Poll: Maximum Children Allowed per Couple

[RyuujinZERO]

Obviously this is a complicated subject; Areas i haven't spoke about:
- divorce & re-marriage children.

The solution here is less so much "2 per couple" as "1 per individual", of course legally "assigning" a child to either partner's "kiddy credit" is pretty morally repugnant.

But "being nice" got us in this mess, so unless we want to handle some VERY serious consequences someone needs to put their foot down and make some tough decisions that people arn't willing to make for themselves. It's all down to ecology equilibrium in the end.

In ecology you see a species spread to fill resource availability in it's environment; for example a predatory animal population in it's range is tied to it's prey animals, ie. rabbits. if the rabbit population booms, the predator population booms til it hits the ceiling, suddenly resource availability drops, and the predators starve back down to a sustainable level. Eventually a sort've equilibrium is reached whereby resource supply and consumption balance out.

Human, post industrialisation is a global population, if we lack resources in X, we import them from Y. But there is STILL A RESOURCE CAP and in those times of plenty human population has happily raced towards the ceiling, so far, we've managed to keep raising the ceiling as fast as population has grown but we can't keep this up forever. In humans though we don't starve, not initially, we start fighting to secure resources. So unless we want World War 3, we HAVE to tie a knot in it - otherwise, all those little kids you're raising and loving now, you're dooming them to a brutal future.

 

[Colour Scientist]

I think they should be allowed to have as many children as they want to have.

 

[RyuujinZERO]

I think they should be allowed to have as many children as they want to have.

And, where is the spare planet you're going to need to house, feed and supply them?

 

[DirtyJunkieScum]

No limits, maybe have a system of diminishing returns when it comes to benefits but otherwise that's it.

 

[Darth Sea Bass]

Two at the most and then only if you have the means to care for them yourself. If you have more that's your problem don't expect the goverment to house and feed you.

 

[thehorror2]

I think that population control is going to be a necessity in the coming century, if only because as the economy continues to (if not actually fail) fail to improve, the increase in population is going to spread resources more and more thinly until things collapse completely. While I think China's stance of one-per-family is too extreme (and leads to a lot of discarded female children whose parents wanted sons) a two-child per family limit is much more sensible. While many parents will fill their quota, some will not, leading to a slow decrease in the population overall. The question is how to enforce it. Without a pseudo-totalitarian regime in place, that level of control over the lives of people would be impossible.

 

[Colour Scientist]

I think they should be allowed to have as many children as they want to have.

And, where is the spare planet you're going to need to house, feed and supply them?

Yeah, because given the choice people are obviously going to opt to churn out 20 children.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I'm with the immortal Sir David Attenborough on this.

Prescriptive population control measures don't work. At best, they just don't work. At worst, they lead to awful human rights abuses like forced abortions and sterilizations, female infanticide and so forth, and that's not even considering that it's short hop down the the street into the wonderful world of eugenics.

The way to reduce population growth is to give women more autonomy over their reproductive choices. In every case where this happens, we see a significant reduction in birth rates, because really.. no woman wants to risk premature death or serious health complications by being forced to squirt out 15 children a decade half of whom will die in early childhood.

There's another point sir David didn't make but which I would also broadly support, which is the sheer irony of people in the developed world lecturing about population growth, something which is primarily occuring in the developing world, while consuming 60% of the world's resources. The sad fact is that if the planet does run out of food, you'll probably all be able to sit comfortably through it munching cheeseburgers and watching billions of people starve to death on TV.

In fact, this is already happening, it's just going to get worse as climate change intensifies. Do you genuinely think you will react differently?

 

[Arakasi]

I'm all for going extinct.
We could all have so much more fun as a species if we got to stop worrying about the future.

Though I don't like the premise of the poll, you shouldn't force anyone to do anything.
What should be done, is similar to what is done in China with the 1 child policy, except for with two children.
Basic idea- Your first 2 children get their education, and whatever else they can think of, payed by the government, if you want any more, you're going to have to pay for them yourselves.
Of course, this only works in societies with gender equality (as China found out the hard way).

 

[RyuujinZERO]

I think they should be allowed to have as many children as they want to have.

And, where is the spare planet you're going to need to house, feed and supply them?

Yeah, because given the choice people are obviously going to opt to churn out 20 children.

You have no sense of statistics do you...

For every family who has more than two kids. One family has to have only one child to maintain some semblance of stability.

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/World%20Population.JPG

As we can clearly see, the CURRENT rate of growth is entirely unsustainable - sure we have spare land now, but at current rate of growth by 2100 we definatly will not; that ladies is what we call an exponential curve if you paid attention in maths.

A minority of people are going to go off and have 20... 10 or even 5 kids. But that's still 3 kids too many in a world where juvenile deaths are nearly zero in the developed world.

 

[gunny1993]

I'm going to play devil's advocate and say that only people who can afford to have children should be allowed, poorer families with larger amounts of children are larger drains on the social wealth and therefore are not beneficial.

 

[Terminal Blue]

A minority of people are going to go off and have 20... 10 or even 5 kids. But that's still 3 kids too many in a world where juvenile deaths are nearly zero in the developed world.

Kind of irrelevant, as populations are only rising in the developed world due to immigration. Without significant immigration, we would be seeing negative growth rates in most developed countries, perhaps even population crises like the one brewing in Japan.

 

[Tommeh Brownleh]

No children for any couples. We need to just be phased out. We had our chance, we screwed up the planet, somehow or another we're still alive.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

Seeing as my mum came from a large family (7 kids) I'm not at all opposed to the idea of large families. However logistically it is a problem. Unless we expand off planet to self sustaining colonies things are going to get very bad rather quickly.

 

[zumbledum]

i dont think limiting the number of offspring per couple is the way to go about it, id make people pass a parenting test and do it that way, have to get a licence to breed. dont want to do it fine go live outside the wall!

 

[Matthew Kjonaas]

I would say two or less since not everyone wants kids and if we let the stupid people have as many kids as they want than we may end up with way to many people that do not understand just how bad it would be without the limit.

 

[Meatspinner]

Earth has space and food for a few billions more. It's making sure everybody gets food that is the problem. It's a problem with socioeconomic and such and such.

And as far as reducing birth rates goes, poverty and poor/no education go hand in hand with high birth rates.

Better to treat the disease than use some draconian methods to treat the symptomes.

 

[annoyinglizardvoice]

Depends a lot on the couple in question, but not going above two for most would be sensible.

 

[kickassfrog]

I think you can't really force people to stop at one or two children, given that we're way over the sustainable, eco-friendly population level.

I do wish people would just realise it on their own and not have 12 kids though.

It's primarily religion's fault though. Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam (as well as several others, I'm sure) all teach people to have multiple kids, because more kids= more followers= more money for the religious leaders.

Also, I hate children, so can I sell my child quota to someone else for money?

EDIT: Actually, we should have the good grace to go extinct. Stupid, annoying people should stop copulating first.

 

[ace_of_something]

Well, considering I'm a twin and the youngest of six. I'm going to say no. Just no.

In the united states if it weren't for the massive amount of immigrants we take in our death rate would actually be higher than our birth rate. So at this point it would just be shooting ourselves in the foot. Speaking as a foster parent I can say there are a lot of people who really need to stop having kids but those are precisely the kinds of people that no amount of government control/programs would stop them.