Plan9

Shocker title aside, what right do we have to reproduce? And by "right" I'm suggesting justification.

Let's examine the reasons why we think we deserve to have kids in a thread and see where it goes.

...

Hi, I'm Plan9. I'm painfully Caucasian and comfortably in the middle socioeconomic bracket. I graduated at the top of my class at a Major University, sport a lukewarm IQ, and have zero debt. I drive a sensible (boring) automobile, floss daily, and wear a bicycle helmet (dork). I have roughly two years worth of survival savings in my bank accounts. I can run a half marathon with little warmup, eat a high fiber diet, don't use tobacco products, and my doctor says I'm in prime physical condition for my age.

But what right do I have to reproduce? Have I earned it? Am I good raw materials? You could say I have desirable traits (physical/mental), a good foundation ("upstanding citizen," good job prospects, and family/friends safety net), and adequate resources (da Benjamins), but are those the only requirements? Something tells me the world isn't exactly hurting for more middle class white people.


...

Based on daytime TeeVee (Jerry, Maury, Dr. Phil), we all know that idiots reproduce like rabbits. You don't have to have desirable traits, a good foundation, or adequate resources to blow a load into your trailer park honey. You don't even have to have two braincells to rub together to fuck. There aren't any 1984-style Thought Police to stop you from reproducing, being a shitty parent, or setting your offspring up for failure.

See, I don't think I deserve to have kids. I think it would be irresponsible for me to reproduce given how many other people are reproducing for no reason other than "accidents," boredom (we're married, what next?) or to milk meager government benefits. I can't jump on that bandwagon.

What, if anything, should stop me from getting a vasectomy tomorrow and living the dream?

I just can't justify reproduction. Any thoughts, TFPers? What about you?

If you don't have children but are planning on it, what is your justification?

If you have children, how did you justify it? What's the logic?

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

SecretMethod70

Trying to apply logic to biology is a futile endeavor. Logically, it doesn't make much sense for anyone to have children on the individual level. Except we've evolved to want to reproduce. This isn't a function of higher intelligence, so trying to look at it through the lens of higher intelligence doesn't really make sense.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

Plan9

Did you not check the username next to the OP? Higher intelligence need not apply. I'm just thinking practically.

Why would you want to have kids when you could save the money/time/effort/sleepless nights and buy a Ferrari?

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Hektore

What right have we to attend universities, own cars and live comfortably when there are so many poor people? So few people can even get a safe meal, and how many of us throw perfectly edible food away at least some of the time.

What right have we to do anything?

We do the things that we want to do, for whatever reason. Without diving into the whole, what is 'meaning/purpose' and and where do we get meaning/purpose' conversation, we do what makes us happy. At least, we do the things we think will make us happy (note the difference).

Let me ask you a slightly different related question.

What right has anyone to stop you?

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The advantage law is the best law in rugby, because it lets you ignore all the others for the good of the game.

Plan9

Well, that's the problem with the vast majority of society. Nobody stops anybody.

Me? I stop myself. I could say it's fiscally responsible, environmentally responsible, etc.

Greedy treehugger is just as logical and populating white jesus' army, isn't it?

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Idyllic

All I can think of as far as a "right" to have children is, Thank God that doesn't stop people from conceiving. Shit parents or not, if people had to prove themselves as good parental material the world would most probably be vacant. My wife beater dad, and depressed mom probably should never have reproduced, but I am soooooooo grateful they did, even when life sucks, at least I get to live it.

It's not a right, it's a gift. One that, when you are ready to open it, can be THE most rewarding and devastating experience a human can know. If one has to justify having a child, then maybe they should not have one, there is no true justification for procreation except the perpetuation of a species and the base desire to proliferate, albeit outside of farm hands and donor siblings. It is the experiment of living, of life, of experiencing that which changes your reality. It is creation, a moment in which tangible effort spills forth from a body and, if your ready, captivates existence. It is the awakening to more than just living til you die, but living so that others may live beyond you.

I do believe forced sterilization "Compulsory sterilization" still exists for some criminals and mentally disabled individuals, therefore, it is not necessarily a right if you are proven to be grossly inadequate as a parent.

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you can tell them all you want but it won't matter until they think it does

p.s. I contradict my contradictions, with or without intention, sometimes.

ARTelevision

Where would a so-called "right" come from? From God? From the laws of Karma? As I understand the way humans use the word "right," it seems to mean something like political power that has been gained by force, negotiation, barter, economic exchange, or just plain bullying someone or some group into acknowledging a behavior as allowed or acceptable.

I don't really think about having such things as "rights."

I exist within a bunch of power relationships.

As for the question about having children...the less the better for us all, IMO.

I'd be in favor of any law that limits or reduces the number of humans born on the planet in any circumstance.

When it comes to people, less is definitely better.

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create evolution

Plan9

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Baraka_Guru

I dunno, ideally it would be the desire to have a loving family that includes children.

When I contemplate whether I want my own children, I don't base my ultimate decision on what other people are doing—especially not those who are doing it "wrong."

9er, you make it sound like everyone's doing it wrong. Turn off the TeeVee.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Bill O'Rights

Well, since you put it that way, let's start by assuming that you intend to raise your potential progeny to reflect your values. The next generation will have to be set into place to provide for the offspring of those that should never have been permitted to reproduce. Looking at the question from that facet, it quickly becomes clear that you not only have the "right", and the "justification", but you also have a responsibility to sire taxable producers to support the next generation of non-producers. So the question is not so much what right do you have to reproduce, but how long do we continue to allow those that cannot take care of the children that they already have, to continue to propagate. Not a goddamn thing. Look, from what I can tell, you're in the process of setting up the foundation to have a very successful life for yourself. In less time than you think, you'll be able to ditch the boring sensible automobile and get yourself a fast and shiny sports car. You will be able to have a home that will be the envy of all that you know. Your clothes won't be from J.C. Penney's. But...then what? For me, the kids are what makes it all worthwhile. So, no...you don't have a "right" to have children. But, if it's justification that you're looking for, the feeling that you get from looking in on your sleeping children makes the minivan in driveway, and the foot lacerations from stepping on stray Lego's all worth it. Otherwise, what are you really working for?

__________________
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony

"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

levite

Meh. I plan to reproduce because I have awesome, awesome gifts to pass on, both genetic and otherwise. (Humility among them.)

Seriously, though, anyone's got a right to reproduce. Because it's a dice roll. Just because two people are awesome doesn't mean their offspring won't be stupid assholes. And just because two people are mouth-breathing, illiterate, possum-rapers doesn't mean their kids couldn't be brilliant, graceful, and loving. Genetics and enivironment both play their important parts in shaping us, but both are still in large measure subject to our own choices. That's just the way it goes, dude.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

Zeraph

I don't think I should reproduce. I have too many medical problems (seizures, sleep apnea, and probably more intense fibromyalgia when I'm older) that I don't want to pass on. I also don't think I would make a good husband (father yes, husband no) which equals unhappy family usually.

Hektore

Well, should people be stopped from reproducing? Is greedy tree-hugger more worthwhile in some way than birthing the next generation of religious fundamentalists and/or welfare cases?

You seem to think it is, but does the same logic follow through for everyone? Does it have to (apply to everyone)?

When you can answer, with universal certainty and applicability, the question of why one particular lifestyle is more 'worthy' than another, please let me know.

__________________
The advantage law is the best law in rugby, because it lets you ignore all the others for the good of the game.

The_Jazz

I saw this thread when it first went up (I think I may have even seen the first version, too), and I've been thinking about it all day.

Everyone and everything has the right to survive and reproduce. Usually that costs something else it's ability to survive and reproduce, but that's nature for you.

So there we go - everyone has the right to breed if they see fit. If they don't, so be it.

That part is pretty simple to me. You exist therefore you have the right to reproduce.

What's more complex is whether or not we have the right, as Art and the Chinese would have it, to tell people NOT to reproduce, especially if they've already done so once. Personally, I say "no" because that's about the cruelest thing I can think of.

The_Wife recently told me that she doesn't feel like our family is complete. I honestly disagree. I like only having 2 kids - even numbers, we're almost out of diapers, etc. But how can I tell the woman I love that she's wrong about this? Hint: I can't.

Honestly, I really and truly only care about one penis in this world - mine. That's the one I'm responsible for, and I don't give a rat's ass what other guys do with theirs. You stick it in whomever you want and wrap it or not. Me = big old cup of don't care. But if you were to try to convince me that I don't have a right to reproduce to my face, I'll probably take a swing at you, regardless of how much I know you're going to kick my ass.

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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
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"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Plan9

Excellent. Self-imposed eugenics would be the point of this thread.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

KirStang

In class, so I'll keep it short, but:

In China, your 'right' to reproduce is delimited by the State's right to maintain a level of population consonant with a sustainable future. i.e., The State's interest in maintaining enough food/power/housing/water/aka a good living standard trumps your 'right' to reproduce (more than 1 baby)

Xerxys

Wiki How has an article on this, thank god for the good ol' interwebz ... >>Linky

dlish

The question is, what right do you have to pose the question? every right!

so what right do i have to have kids?

smart, dumb, fat, skinny, happy,unhappy etc etc, (and everything in between) people can justify procreating one way or another? why procreate?
the answer is it's 'because you can'.

People have different reasons to justify their actions (or inactions). some people build motobikes as projects, other people raise families, other do both. do you need to 'justify' it to anyone but yourself or your partner? not really

at the end of the day, people arent metallic objects from the future. They are living, breathing being with feelings, emotions and needs (or wants).

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Plan9

And thus they're not just a hobby like "motobikes." They're a huge responsibility to the individual and society. Requires a lot of thought, no?

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

FuglyStick

Will you be my baby daddy?

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AZIZ! LIGHT!

girldetective

I have no idea.

. . .

The reason that I had children was sex.
The motivation was sex, and love.
The right was natural, inherent as a sexual being.

Yes, I believe there is more to being a fab parent than just the idyllic-for-some pic you paint. If you were to lose your health and support and income/savings, you would need to continue to provide for your children and their well-being in all aspects. This takes, at the very least, interest and interaction and some smarts.

However, the Standard of Care in many states is much less than this, and humans can survive just fine with those too.

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As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons...be cheerful; strive for happiness - Desiderata

Cernunnos

Ontologically speaking, the concept of rights is meaningless. If a woman allows my penis to enter her vagina with the expectation of a possible impregnation, that is justification enough. Lesser animals (and some men) consider mere access to the vagina as sufficient cause, regardless of the means by which it is obtained, so I would consider myself one step higher on the moral ground.

Of course, I've no interest in the acquisition of offspring, so birth control methods are vital allies against that threat.

FelixP

I'm surprised Schopenhauer hasn't been brought up yet.
I suppose it depends on how you look at it. I mean, the world is overpopulated as it is, but do we (as intelligent people) have the obligation to try and reproduce to the point where there are more intelligent people being born than dumbasses? No homo, but Plan9 certainly makes a strong argument for himself (although having never met him, I can't really offer any counterpoints because I don't know many of his negative traits), so does he have the obligation to try and produce as many babies as possible, in the hopes that he and others like him making more kids than the dumbasses on maury, springer, montel, etc?
As it is, we no longer live in a time of natural selection. Now we have welfare, police, firefighters, EMTs, medicare, etc, so it's harder to weed out the idiots, which surely is at least partly why we are so damn overpopulated.

Me personally, I wouldn't mind having a little girl someday, someone I could spoil rotten and nurture and take care of. Of course, I have asthma, bad eye sight, and bad hearing, not to mention my family history of bipolar disorder, numerous cases of suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, heart disease. Granted, I listed only the negatives here, but i think my point remains valid.

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Free will lies not in the ability to craft your own fate, but in not knowing what your fate is. --Me

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Baraka_Guru

We're not overpopulated; we're misusing resources. Well, enough of us are, anyway.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

SecretMethod70

Sorry, I just....... did you really just say that?

YouTube - no homo.

Apologies for the threadjack.

__________________
Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

filtherton

Sex is nice. So far, kids have been a net positive in my life. I don't think that there's a whole lot of justification warranted beyond "I want to have kids."

From the other side, if you are an intelligent, competent, emotionally intelligent person you probably should reproduce, or at least adopt, because the world could use more of your type raising kids.

Natural manhood

Talking about biology ... humans have already broken all boundaries of biology for several milleniums now, in order to breed much more than nature allows us to. In nature, there is are natural barriers to breeding profusely, and especially, the male participation in breeding (and bringing up offsprings) is very limited amongst mammals. While a huge population of males don't breed at all, most of those males who breed do it only a couple of times in their life, that too, towards the latter part of adulthood. Our societies, sought to beat this natural barrier by making the marriage institution and forcing all men to breed.

On top of that, today, the medical science has grown so advanced that mortality rate has gone down immensely, and all of this put together has resulted in a situation where human population has grown out of proportion to a point where mother earth can not bear any more humans on her surface. We've driven out several of the other species on the planet to a point of extinction, many are on the verge of extinction and for the rest we've made life pretty difficult.

The lives of humans themselves have become a great misery, and a large part of the human population is living below the poverty line.

Willravel

Am I intelligent? If so, am I intelligent because of genetics? If so, how much have my genetics contributed to my intellect? If quite a bit, does that mean I will have intelligent offspring? Is intelligence a survival trait?

But yeah, the right to reproduce would seem to be something worth defending during times of underpopulation and something not worth defending during times of overpopulation. That said, it's generally considered to be unethical to force people not to reproduce or to have them rendered unable to reproduce. And clearly people aren't willing to volunteer to any meaningful degree to abstain from having children.

We'll hit the wall, crash, and then probably do it all over again. It'll be a gas.

Plan9

Well, this can be argued... but let's say for the sake of this thread that they're essentially the same problem:

The planet / nature / the environment is waaay outta balance thanks to all the upright apes.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Baraka_Guru

Well, my argument is that it has more to do with how we use/abuse resources than it does with our net population.

If we had a choice between building/re-engineering all our cities with zero-energy buildings populated with self-sustaining societies versus literally decimating the world population and going with the one-child policy, I would like to choose the former. (Okay, that's unfair....but generally I choose the former vs. investing all kinds of efforts into curbing current population trends.)

The solution to our problems have more to do with how we spend our resources and how we treat our biodome planet than it does with our population.

It's not that there are too many of us (not yet, anyway); it's that too many of us are wasteful selfish hogs.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Plan9

Yeah, I think it would be more realistic to suggest a nuclear missile exchange between two major world powers every 100 years as a method of population control. Expecting up-and-coming nations (China, India, etc) to improve their world-shittingness is silly. They're making money.

...

When I see my peers with their kids, I can't help but think that "one could have been enough" or that they didn't really need to have kids because they can't even take care of themselves. Sometimes it's a personal judgment, sometimes its just blatantly obvious. Me? I don't think I should have kids because I'm too selfish. I have no desire to carry the burden of a creature less able to take care of itself than a puppy for several years, along with all the money spent on it that could be used to further myself. I have options... I can pay cash for a PhD or I can father another screaming poo factory.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Honesty

In America men have no rights to reproduction.
Women are in 100% control of the life force, they decide if the baby is going to be born.
Men have no rights to reproduction.

spindles

If having children was a purely financial decision, no one would do it. There are obviously huge reasons to have them, though.

Sure, it involves (fiscal) sacrifices, cleaning up poo/wee/vomit and other huge changes in the parent's lives, but it has heaps of (less tangible) upsides.

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Honesty

That is not altogether true. In America still, having children is a lucrative event if you are receiving government assistance, welfare money.
Not as much as it was 40 years ago, but still somewhat lucrative.

Baraka_Guru

Just curious: do you know what the word lucrative means?

In all seriousness: you're grossly exaggerating.

As an aside: if money were no object, I'd probably have kids by now.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

snowy

It's much more lucrative to have kids in most western European nations than it is to have children in the United States. Welfare isn't what it used to be--there's a reason it's called TEMPORARY Assistance to Needy Families now. By the way, social science research has largely disproved the image of the "welfare queen" in American society--the woman having more and more children to collect more and more welfare.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Plan9

And by lucrative you mean "affording a lifestyle similar to that of the slack-jawed inbreds on Maury." TANF isn't a cushy ride.

Noooooo! Don't do it. How are we supposed go on our Easy Rider adventure if you've got daddy duties?

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Baraka_Guru

But what about the all-you-can-eat Kraft dinner?!

Well, given that you'd have to fund such an adventure, let's just say money will always be an object.

Poverty is great birth control device for the over-educated.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Plan9

That reminds me of something that was brought up in a tiny shot-to-shit Afghan school in a village out near Gardez.

"Afghan girls that go to school don't have family until they're 16."

I guess that's progress. Primary education as a contraceptive in a third world country.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

snowy

Yes.

And 9er, research discussed in a geography course I took last year suggested that when women are better educated, the birth rate drops. Several places in India have lowered their birth rates successfully merely by sending girls to school.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau