ring is officially in the running for my 'hero of the week' award

We need to have assembly line style efficiency to performing vasectomies.

And I think if a guy has fathered two kids with women he is not married to, that he should have to get one done.

Or if a woman has two kids with two guys that she isn't married to, then she should be cut off too.

I just think of how hard it is for parents to qualify for adoptions, yet any unprepared couple can make a baby and bring it into a cruel world.


And 'child care' should be a junior high class, and show how hard it is.

ASU-

Exactly which babies do you propose should be sacrificed on the alter of "teaching high school kids how hard it is to change diapers, burp, feed, etc." ? Yours? Because there's no fucking way my baby is being "raised" by an unwilling highschool stranger for even 1 minute.

Sacrificed on the alter???????? This is not very close to what ASU2003 actually said.:shakehead:

Lindy

Lindy,

Exactly how does one properly drive home the point of "how hard it is to provide child care" without making them feed/change/burp a baby for a few hours/days?

What do you think will teach them? Watching a whole season of MTV's Sixteen and Pregnant? They just laugh and don't take it seriously.

So, since the only way to "teach them" is to make them do it, are you willing to volunteer your baby for that lesson? Not me.

You could always have them observe a daycare, attended by trained professionals.Might be better, in fact, to provide them with a range of ages.
Though honestly I started babysitting at age 12 and I could never get enough kid-time, it was way too much fun. The process might have the exact opposite effect of what you're going for.

Babysitting and observing daycare are not anywhere close to actually having a child, like not even on the same planet. Any class that comes anywhere close to imparting knowledge of reality is going to drive that home in a big way. Not that I don't think it's possible for such a course to cause teenagers to actively want to produce a baby, but I think it's pretty unlikely.

---

As for the justification for having children, it boils down to the same justification every person ever has used for anything they have ever done: 'because I fucking wanted to'

I'm sure MTV or some educational company could make a show about single mothers and how hard their lives are, and how much they have had to change things because they have to take care of a child. And learning about how to take care of babies, toddlers, pre-teens and teenagers from adults would be better than letting them find out the hard way.

I remember seeing a tv-show, in which they gave a mechanic baby to a couple with no kids yet or a teen, who was pregnant, to make them experience, what it's like to have a baby and how much a baby will need attention. The doll would demand feeding and diapering. It would wake you up at night and it would cry, when things weren't right.

I couldn't find a link to this, but found another kind of doll instead. This sounds a bit creepy, how they are made. This baby doll is for those, who really want one.

Not Child's Play: 'I Feel Like I Have a Real Baby'

That doll was part of an elective home-ec course at my high school. I never took the course. The people I knew who did take it... still had kids early... but it did break up quite a few couples who thought it would be "romatic" to share their fake baby.

They already HAVE! It's called sixteen and pregnant and millions of teenagers laugh at it each week.

Sigh. Clearly you do not have children. Clearly you have no idea what it is like to string together 3, hour and a half naps between feedings with an 8:00 meeting in front of a CEO. For a teenager, that would be 3 naps before their big math final. The baby does not care that you have a math final. The CEO/teacher does not care that you have a baby. Both have to be done. You are exhausted. Every time you finally get to sleep, the baby starts crying for it's next changing/boob/burping. Then you have to transfer and label the breast milk and put it in the freezer. Then you have to wash the equipment from the breast pump before going back to bed for hopefully another hour and a half.

You, sitting in a chair fully rested, with a coke and a smile could not possibly grasp what that feels like for 6 months straight. It is unrelenting. There is no show that anyone could watch which could prepare a well-fed, well-rested teen for the rigors of a newborn. It is naive to think so.

...and it is all worth it. There is absolutely no greater feeling than being a dad. An adult dad, that is.

I like how this thread has successfully turned out to be a conversation about how to stop people from having babies.

We started with the "ghetto mama" and now we've moved onto "Lolita."

The solution isn't in one specific thing, whether highly technical or program based. It's actually quite multidisciplinary and multifaceted. The solution is in fighting poverty, improving access to both sex education and higher education, and removing the barriers women face with regard to vocational pursuits and economic feasibility. Though there are also problems with regard to gender and sexuality in society and media influence, but that's another story.

With no justification I'm not unhappy having had birth control fail me.