If you can't afford children you shouldn't have them.

[MrsArchieTheInventor]

"If you can't afford children you shouldn't have them" [and] "child benefit and tax credits should be abolished" with the mantra that if she choses to be childless she should not be forced to pay for the 'breeding' choices of others.

A Facebook friend of mine. I didn't retaliate.

SArdine - I think the general idea was that women in the UK have more help and support available to them than many other parts of the world.

I don't think there was ever a suggestion that it takes luck to be raped

Sorry halfpast - I do just have to tell you that Women's Refuges are likely to be a thing of the past if the cuts keep going

How would you stop people who are on benefits, from having children. Please do enlighten me.

The point at issue was whether you believe they should, not whether you can stop them or not.

I do not believe people should have kids that other people have to fund. Do you believe they should?

As to how to stop them, I suspect that would depend very much on how much money a state wanted to spend, and its level of desperation. The Chinese had a draconian, albeit cheap and effective model.

MrsDevere - Another teenager who has no home can be jealous of a teenager with a couple of kids and a house and bennies.

ANd I think the rest of the population have a right (duty!) to do something about that.

I do agree with Shirely that it is an awful state of events when kids look up to some 15YO whose living off benefits with a kid, because she has more than they do.

It happens.

half past wine no that comment was not directed at you

Your comments about rape in the UK are really disturbing. Viz "FFS. Yes it does but there is much more support here. Womens Refuge for a start."

The implication being that women in the UK who are raped within marriage are lucky as they have access to some support. So many problems with that idea I don't know where to start. And it still doesn't explain how the presence of women's refuges does anything to change the fact of a pregnancy.

Sorry halfpast - I do just have to tell you that Women's Refuges are likely to be a thing of the past if the cuts keep going

I believe so, and what a disgrace it is.

How does going to a women's refuge stop a raped woman being pregnant?

I could write a ream of stuff about how it is not that simple for abused women (and children) to just "go to a women's refuge" but I can't be bothered

whatmeworry - the Chinese one-baby policy you mean? Where women were forced to have abortions? Where babies were ripped out of wombs and left in hospital bins, their cries being heard for hours before they died? Girl babies and disabled babies being left in garbage dumps? That policy you mean?

I worked for The Good Rock Foundation. This wonderful lady now lives over there. Forced abortions still happen. Infanticide still happens. Babies are still dumped, sometimes alive, in communal rubbish tips, on the side of the road to be collected by refuse collectors and simply put down rubbish chutes.

Unless you bloody well know what you are talking about perhaps you should keep schtum. Because you know NOTHING about China's one child policy.

This is a hateful, shit stirring thread.

But if they dont have children why would a teenager need a house?

A one bed flat maybe but not a house.

And why do we focus on what they have rather than look at what their lives are really like?
No job, no prospects , no hope.

There is no proper examination of what life is like, its all about some council house that the majority wouldnt want to live in even if it really was 'free'.

Agree Rhubs. It is utterly staggering that anyone could advocate China's policy as anything other than abhorrent.

sardine If you check upthread the whole 'third world' thing came into it because someone stated that third world mums continued to have children despite living in poverty. My response was that they amy not actually want so many children and that they didn't have access to contraception as we do and also that if they did, due to religious reasons they may not take it or their partners may just refuse to wear condoms. Therefore, unwanted pregnancies. The whole issue has just escaled from there.

we have got major population growth both within the UK & globally so we do need to consider a fair way of limiting family sizes.

The Chinese Model has been far from sucessful.

It has been a disaster.

Girl children have to be tethered to fences to prevent them being stolen as prospective brides. There are not enough women to go round.

I cannot believe anyone who is intelligent enough to log on to a pc wouldnt know just how unsuccessful it has been.

I read what you wrote, halfpast.

TheRhubarb - completely agree.

i agree OhDo. how many girls/women are missing from the chinese poplution?

but we do all have the same problem. 1 planet. 7 billion people & counting.....

Like what Tilly? Because surely, surely to God you're not saying that the one child policy of China is an acceptable option?>

x posted

You are never going to have a reasoned and intelligent discussion with someone who uses the term "breed".

Ignore, pity them, and delete them off your FB friends

Oh and also if there are limits set in the UK, they will be limits for all presumably, not just the poor?

21 babies were recently dumped in a Chinese river.
Dumped babies are not uncommon in China, largely girl babies and disabled babies because of the one-child policy. Rural families need boys to continue working the farm, girls are a burden who are married to another family and who cannot support their parents into old age, so girls are dumped, aborted or killed in favour of boys.

You might think the old practices of killing babies as they are born, or of forced abortions are in the past but they are not. Many Chinese people rely on their factory work for housing, schooling and so on. If they lose their jobs they lose their homes, medical care and school costs. If a worker gets pregnant for a second time she is harrassed and often marched down to the medical centre to get an abortion. If she doesn't, she knows the consequences.

This is what, held up as a practice we should adopt?
This whole thread is a fucking insulting joke.

of course the chinese solution is completely bonkers. rejecting one solution does not make the problem go away though.

I hate to feel like I'm playing 'big brother' here but one of 3 things will happen here (as in on earth), in the not to distant future:

1. People will somehow magically understand that procreation is not some god given right and we will self manage our own global population (Outcome: Unlikely)

1. Goverments will impose ever stricter and stricter guidelines on how many children people can have (Outcome: Likely)

1. THe world will become overcrowded to the point where events like infanticide / child cruelty / child poverty etc., become actually mainstream (Outcome: Almost inevitable)

it's already happening in many parts of the world, we just choose to ignore it because we can. What is happening in CHina may be shocking to us, but procreation on the current scale is simply not sustainable.