[LMB] Now ON topic! was, Gender roles

[Azalais Aranxta]

On Wed, 20 Jun 2007, Laura Gallagher wrote:

> Thinking further on EoA and replicators and such.  I think one
> of the things I like best about Athos is that it sounds as
> close as can be achieved to "every child a wanted child".
> Sometimes it makes me wish not only that we had replicators,
> but that we had to use them.  Of Beta Colony and its control of
> the gonads.  I'd like it if more people were thinking about
> that postpartum long-term commitment.  But - I can't imagine
> trusting governments to manage that control, so just as well.

I used to feel that way, but who, really, is the government?  We
are, ultimately.  And the situation right now in my opinion is
getting sufficiently dire that if the technology existed, I'd be
sorely tempted to support such a solution.  Of course, part of
the problem is poverty, and if the conditions which cause that
could be fixed, it would be less problematic.

I really believe very strongly that all children should be wanted
children.  But that may not be enough.  Humans are stress
breeders.  The worse conditions get, the more children we have
and the earlier we have them.  Our instincts tell us that if
we're not going to necessarily make it, we need to pass our
genetic heritage on.  The main reason I'm so solidly and strongly
against 12-18 year olds having babies, period, isn't that I think
they make bad parents necessarily (we can probably all think of
at least one situation where a kid who became a parent was a very
good one); it's that very rarely does it happen to 12-18 year
olds who know they have a bright future.  Kids with a lot to look
forward to don't WANT to have kids yet.

I'm not positing a Marching Morons theory or any such elitist
hogwash (I was born into a nest of elitists and bigots, and have
been an elitist, will always be something of an elitist at
heart--much as I do love some of them, I know from elitist
hogwash);  but more and more, scientific evidence is building up
that stressors in early childhood--information-poor environments,
lack of emotional support--do damage that can't completely be
reversed.  Even if children raised under stressful situations
grow up to be functional adults, they achieve less than they
would have otherwise.  I look at this research and try very hard
not to think about what I might have done if things had been
different.  It is the single most important cause of the slow
leftward drift of my politics after the past five years, probably
even more than Marna's influence--I can be inspired/influenced by
people I respect, but hard data can't be argued with.  Not that
I'm going to turn into B. Ross Ashley or Nicholas Rosen any time
soon, but.

Don't hate me, Jackson's Whole fans, but I'm slowly going Betan.
...it must have been the therapy, lol.

~malfoy :)
****************************************************************
Azalais Aranxta (~malfoy)
ataniell93 on LiveJournal and Vox
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/malfoymadness

"I know the true world, and you know I do. But we needn't let it
think we all bow down." --Christopher Morley