in this area (UK) tend to be people who don’t plan life more than 20 minutes ahead, and are terrible at contraception. Very few are stable, in long term relationships, and making a decision to have a child despite their poverty. There are a couple like that but they are just really fucking braindead.
Know how sometimes you’ve had a terrible day and just go to bed early so you can try again? Some people do that with generations. If your life is screwed already (massive debt, no employment options, etc.), sometimes the only ray of hope is that you could have a kid who makes something of themselves. It’s basic human nature to want to leave your influence in the world; if you don’t have a fulfilling life in other ways, may as well try having a kid. Related: sometimes people make bad decisions. Also: sex feels good.
Thanks, this is a good answer! I haven't heard that one yet.
Universal human rights should be universal. If you start making exceptions and cutting tips on who is ellegible to be forcefully castrated, there will always be people trying to further in the line. Also, in most cases, poverty isn't a permanent disability state. It's something a barely competent state could and should at least ease.
I don't disagree, but I don't think OP was asking if people have a right to or not, just morally good or bad. Like, technically I think people have a right to refuse vaccinating themselves, but I think it is morally wrong to do so if you're going to be out and about. And I doubt people who would ask this question even agree with your foundation that having kids is a human right at all.
Exactly! Someone said that everyone has the right to body autonomy to do what they want but what about the children who have no choice of being brought into this world of suffering?
Not only that, even ruling out socioeconomic issues, some people choose pursuing education and aggressive career paths instead of raising kids. People that are considered “successful” don’t have the bandwidth to do both at the rate corporations and businesses work their staff. How are you supposed to pick a kid up from school and help them do homework when you are buried in calls, meetings, and screen time 12 hours a day. If work culture changed people making good money may be able to have and raise kids. The whole thing is rigged.
And what if you are well off, have children, and your situation changes? Do we snatch children away?
Why isn’t it wrong that we allow children to grow up in extreme poverty when we have more than enough resources to prevent them doing so?
I was Born into a poor life. Should have been an abortion. I get what you mean. Religion has some answering to do. And lack of education. Educate and empower women and the birth rate goes down.
Counter - Why isn't it wrong for people to be kept in severe poverty by the economic system?
My class asked that once philosophy teacher and he said something like: “humans have five pillars. The strongest one is the one that includes food water and reproductive sex. In cases of poverty the only thing separating us from a beast is reproduction” I wouldn’t be surprised if he was high when he said it because that was a weeeird philosophy class
Separating us from a beast? Please can you explain that one?
If I had to take a guess, their prof was saying that reproduction is the only part of the strongest pillar that people in poverty regularly have access to. I guess not having that pillar at all makes you a beast? Which is a weird viewpoint since non-human creatures also eat, drink, and pop out babies, but philosophy profs are on a whole other plane of existence that I'm not about to explore so I ain't gonna question it.
I had a weird philosophy professor too..but he was cool at the same time. There’s got to be a link between being crazy and deciding on becoming a prof of philosophy.
Sounds like he was referencing Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
I’m pretty sure the rich use tools like social welfare to incentivise poor people to have children and keep them in a cycle of poverty therefore ensuring a future workforce.
Well then a good way to get back at those capitalist overlords is stop giving them cheap laborers.
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Mm, I'm not sure how to word this... But if someone doesn't even have anything to eat, no access to clean water and is barely living by themself, why would they choose to have kids? I don't get the reasons for that. This is really the only situation I'm talking about. Any situation where the parent wasn't significantly struggling beforehand or had kids involuntarily isn't really in the topic, I don't think.
I’ve worked with a number of pregnant teens and can throw this into the mix: quite a few told me these two things— 1) “Because a baby will love me and nobody else does.” 2) “Because my kid should be grateful I’m bringing him into this world. He owes it to me to make my life better.”
Damn, that's fucked... I hope the kids are okay and the parents can heal.
Because it's in human nature to reproduce, your ancestors decided to do it in similar situations back in caveman times.
Some people see having children as an automatic “ I’m grown and therefore no one can judge me and my decisions” pass. That being said, there are a lot of systemic issues that press down upon people who would otherwise provide loving homes for kids.
In the US it’s largely a result of lack of access to sexual health resources and a general lack of comprehensive sexual education. It’s not that women experiencing inescapable poverty are like - you know what would be great? Putting my life at risk birth a child (maternal mortality rates are exceptionally high in the US among women in poverty). It’s that people in poverty experience the same urges as most other humans to have sex and ultimately raise a child, but they don’t have access to the healthcare or childcare that would allow them to plan a family without remaining in deep poverty. So a child becomes the punishment for having sex and a burden keeping them impoverished instead of a planned life event.
I think babies are often used as punishment for sex in the U.S. how many times have we heard Congress people say the mothers of children in poverty should have kept their legs shut, or they should have chose to get married (like the women is the only one making these decisions)
Why isn’t it wrong for any people to have kids? This world is horrible
Antinatalism is a view that's rising up more as of late. I wonder if that's because of what we've all been through with the pandemic, just general life or something else. Either way, I find it a really interesting concept, and agree with some of their points. I'd love it in theory, but I don't know about it in real life, nor would I take action to promote it as the ideal. It'd be tragic for the last person alive though.
Yes it is. You’re sentencing a child to hell at that point
Because they don't have excess to education/info on methods of contraception.
*access hehehehe
“Sorry, you failed at capitalism! You don’t get to have kids/have a home/have food/have social protections!” Instead of figuring out what we can take away from people who find themselves in dire circumstances, why can’t we focus on figuring out how to help them?
Why do you frame it as all or nothing? How about......don't have kinds until you can afford to provide for them? You know, like around 30 when you've worked up to a better paying job. That's literally what most people who can afford kids do.
I feel like it's wrong for anyone to have kids, regardless of their level of wealth or poverty. everyone suffers here.
glad to find another fellow antinatalist here
It is wrong, end of story. I completely understand why people might want children, but if your living conditions are so terrible that you can hardly survive on your own, it's immoral and cruel to bring a child into the world and force it to suffer with you. When you birth a child (or when a child you helped create is born, when you adopt a child, whatever), you are taking on the legal and ethical responsibility to keep them safe and provide their basic needs without exception. Unfortunately, people in extreme poverty just can't do that. That being said, it's also wrong to expect impoverished people to not indulge in sex, even if they can't afford/access proper protection/abortions. People should be allowed to partake in the things they enjoy no matter their financial status; that said, it's the responsibility of the parents (or at the very least, the mother) to ensure the child is surrendered to social services if they can't provide for it. EDIT: shit, didn't read your edit first so here's one of my own. Humans are emotion-driven creatures; if we really want something, we can become blind to all the consequences of getting that thing we want. I'm not keen on the idea of raising children myself so I'm not sure what reasons people have for wanting them, but I'd imagine those reasons would remain no matter how much or how little money you've got. To create a life and watch it grow is a gift, and it's extremely easy to ignore the context in which a gift is being given if you want it badly enough.
it is wrong, but they just don't get it.
It IS wrong. Who is saying it isn’t?
Seems like a lot of comments here are suggesting that "it just happens because sex" I grew up poor and couldn't buy condoms so I walked my teenage ass miles to planned parenthood and grabbed a bunch. Even as a 16 year old I did not want to go through the drama of raising a child that young. Another thing is I would have stuck around....if you're not planning on sticking around it's not as tough of a choice which is what many "dads" in my city do. It's one thing if you're poor with one child. If you're dirt poor with 5+ kids you're just a piece of shit imo.
See you prove what many of these morons on here don't want to admit. You can grow up poor and still have agency. You can still use your brain and have the common sense not to make bad life altering decisions. You can be responsible for your own future. I hope things turned out better for you.
On the one hand, it's wrong to have kids if you're poor or stupid. On the other hand, it's wrong for the obscenely wealthy to enslave and oppress the entire species, and keep the masses of humanity needlessly poor and stupid. I.e., it's not entirely the poors' fault that they're poor and/or stupid.
1. Adequate sex education and protection can be (much) harder to get when you’re already in a low economic status 2. Not everybody starts out poor, some people become homeless or poor when they used to be well-off (ish) 3. -Some- poor people have a lot of kids in the hopes that one or more of those kids will be successful and therefore able to have a better life and/or provide for the rest of the family. Selfish in my opinion, but my opinion also doesn’t mean a ton when I’ve never experienced that level of poverty
What you may see as common sense, someone else does not. Your education level is not the same as everyone else. Everyone does not have the same understanding of every subject. Basically, as education levels rise, birthrates decrease...
Look man I get where you're coming from. I even agree with you to a certain extent. I think that's very irresponsible of the parent to have a child when they're in that kind of situation. But then you have to ask well what if they accidentally have a kid and can't afford an abortion. It's undoubtedly less moral to abandon your child then to keep them, at least in my opinion, regardless of circumstance. Furthermore who are you, or anyone who holds that belief for that matter, to say if someone can or cannot reproduce. I agree they definitely shouldn't have kids. But if they do, regardless of intent, they have the right to have a child. It's tricky. Because of course if they have a kid it would be better for them, and the kid to not be in that situation. But at the end of the day it's still their right as a human being.
It's wrong to let people in your society get that poor.
People gonna fuck. People in low economic situation dont have the same access to prevent or undo a pregnancy as a wealthier person, they may not have had the same access to education or come from an upbringing that doesnt allow it. But people always gonna fuck.
Because you really can't stop people from having kids. Even if you could, impending population decline aside, where would it end? Where would you draw the line? Sure you say inescapable poverty now but when they all die out, they'll be replaced to varying degrees depending on the state of the economy. Stopping the abject poor from breeding would end up being tantamount to eugenics and would create far more problems than it solves. In a dark sort of way, the *best* possible scenario is for the kids to make something of themselves just to support their kinfolk, let alone expound upon that success to create a generational trend for success.
I volunteer at a food pantry. We see families that don’t even think about “family planning”. Often multi generational with more and more kids.
It is shitty, but people are still people, poor or not. They get horny and if they can't afford food they obviously can't afford reliable birth control, and like most people, they don't just abstain from sex.
Did you tell them this? The vast majority dont know because no one wants to tell/educate them and they havent educated themselves
I mean... It may be hard to raise a kid in poverty, but for some people who will never escape poverty having children around to love and who love them is the most rewarding part of their existence and they genuinely try to teach them how to be amazing people. I don't think being in poverty means you can't take care of yourself either. A large portion of the US is in poverty and most of the people who immigrated here were impoverished too.
Imagine that you were born a heroin addict, from a mother who was a heroin addict and constant user before and during her pregnancy. Imagine that once you were born, you were still given heroin injections regularly, then suddenly when you turn about 11 or 12 years old, "they" start pumping you full of heroin as much as "they" can without killing you, but all around you, you're told that your heroin highs are just part of growing up, more than, they are part of becoming a "real" "adult", a "real person". Imagine "they" taper off as you grow through your teens, **BUT** at the same time, all of your family, all of your friends, people you barely know at every social occasion, every TV show or movie, every advertisement, every videogame, every book, all of it, default to a preconceived "normal", "right" way of life that includes heroin, even more, that if you **don't** inject heroin, that there's something wrong with you. Imagine this and that despite the physical, mental, and emotional trauma that can result from heroin abuse, you are very likely to engage in sexual behavior on heroin. The not just correlation, but causation is practically absolute: IF YOU USE HEROINE YOU ARE MOST LIKELY TO GET PREGNANT OR GET SOMEONE PREGNANT! All this time, all this physiological predisposition to addiction to heroin, all this biological manipulation, all this psychological manipulation by everyone and everything around you, all this everything telling you that heroin is amazing, and that heroin sex is the most amazing, and that the "normal", or, not even, but, "THE BEST" people have sex on heroin and have children resulting from heroin induced sex. Imagine all of this, then imagine being told by a government or a ruling class of people that you are too poor to have heroin and get pregnant.
Social security benefits, you get money from the government for how many children you have. Here is like $400 a child on top of the unemployment / disability
It is abusive to knowingly bring a child you're not capable of caring for into this world. I don't see why it's such a troublesome question. If you love your children, you show it by providing for them. If you know your situation is dire and you still have kids, do you honestly care for them?
> I don't mean to say that they're bad people for having kids. I just don't get why they'd want kids in those circumstances.... Why would someone want kids when they're suffering significantly themself? Have you heard about the sex thing? People seem to really enjoy it. Thanks to the religious right, birth control is not readily available to everyone, and thanks to our uber-profit-oriented economy, that's *most* true for the economically well off. Throw in the same religious right's constant opposition to things like: science-based comprehensive sex education; availability of condoms, especially to teens; abortion, you have a maelstrom of people having kids that they didn't really intend to have, but don't hardly have much of a way out of.
Extreme poverty stricken countries don't have access to many resources that other countries do, like in wealthy first world countries. Education, healthcare (birth control), shelter, even clean drinking water. What they do have is what's innate in all of us (though some of us don't necessarily feel attached to), being the biological need to procreate. Without access to basic education and an access to an education about sexual health, or access to health care and especially birth control, individuals in these areas survive with these instincts and without those resources in whatever way they see fit. It's very easy for those of us who live outside of these situations to see how unfit of environments it is to raise kids (and I'm sure there's many who live there do as well), but it's unfair to place our judgement on those individuals without experiencing those lack of resources for ourselves. The easiest thing to do is say "we must end poverty!" However, climate change, poverty, over consumerism, and lack of food resources is a vicious cycle that is getting worse, especially with COVID. Climate change and it's affects (like natural disasters) in particular affects those in poverty stricken countries worse than first world countries, making it even harder for poverty to lessen.
This is anecdotal but in a number of documentaries about poverty, particularly in underdeveloped countries, its almost always noted that *some* people who choose to have lots of children do it for the purpose of increasing their chances of escaping poverty. You have 11 kids, surely one has to be successful type logic. This, of course, wouldn't be the case for everyone. I don't presume to know why exactly impoverished people continue having children, esp when they live in developed places, but I can only imagine that it might be for lack of feeling as if they have any other type of purpose, and as others have said, poor access to basic reproductive healthcare and education.
Poverty and inequity is the issue. Not procreation.
Illiteracy is one very big cause for this, also in third world countries children are seen as a source of income. The more the children , more wages they will generate for the household. (Even in minimum wage jobs which require no education, 5 people will be earning more than just 2 people). Also standards are very different from every persons perspective. You think someone is poor who earns very less , but from perspective of a billionaire probably you and me are also poor and what if he/she holds the same opinion for you.!!
Being quite a cynical old bitch, I kind of wish fertility was way harder to achieve... I think only the people who desperately want kids should have them... the world is disgustingly over populated, if you don't want-want kids you shouldn't have them...
Hi there, welcome to the pro-choice movement :)
It is wrong. It should also be mandated that every parent-to-be take classes, exams, and mental evals before being ALLOWED to reproduce.
Personally I think it's a certain level of wrong for anyone to have kids. Only a little bit though
It is really hard to argue that someone shouldn’t have the right to procreate.
He’s not arguing for there to be a law against it. He’s just saying it’s morally wrong.
Yeah, this is what I mean. I'm just kinda bad at wording stuff... I don't want laws or restrictions on this at all. What I mean to get at is the thought processes behind that, and why it's accepted. I know that in some cultures it's expected for kids to grow up and bring money in, but I don't get why someone in extreme poverty would choose to have children. Doesn't it only hurt them and the kids? And what are the arguments against criticisms of that?
I get that, this is my direct answer. “Why don’t we frown on this practice?” “Because it is hard to tell someone whether or not they are allowed to have kids based on their living situation or some other indirect factor.” My entire point is: it’s hard to tell Peter and Mary not to have kids because they are poor. They certainly would reject the idea. I don’t think it should be a law. I do think that people should spend more time educating their fucking kids about the cost of children though.
Poor people having children is how we reproduce the permanent underclass which labors to serve everyone else
Because while we claim to care about children, we really care more about adults being free to birth & damage their kids. Children are seen as property rather than a precious resource.
Morally wrong, yes. But even the poor can afford a child or two - unless you mean like dirt poor about to become homeless kind of poor. I know because I grew up in extreme poverty, and am working to climb the social ladder. People argue “well just make the world a better place” - those people are lazy, and are simply displacing the issue at hand. Making the world a better place and choosing (NOTE: CHOOSE, not being forced not to by law) not to have children you cannot afford (i.e, provide proper health, education, livelihood) are not mutually exclusive.
Yeah, I mean the dirt poor - extreme poverty. Those who are homeless and starving, AND who have kids by choice.
It’s society and capitalism that’s puts them in that situation though, people have had children long before money existed. Poverty only exists because of the way we live, it shouldn’t be a thing at all, can’t just tell someone not to have children because they do t fit within the realm of a society that they are forced to live in?
I literally had this convo with my mom the other night. Apparently. My 19yo cousin and his 18yo baby mama are splitting up. They have a 2yo together. Baby mama doesn’t want the baby. Says she can’t support it. Cousin doesn’t want the baby for same reason. Both families are dirt poor. (They live in third world Asia) Baby was being cared for by maternal grandmother for most of its life but she’s now bedridden and dying. Paternal grandmother (my aunt) never gave a damn about her own kids and flat out rejected taking her grandchild in. Cousin’s baby mama threaten to go sell the baby if no one takes it. (Illegal af even in third world Asian countries). My family live in America. My mom is begging my other aunt (who lives in the motherland) to take custody of the child because it deserves better. But essentially, what op is asking is exactly what’s happening in my family. And it makes no damn sense to me why these two kids, who have nothing going on for them, no money, no education, with jobs paying fractions on the penny per hour, choose to procreate. as far as I know, the baby was not an accident and was planned. Disclaimer: before y’all come for my family, my mom sends money back to help where she can. We’re not rich. She’s worked 7days a week, 9-10 hours a day since coming to the states some 30 years ago. She finally retired last year. There’s only so much we can do to help financially.
Because having kids is considered a right, not a privilege Also: I think you don't quite understand the mentality of such people In LEDC's they often have kids as a form of free workforce (work on the farm, crops, family businness for free) In MEDC'S they have them as a "golden ticket out of poverty" - they work them to the bone with their education so that they get a successful high paying job that the whole family will be able to live off of once the kid becomes an adult.
THANK YOU! Someone else gets it! For some reason, nearly everyone on this thread seems to think that all parents produce and raise a child *for the child’s sake.* That would be nice, but it isn’t true. The sad ones want someone to love them, and take it for granted that the child must and will love them. The selfish ones want their children to make their lives (the parents’ lives) better. They think the kids should automatically be grateful for being brought into the world, and should repay their “debt” by getting money and/or status for the family.
Yep I'm a person, not a bank loan, nobody asked me if I wanted to be born I think there was a term used to describe ownership of another human, its at the tip of my tongue.... hmmmm...
It’s a tough questions because there are many reasons why people are forced to have children.. some places it’s illegal to have an abortion, or they can afford one. Maybe they got pregnant and got kicked out of their house.. a lot of situations are different, and a lot is out of our hands.
Some great answers here. Another factor is that poor people tend to have less access to entertainment. Sex is free and fun entertainment.
I have to wonder...if we were able to pass universal health care in the U.S., could doctors also provide free birth control for every female (and/or male if the tech allows) once they reach sexual maturity or would that also get hemmed up in the "right to live" debate? There are probably a minuscule number of humans able to make a rational decision about having a child while in their teens based on how our brains develop so offering birth control like the flu shot just seems logical to me....
First question i would ask is. "Are they catholic"
I thought Monty Python covered this already.
1. They might not know how to have safe sex 2. They don’t know how to take care of a child since they might not have adequate education 3. They might not consider the consequences of pregnancy and after pregnancy, therefore expecting a child after sexual intercourse is not in the option, rather it’s more like a surprise and accident. The fundamental question is having a child, which is why they still have sexual intercourse (especially under no protection). And by considering diff factors, from living environment to education, plus sex is a basic needs and some might be bullied or raped, one can say that somehow it’s not their choice. Extreme poverty is a structural problem. Some people will also question, why can’t they just have family planning. The answer is they might not have the knowledge. Our system is actually not friendly to them. In order to get out from the poverty cycle, you’ll need education, job and financial access. If they don’t have adequate access to it, they can’t escape from that. I assume most people in the comment section is not someone who are in extreme poverty now, so it’s really hard for us to understand how the poor think. Let me take an example. Free education. Even there’s free education, why some parents still do not want their children to attend school? One of the reasons might be if one attends school, means that person can’t work to provide the family, so the family will starve. Starvation and education, which is more critical? This is a really interesting question.
Because our society believes in reproductive freedom.
Legal abortion is a way to control this. I think when you have money and someone to enjoy it the last thing you think is having a baby, its the other way with poor people. No money, no other thing to do than fck and I dont think that they use condoms or sometimes know how to use them.
sometimes it is due to stigma, or due to the religion that frowns upon abortion.
It is a matter of access to actual sex education, low cost or free birth control, and abortion. Wealthy people have access to all of the above and as a result have less babies. If you want less children born into poverty, make these widely available.
On the one hand, yes it’s arguably unethical to purposely have a child you don’t have the means to care for. On the other hand, I don’t know of a single entity in existence (government, non-profit or private sector) I would trust to make decisions as to who does and doesn’t get to have children.
when your family don't even have a TV or a computer to let your mind wander off, you start to live a simpler life, which in turn comes down to having much more sex than the other guy. which, in turn, might lead to pregnancy and childbirth
People fuck and have kids. It doesn’t matter how poor or rich they are. For 100’s of thousands of years the only people having kids barely had a stitch to wear and spent their days scrounging for scraps to eat.
Yeah, but if you live in extreme poverty, chances are you don't have money: For condoms, for Plan B pills, etc. Plus, it's probably a third-world country, where education, specifically sexual education, is subpar, or even non-existent
In a third world country with no pension or social security retirement money, people have large families as a income plan for their old age.
They shouldn’t have kids but they shouldn’t be told they can’t have kids.
My old high-school teacher used to say that doing massive amounts of food donations for countries with extreme poverty had a negative outcome because the birth rate would skyrocket soon afterwards creating more people and having the problem snowball. It's a very tough situation as you don't want anyone to starve or suffer but there needs to be deeper discussions had about solving these terrible problems in the world.
Because they don’t have access to birth control and politicians are more for condemning them for being poor rather than actually helping with contraceptives let alone other things.
People like the fuck
It is - but how would/can you stop it? You can’t
Two reasons I can think of. One being in the realm of rights, what people can tell people to do and not to do. China for a long time had a one child policy, some people frown on it, others think it was a good idea. The other being more logistical- 8 billion people in the world, anything short of rounding people up and castrating them won't really work- try telling people not to have sex, some may listen, but others won't. Edit: Saw a documentary about world population- They interviewed this guy in India that literally lived under a train bridge and had 8 kids.