

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Children, Education, and Status










In summary, children used to be:
  • self-sufficient at an early age;
  • submissive to adults;
  • the only path to adult status

Posted by Sister Y at 1:46 AM
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  1. The impact that technology is having on the economy, will likely lead to even lower birth rates. 30 will soon become the new 18, as the age children leave home. There simply are not enough jobs being created to employ all of the college graduates every year. This will put even more financial strain on parents.
  2. Sister Y, I agree with the Nayaka definition of children! But having accepted the definition for children, children's rights are better formulated in the West!
  3. I think the 1% return on investment comment is interesting. It might be informative to look at alternative options for investment. I would imagine subsistence farmers have very few places where they can generate better returns.

    1% ROI over 25 years to ensure you have a caretaker in old age is better than 0% ROI with no old age insurance. The subsistence farmer is effectively creating a social safety net program.
  4. The idea of being childless is now receiving coverage in that most conservative of papers, London's Financial Times:
  5. We are all here because our mothers were irresponsible sluts.
  6. To continue on the previous thread, here are some of the problems I see with your theory:

    1. I really don't see how it fits the historical data on which countries had the earliest decline in fertility. (To give the link again for reference:

    Would you actually argue that the factors you describe manifested themselves in France decades before England, and in England decades before Germany?

    2. How would you explain the high fertility that persisted in Anglo-Saxon societies until at least the mid-to-late 19th century, through the ages when in these societies it was expected that children should leave the parents' home as soon as they were old enough to provide for themselves? (And, in addition, where easy exit to the colonies and the frontier made any real patriarchal authority over anyone but pre-adolescent children impossible.)

    At the very least, if your theory is true, these factors should have implied dramatically lower Anglo-Saxon fertility in the 18th and 19th centuries relative to places with strong extended families and no easy exit. But that wasn't the case, as far as I know.

    3. How do you explain the post-WW2 baby boom? It certainly didn't come at a time when any of the factors you mention were weakening.

  7. if this is a true reflection why is there so much over population?
  8. Simply put, birthrates decline when the status or women is increased.

    For an interesting story read...

    "... the Church was not only the biggest feudal landowner with an average 20-30% of all fertile land in the whole of Europe as Church property, but therefore also suffered the severest losses in income from the losses in serfs due to the plague. Hence the Church's intent to repopulate its estates with serfs. [Basically, serfs at that time led a life of slavery].

    So we are no longer surprised to find that as early as 1360 authorities began to execute "wise women" and midwives in their villages [46]. We now understand what the Inquisitors had in mind when they wrote:

    "No one is more dangerous and harmful to the Catholic Faith than the midwives," [47]

    preaching that procreation is a duty ordained by God, where the Catholic Faith simply meant the dominating position of the Church in medieval economy. [The general populace] considered birth control as "good" or "white" magic, just as people today do not want an unlimited number of children. For this reason midwives and "wise women," prominent in the authorities' witchcraft accusations, seldom appear to have been accused of being witches by the populace (who considered them their only source of medical help)."

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  3. Fear of death is not love of life.

  4. @Ian_HT completely my own fault of course







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  12. @bswud thanks!

  13. @realmattforney you're too real the rest of the time






  19. how are those belmont "marriages" going lol 

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