Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aero!apple.com From: bdelan@apple.com (Brian Delaney) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Child making and rearing ( Mild Soapbox ) Message-ID: <9584@goofy.Apple.COM> Date: 5 Aug 90 20:36:30 GMT References: <10848@cs.utexas.edu> Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Lines: 98 Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org Status: R In article <10848@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.EDU (Russell Turpin) writes: > What has yet to be explained is why parenting requires more > subsidization in this society. Do we have too few children? > Do parents feel that the material sacrifices of parenting are > too great for the rewards of this choice? This is a very important point. I've heard the complaint that without parental leave et al, that many couples could not afford to have children. Well, so what? The owner of the business, whether a man or a woman, is not in business to subsidize someone's desire to wiggle upstream and spawn. Maybe these people *can't* afford to have children. At least without affecting their standard of living. And it is not the business man or woman's job to make it affordable for them. After all, why stop at children? There are Ferrari's, yachts. . . . . I understand the angle that this is no different from allowing vacation. It is a perk to encourage quality people to remain with a company. I even agree with this, as long as the business is allowed to decide for themselves whether a particular employee is worth the cost. A man or woman who wants 6 months to bear a child brings tremendous cost onto a company; hiring a temporary worker, dealing with a worker who cannot be there in real time, possible re-training when the leave is over, etc. It should be up to the business to decide if a particular employee is productive enough to make up for these costs. If the employee *is* worth this, then the business will provide it out of simple self-interest. If the employee is not this productive, why should the business have to foot the bill for someone wanting to be a parent? What is really being said here is that having children is some sort of "right". And that it is the responsibility of the businesman or woman to finance this "right." I don't buy this. People have a "right" to affordable health care. They do not have a "right" to bring still more individuals into the world to enjoy that health care unless they can demonstrate the ability to provide for those persons on their own. The notion seems to be, "I'll have children just because I want to, and if I can't afford to do this on my own, without altering my lifestyle, then business or the government will just have to take up the slack." I understand, and agree with, the observation that parental leave improves the quality of life, for both the parent and any children. I'm all for "quality of life." However, remember the "Zero Population Growth" campaign of a few years back? Were the problems of pollution and resource depeletion suddenly solved while I wasn't looking? A decision to have children is a personal one. All of these parental rights programs take the cost of having children and distribute it across the whole population. Essentially, some of the costs of raising a child become "hidden" from the person making the decision to have a child. Between the "consciousness raising" leaflets extolling the virtues of lower population, and the financial incentives that such parental leave programs provide, which do you think will influence people more strongly? As Gloria Steinem said, checkbook stubs are the most direct indicators of our *real* values. The question of the "quality of life" for the child doesn't come up untill the parent decides to make it one by having the child in the first place. Thus, the real issue is one of the "quality of life" for the potential parent, the one who just "really wants" to have a child. The one who feels that their "quality of life" demands that they be able to have a child. Having already decided that they are *going* to have a child, then they insist that the lack of daycare, etc, affects the "quality of life" of both themselves and their children. Which is true, after a fashion, but only because they couldn't resist the temptation to breed. Maybe parental rights programs like this won't increase our population by much. However, Americans consume more of the world's resources per capita than any other nation. If you want to be international about it, how many starving Ethiopian children could be fed with the resources that one American child would consume? There is another angle here as well. Suppose we have ten million dollars in the bank. We could spend it on "quality of life" issues. Say, invest it in a day care center. This is spending money on something that we want today. It makes our life more pleasant. This is what might be called "investing in consumption." Or, we could apply this money toward, say, replacing our out-moded steel mills with ones that are more efficient and pollute less. This would improve our air, make our steel indistry more competitve on the international market, and thus help solve some of the unemployment problem in the Mid-West. This doesn't just help us. It helps our children, and our children's children. One might call this "investing in production." Now, I've horribly, maybe even criminally, simplified the issue here. I realize this. After all, one could argue that improved day care will produce a generation of brilliant children who will solve all the world's problems. The point I'm trying to make is that evey expenditure of money we make involves trade offs. There is the problem of "opportunity cost." The question is not, "Wouldn't mandatory day care be nice?" The list of things that would be nice to have is nearly infinite. The question is, "Is this the *best* allocation of limited resources amongst the many competing alternatives?" Our economy is already uncompetitive with many foreign nations. This gap is getting wider, not narrower, as time goes on. What will history say of us? Will some future historian observe that while we had the world's largest budget defecit, a moribund steel industry, rampant unemployment, a deteriorating environment, and a slipping technological edge; that we decided to spend money assuring that those people with jobs could take 6 months off to have children? For some reason I am reminded of that old truism from the Romans, that democracy will destroy itself one the people realize that they can vote themselves bread and circus. . . . . . . I've babbled on long enough here, so . . . . . . . ************************************************************************** Brian "High Tech Sex and Affordable Firepower" Delaney Disclaimer: NOBODY, least of all Apple, thinks the way I do. **************************************************************************