Poll: Maximum Children Allowed per Couple

[mayney93]

Coming from a rather large family, 1 of many, i would say that you should only be granted the number of children you want as long as you have the means to support such a family, i.e, can't have 6 children if you only have enough to buy / rent a 3 bedroomed house, etc, it's just not fair.

 

[RyuujinZERO]

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.

As much as i love to bash religion, thats a very fallacious argument.

The bulk of the rampant population growth comes from cultures where it is merely the norm to have many kids; usually due to high infant morality rates in the nation's recent history, often there is social status attached to having a large family (In much the same way some American families own two humvees as a status symbol even though they KNOW it's bad for the planet).

Very few religions outright state large families are a must or contraception is bad. And I don't believe it's for convoluted reasons such as power either

 

[FamoFunk]

As many children as you're able to afford.

I think some people forget there are a lot of people in the world who have no children or stick to one. Just because someone has 3 doesn't mean you have to have 1 because of them.

Plus, with the ageing population and people living longer than ever, we need children and the next generation so they can look after them.

 

[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.

As much as i love to bash religion, thats a very fallacious argument.

The bulk of the rampant population growth comes from cultures where it is merely the norm to have many kids; usually due to high infant morality rates in the nation's recent history, often there is social status attached to having a large family (In much the same way some American families own two humvees as a status symbol even though they KNOW it's bad for the planet).

Very few religions outright state large families are a must or contraception is bad. And I don't believe it's for convoluted reasons such as power either

You're probably right.
I know in some countries having a dozen kids is the norm because that increases the chances of some surviving to adulthood, but should we not focus on helping them rather than expanding our own populations.

That's also why I hate people who hate GM crops. Don't defend them, because I won't listen. We need GM to support our too high population.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

For the sake of argument I'll say zero, at least for a decade or so. Let a decent chunk of our population die off before we insist on filling the gap to exceed the number of deaths.



As far as enforcement, obviously you can't. not without turning your government into a kind of totalitarian "big brother" state. So you just discourage breeding by increasing the incentive to the alternative. For example tax credits for households with no children. Decreasing returns for every child until the number of children in the household equals or exceeds the number of adults in the home.

 

[FamoFunk]

the only way to control the 3rd world birth rate is to educate the women that they don't need so many children (5 or more is too much)

Why just the Women though? Why not teach the Men in 3rd world countries not to rape, because rape by Men in 3rd world countries is really high. Also selling Women as sex slaves, these countries don't have access to condoms or other means of birth control we're lucky to have.

We have to remember the reason they have 12 kids is because half of them won't make it past the age of 20 or something, which would mean when the parents are old and frail they'd have no one to look after them or get food and water. Things we're lucky enough to pay random people to do here.

 

[legend of duty]

As long as you can take care of them go for it. I cant stand watching people continue to have kids even though they've been living on the government for their entire adult lives.

 

[In Search of Username]

1, but an unlimited number of adopted children. Seriously I don't get why more people don't adopt. All the, er, fun, of raising a child without the horror of childbirth.

But yeah, as others have pointed out, actually implementing any measures like these generally leads to a lack of human rights - even if you implemented it purely through something like financial incentives it'd still have a greater effect on the poor than the rich, so that'd just be another problem. Much as this policy seems necessary, it just isn't feasible.

I'm all for getting rid of this perception we seem to have that babies are the best thing in the world and your life is incomplete if you haven't had one though. Changing people's perceptions is the only real way to do it.

Of course, this will never happen because we're a bunch of idiots, and eventually it'll just be necessary to have the kind of population control they have in China, or die. Bye bye human rights!

Man, we're screwed.

 

[BNguyen]

if we kept the maximum number of children per couple to 2 and disregarded all others who couldn't produce children or who don't want to, then the population would decrease rather rapidly not only because of the death rate but because of a decreased deepness of the gene pool which would basically allow any sort of virus or disease to kill us off. With a smaller population the chances for defects to turn up would increase as well with fewer potential and willing mates existing.
While a smaller population would be easier to maintain the ramifications for having it would not outweigh that of having a larger, more diverse population - but really in places that have ultra high population densities should incite laws for limiting the number of children, such places like India and China, but also places like in Africa where STDs are rampant as well as starvation.

 

[Heaven's Guardian]

Why is everybody consistently wrong about this subject on the Internet? Developed countries simply do not have a birth rate high enough to sustain population size. Is the birth rate currently too high in certain developing nations? Yes, but that is a direct result of the economic status of those countries, and birth rates fall as economic growth grows. There is a reason that countries are desperately trying to craft policies that lead people to have more children; the birth rate is far too low. Populations are aging like mad because there are fewer younger people being born in each generation, and only mass immigration is saving these countries from ruin as the elderly retire. As world incomes become more equitable and borders tighten, this will no longer be a sustainable solution for many countries, especially as anti-immigrant reactions will rise as people feel like foreigners in their own countries. Please, let's actually look at the facts and stop this nonsense over unfounded worries. The world birth rate does not reflect the trends in the developed world, and as the world develops, decreasing family sizes will bring the rest of the world in line with these trends.

Also, even if this were a problem, this solution is morally disgusting, but other people can handle that here.

 

[In Search of Username]

Wow, just wow. I didnt think there were people who actually thought this was an intelligent idea outside of china. I mean fuck are you completely insane? Putting a cap on the number of children you can have and forced abortions is not something a sane person should be thinking.

'I'm not advocating any living 3rd + child be shot, nor that if a family has a 3rd child that it be aborted.' - Guessing you missed that part. And no, nobody thinks it's a nice thing to do, just that it's necessary.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

Or we could use our land better.

Spoiler: World Map

[http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2010/04/15/cartograms/]

You might think 'uhh... what about Russia?'
Well, that map warps countries based on the population compared to land. Russia and Canada are squished up because they have a lot of unused land.

And anyway, you can't dictate how many children someone is allowed to have without some infanticide. Because what if someone has triplets? Are you just going to kill one of them? If so, you're a sick sonofabitch. If not, you're inconsistent with your beliefs.

 

[BNguyen]

For the sake of argument I'll say zero, at least for a decade or so. Let a decent chunk of our population die off before we insist on filling the gap to exceed the number of deaths.



As far as enforcement, obviously you can't. not without turning your government into a kind of totalitarian "big brother" state. So you just discourage breeding by increasing the incentive to the alternative. For example tax credits for households with no children. Decreasing returns for every child until the number of children in the household equals or exceeds the number of adults in the home.

So why should a family that has fewer children keep more of their paycheck than one that has let's say two more children? A family that has to pay higher taxes would eventually become homeless and/or living off of the government. either that or the stress rate would cause mental breakdowns and increase the amount of violence. Either way, a family that has more mouths to feed needs a bigger amount of money in order to survive even if the amount of people living in the same family was formed under less than reasonable means

 

[BNguyen]

Wow, just wow. I didnt think there were people who actually thought this was an intelligent idea outside of china. I mean fuck are you completely insane? Putting a cap on the number of children you can have and forced abortions is not something a sane person should be thinking.

'I'm not advocating any living 3rd + child be shot, nor that if a family has a 3rd child that it be aborted.' - Guessing you missed that part. And no, nobody thinks it's a nice thing to do, just that it's necessary.

I've never seen abortion as necessary, to me it just seems like the easy way out to people who don't want to take care of the children they foolishly create through unprotected or unplanned sex. And by unplanned I mean having sex when you are obviously fertile but don't believe that you are capable of getting pregnant by some arbitrary means or that you're just sex-crazed and want to have sex dozens of times without thinking about it

 

[Darkmantle]

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.

Have you ever looked at those stats by country? Because in developed countries we are RIGHT on the border of a replacement birthrate in all 1st world countries. It's constant in every case, the more education, access to contraceptives and equal rights for women, the closer we get to replacement birthrates. It's 3rd world countries that are making our global population soar, so doing anything in the states or Canada to curb global population will do fuck all. The best way is to actually help the 3rd world get on it's feet.

And for every family that has 5 kids, half a dozen will have one kid. It evens itself out.

 

[Xan Krieger]

2 maximum and this is one of the few cases where human rights don't matter, there's bigger things like human survival.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

For the sake of argument I'll say zero, at least for a decade or so. Let a decent chunk of our population die off before we insist on filling the gap to exceed the number of deaths.



As far as enforcement, obviously you can't. not without turning your government into a kind of totalitarian "big brother" state. So you just discourage breeding by increasing the incentive to the alternative. For example tax credits for households with no children. Decreasing returns for every child until the number of children in the household equals or exceeds the number of adults in the home.

So why should a family that has fewer children keep more of their paycheck than one that has let's say two more children? A family that has to pay higher taxes would eventually become homeless and/or living off of the government. either that or the stress rate would cause mental breakdowns and increase the amount of violence. Either way, a family that has more mouths to feed needs a bigger amount of money in order to survive even if the amount of people living in the same family was formed under less than reasonable means

By the same argument why should a person who has engaged in the relatively unimpressive act of procreating get to keep more of theirs? Why should we reward those who lack the foresight to make sure that they can take care of their families without additional assistance?

 

[dagens24]

This thread makes me sick. Procreation is a fundamental human right that should NEVER be limited.

EDIT: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/07/07/china-forced-abortion.html

 

[Pinkamena]

Wouldn't it be better to allow a little more than two children? I mean, not all people are able to reproduce, some children might die before reaching maturity, some people might not want to have children at all, etc.

 

[Delsana]

2 Is a nice number.

Now, if they have twins and already had one kid.. or they had quints, or quads, or some strange thing happen... those babies are allowed to stay.