This. It always baffles me why people are not shamed more for having kids when they clearly have no resources of place for them in their lives.
At the time of conception, nobody knows how things will turn out in their life a few years down the line. Will I still have that job that allows me to pay my bills? Will I have been bankrupted by an acute medical issue, because I lost my health insurance at a critical moment?
Having kids is a commitment. But you have to take a leap of faith. You can't just undo that commitment later, or walk away from it.
But shaming people for having kids? Have you no heart? How on earth is that going to help with anything? Is it going to make their lives better? Is it going to help the kids?
There is always some uncertainty in life. And yet, we're somehoe able to make decisions despite this uncertainty. However, you take this uncertainty argument to absurd levels - by your logic, no human being should be expected to be responsible for any life decision, ever, because uncertainty.
How about we just presume that having a child without a good, reliable job and some sort of partner (not neccesarilly a heterosexual or even romantic one) it plain stupid?
> Is it going to make their lives better? Is it going to help the kids?
When you shame someone for bad decision, the purpose is not to influence these exact people. The purpose is to create a strong understanding in the whole culture that this is a bad decision, and prevent other people from doing the same.
I think my point didn't come across. I wasn't talking about avoiding responsibility. I simply meant that it's easy to make assumptions. Just because someone has a child and doesn't have the resources to care for it, doesn't mean that it was always that way. Things in life don't always go as planned.
> How about we just presume that having a child without a good, reliable job and some sort of partner (not necessarily a heterosexual or even romantic one) is plain stupid?
Personally, I agree with that statement. But who am I to judge other people on their choice to have kids? That's just not my place.
And I am also a realist - things happen. Live throws curve-balls. Birth control doesn't always work. And sometimes people do things that are not smart in the spur of the moment. Procreation is a very powerful drive.
It seem to me that more and better education and easier/cheaper access to birth control would be a more effective way to help people make smart choices about having children.
As I wrote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18284196 Let's subsidize vasectomies so that they can ideally be gratis. They just have to be done once. No regular visits necessary.
> But shaming people for having kids? Have you no heart?
I have a very big heart. But my heart is a deeply rational one instead of an empathic one (I know, I will never become a diplomat). My big, rational heart is the reason why I became very anti-natalist.
> Sterilization was most frequently recommended by physicians because of a pervasive belief that Puerto Ricans and the poor were not intelligent enough to use other forms of contraception. Physicians and hospitals alike also implemented hospital policy to encourage sterilization, with some hospitals refusing to admit healthy pregnant women for delivery unless they consented to be sterilized. This has been best documented at Presbyterian Hospital, where the unofficial policy for a time was to refuse admittance for delivery to women who already had three living children unless she consented to sterilization. There is additional evidence that true informed consent was not obtained from patients before they underwent sterilization, if consent was solicited at all.
You're assuming that the poster actually cares about these things, and not just shaming people he thinks are below him.
Yes, people should be allowed to make their own decision on whether or not to have a child, but it should be an informed, considered decision, including the cost of supporting a child for their whole life, and not "oh no, the rhythm or pull-out method didn't work, ah well, let's just keep it".
There is, in fact, a massive confluence of reasons why poor people end up having children, and shaming them for doing so instead of helping those reasons will not help anyone.
If we lived on a planet where every person was a rational, level-headed adult, lectures and books would be enough of an education. Sadly, most of the people are irrational and emotional; if you want to steer them towards better life decisions, for their sake as well as society's, shame is a very good tool.
America has a long, ugly history of shaming single mothers, sexual abuse victims, adulterers and interracial and non-heterosexual relationships. I don't think that we should encourage more of it.
> Sadly, most of the people are irrational and emotional; if you want to steer them towards better life decisions, for their sake as well as society's, shame is a very good tool.
Would you use the word 'paternalistic' to describe your views on an ideal society?
This is not true at all. Everyone knows how not to have children, just like everyone knows smoking can cause cancer. People just take the risk anyway. It's basic human irrationality, no amount of education can fix it.
Societal pressure, on the other hand, does have some of the desired effect, even if it's not a "nice thing" like education.
I used to help moderate a LiveJournal community called "amipregnant" and this is a laughably false assertion.
"Yes, you can get pregnant your first time having sex" and "no, you can't get pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat a boy used" were both pretty common sorts of things we had to tell folks.
Otherwise, I think it's self-evident. There's many behaviors that would've been socially unacceptable a hundred years ago, which today are accepted and far more common. For a somewhat related example, consider inter-racial or (to some degree) inter-religious marriages.
Offering free vasectomies (subsidized from tax money) would indeed not a bad idea to help these people before the problem occurs.
/s !
If you mean me: I have good, deep reasons why I do not even want children (these reasons shall by off-topic here). And I live by my words so that other people can follow my anti-natalist example. :-)
Yes, I would rather shame people who are "having kids when they clearly have no resources of place for them in their lives" than spending any of my personal resources on actually helping them, if those are the only two choices I have.
Your empathy in and of itself is worthless. How much of your income are you personally willing to give up to bail out people who make poor choices? Where do you draw the line? I hope we can agree that having children without having the resources to take care of them is a poor choice. All that "neglect and undereducation" is due to that poor choice, first and foremost. Welfare doesn't fix the problem. Just look at all the "angry young people" in France (20% youth unemployment), a country which has some of the strongest welfare programs in the world, including free university education.