Too many kids

[OoerBlah]

So I've just watched Cathy Come Hone, the Ken Loach play from 1965. It's heartbreaking, no doubt about that. But it made me wonder if there is ever a situation where people might think that having kids if you can't afford them is just, well, don't do it?

I know accidents happen and not all kids are planned. I also know that life is complicated and consequences can't be foretold. But particularly in this day and age of so many finding it difficult to find homes and provide for themselves let alone children - is there ever a time when we should say if you can't afford kids, don't have them?

ReallyTired
You seem very bitter and angry towards white people generally, especially British ( are we "Aryans"?)

British and other Europeans DO NOT NEED TO BE "ENCOURAGED" TO HAVE FEWER CHILDREN! If some want to have more than two that's fine, although in my book only if they can afford to do so without recourse to welfare.

The same applies to people in the Caribbean and Pacific Rim who also have a low average fertility rate.

As I said above as people move to the UK from cultures where lots of babies means lots of people to help on the farm etc their birth rates go down. Economically the UK does worse when birth rates fall however which is why Germany needed immigrants. The UK is different on that point so has taken a different stance at present. People will always move where there is food.

I saw a good programme on iplayer last night about peoples who moved from Siberia by boat to NW side of Canada/USA and thrived there without agriculture because there was enough food - fish etc.

I am 3 - 5% Neanderthal genes, the highest there is (and most Africans have none) because I am Celtic, freckled etc. We are all mixtures of all kinds of peoples.

If we have mostly old people and few babies being born then nations tend to stagnate like Japan. However the great difficulty is that the planet and longer term we need fewer of us, perhaps without growth and indeed with our using and spending much less. Governments looking at 5 year elections/terms will always want growth and people happy now. Aristocrats who are land owners, tribal leaders and the like might well take a 300 year view of things and in fact want things which are better for us - much less consumption, much less eating as a whole, many fewer babies. They are difficult issues but as we will all on this thread be dead within 100 years we need not for ourselves worry about them.

I don't think anyone has been white or black supremisist on this thread. Lots of whites, blacks and all kinds of others have been killed in history and now all need to live together happily as mostly we do. Immigration whether it be of Poles or Somalis is perhaps a slightly different issue.

ReallyTired I suggest you just ignore Hedda

Yes, ignore anyone with a different more sensible viewpoint. And so the point of being here at all is.....?

If all countries had a fertility rate of 2 children then the world population would start to stabilise. The population would still increase in the short term even if the world's fertility rate was below replacement because people are living longer

And the ageing population would be supported by who, exactly? And as the ancient cultures of the west die out, as they get further and further below replacement level, thats a good thing some how?

hose who want European countries to increase their fertility rate are the white supremacists. I used the word Ayran to mock you. It's not me who wants more white babies born

You're a racist fool. Since when are all European babies WHITE? You're the one wittering about colour, no-one else mentioned white babies.

"And the ageing population would be supported by who, exactly? And as the ancient cultures of the west die out, as they get further and further below replacement level, thats a good thing some how?"

In the past the pyramid model of population worked as so many people died young. Now most people are living into old age we can not simply have lots of babies/ children to support the older generation. As a species we can support our older generation even if there is a huge population bulge at 65 plus. Lots of jobs are being mechanised. There will be less of a need for unskilled labour in the future.

Our culture is not particularly ancient. British culture is livng and evolving. We have nothing in common with the ancient cultures who used to inhabit our islands even a couple of hundred years ago. Western culture will not go extinct but it may well evolve into something better.

Whilst I agree that we need children if we want to support older people in the future and keep the human race going, is it necessarily a bad thing if the population declines a bit? Would it matter if the UK population were 50 million rather than 60 million? It would still be quite a densely populated country. Given that the NHS and care homes, for example, would probably cease to function without immigration at the moment, it's also not a given that today's children will fill future gaps in the labour market.

Anyway, I think that stopping at two children is certainly no bad thing for the planet, and this applies to people wherever they live in the world. Did anyone see the programme called "Don't Panic - The Truth About Population?" with Hans Rosling? (www.open.edu/openlearn/dontpanic). He said that many people, even in countries with traditionally high birth rates such as Bangladesh, are now having much smaller families; generally, as a country gets richer, its birth rate goes down.

It is also true that you might have someone with six children who lives on a self-sufficient vegan commune and never flies or drives anywhere, whereas another person might have one child and live in a huge house, drive a huge car, buy lots of stuff and fly regularly, so resource consumption is a huge issue, and an arguably more important one than population growth. But six children are going to use up many more resources over their lifetime than one child would.

Anyway, I think that stopping at two children is certainly no bad thing for the planet, and this applies to people wherever they live in the world.

Yes but it only needs to be on average.
If some are having no children and some just one, its fine if some have three or four. This is the case in Europe and the countries of the Pacific rim, where on average people are having less than two so even though a few have big families the populations are still shrinking.

These countries should not be told to have a maximum of two children!

It is those countries where women are having huge numbers six seven children that need to be incentivised to reduce their fertility. You are right about Bangladesh they have greatly reduced their birth rate, even though they are poor and this was achieved by a massive birth control program in the seventies. Africa and Afghanistan are the problem areas now and the West seems to have abandoned sponsoring such programs.

I think that the world's population has got too large. It has grown drastically in the last century.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth

I feel we really could do with reducing the population and birth rate of the world. Encouraging people to stop at two children does not mean every one will. There will be triplets, twins and those who are so desperate for a third child.

Well if it's selfish to have more than 2 then so be it, I'm selfish. But it's ridiculous to assume that the reasoning is rooted in white supremacy. My reasoning, like most people's, is a little more localised that that. My children, I have 4, have precisely zero extended family. No living relatives at all outside of us. We had 4 because we wanted them to have family, to have each other. For their children to have a chance of cousins.

Also, from a basic POV, I suppose we have also had the children our siblings didn't get the chance to produce. Also, we have 3 boys then our daughter who was a happy accident and I'm damned if I'll ever consider her a mistake or accept that as abortion is available and I already had 3, we should have terminated her.

We can afford 4. We have 5 bedrooms and enough space. We aren't in receipt of any benefits and we pay for school. We try to teach them that being born in the uk is an amazing privilege and to educate themselves on staying healthy and working hard. My older 2 are teenagers and we talk about the world in general. The know that immigration is, on the whole, a good thing. Either because we need the skills those people bring, or they need the safety and stability we can offer.

My hope is that they'll grow up to be productive and happy members of society contributing fairly through the tax system. I think that's s fairly universal hope (to address the op)

RT youre still not accepting that populations which have got their fertility rate well under control and are already shrinking in number do not need to do anything to pressure their people to have even fewer children.

The problem of overpopulation is caused by a small number of ridiculously over fertile countries, largely fuelled by appalling sexism and ruining the lives and health of women. They are all countries which are shit holes for women

Certain kinds of 'lefties' and Christians are reluctant to accept this and unwilling to advocate active incentives to birth control.

YY
There is no need to advocate restraint in the uk. What we need is organisations such as the Catholic Church to come out and tell women living in appalling poverty in countries such as Bolivia, that it's ok to use contraception. That they won't go to hell and that no, their God does not require them to continually endanger their life by having another baby each year. Such a proclamation would have a massive effect on the worlds population and more importantly on the health of these women.

I'm a Catholic, and the Catholic Church does not require women to pop out a baby each year. I see this misrepresentation all the time, when in fact the RC specifically advocates responsible parenthood i.e having the number of children that you can take care of properly. Just because you don't use artificial contraceptives does not mean that you cant avoid pregnancy if you feel it is the right thing to do in your circumstances.

Actually PQ with a TFR of 2.87 Bolivia really isnt that bad! The problem countries now are in Africa and Afghanistan.

The worst is Niger (not Nigeria) with an average truly shocking 6.76.

"Just because you don't use artificial contraceptives does not mean that you cant avoid pregnancy if you feel it is the right thing to do in your circumstances."

In countries where women are not respected lack of safe contraception does mean they have no control over their fertility.

Marmaduchess, yes, it's not high but according to unicef, they have one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world. According to unicef, the sad, ironic reason why the TFR is lower than expected in Bolivia is due to young, poor women dying in childbirth.

TH, the Catholic Church has repeatedly refused to come out and tell women that contraception is acceptable. Do you really think that these women have any say over their fertility or their bodies?

It's not enough to provide condoms and expect people to reduce the size of their family. It's necessary to provide access to health care so that children survive and guarantee that childless people are looked after in old age.

It's not enough to provide school places. Classes need a sensible ratio of pupils to teacher. Children learn little in classes of 50 plus where they cannot ask questions.

I haven't read the whole thread but in a nutshell my view is this:

You shouldn't have any more kids than you can afford to raise without state help.
If you have kids because you can afford them and then your circumstances change then fine, that's what the welfare state is for. You should get the help you need to maintain a decent lifestyle for your family HOWEVER.... you have absolutely no fucking business having more kids while you are drawing money from the state. You should wait until you're self sufficient again before having more kids, if you never get to that point then tough, I don't see why everyone else should pay for you to have more kids.

RT
It may not be enough to just provide condoms but its way better than not providing them. But condoms are not enough in some of these shit hole countries where men refuse to use them there need to be safer ways of stopping pregnancy, pay men to have the snip, contraceptive implants for women who want them, IUDs.

Too many kids cause poverty, and while much is made of the 'need' for kids to care for people in old age by those those with political agendas
to decimate the European population and create a world with no borders, nobody 'needs' seven eight or nine. Bangladesh is still very poor but most Bangladeshis have two or three now. The TFR is only 2.2.

Slightly off topic but I enjoyed watching this yesterday hdmovie14.ag/watch/GObK415x-gloriavale-a-woman-s-place/openload.html You need to click on a picture and then click on the big arrow in the middle which comes up to watch.

Condoms are vital in the fight against AIDS, but if you want to control population you need to change a mindset. You also have to be compassionate and see the other person's point of view.

European populations are not going to be decimated. Our population has grown exponentially for centuries. If the native uk population shrank a little bit then housing would be more affordable.

Condoms are vital in the fight against AIDS, but if you want to control population you need to change a mindset
And the best way to 'change mindset' is the traditional way, financial reward. Pay men who have the snip. Make it worthwhile.

European populations are not going to be decimated
Unless at some point the birth rate increases to an average 2.1 per woman of course they are. No organism can survive if it does not reproduce. The same applies to Japan. Japanese people too will become extinct just like the Aztecs and the Incas.

Our population has grown exponentially for centuries.
Wrong tense
Our population grew exponentially for centuries
Irrelevant. European populations are ageing and shrinking now, having few children and having them late so the birth rate is very low. If it wasnt for people living longer the populations would be falling significantly and it will soon start to do so as the breeding age population shrinks .

If the native uk population shrank a little bit then housing would be more affordable.
Not while there are open borders lunatics like yourself around who want to replace us with immigrants! We would already have a falling population if we did not have uncontrolled immigration.
The improvement in the housing situation that would arise would encourage more people to have a third child too. For many its not that they do not want three children, but they know it would cause overcrowding.

Not while there are open borders lunatics like yourself around who want to replace us with immigrants!

YY.

In a perfect (or at last different/better) world we'd have open borders everywhere. But for open borders to work, there needs to be equality between countries. It doesn't work if there is a move towards certain countries but not others. Perhaps it would need to happen a little to get us all a bit more evenly spread out but that certainly doesn't involve people coming to the UK. And we also know immigration disproportionately affects the poor, but hey, who cares about the poor in our own country?

I don't want the UK seen as a cash machine, people should move to countries because they like the culture/history/climate etc. Possibly if they are in very specific, small industry or if there is an occupational shortage in a particular area that for some reason can't be filled by training the local population. But I've encountered many immirgrants who are disappointed by the reality of life in the UK - they just did not understand the costs of living here, especially housing (meanwhile relatives back home pile the pressure on to "succeed"). Including women separated form their children fgs - we shouldn't be saying "come here" we should be making life better where they are now!

Just to add - a lot of people move without a realistic idea of living in the other country. It's human nature, it's "the grass is always greener".

And we also know immigration disproportionately affects the poor, but hey, who cares about the poor in our own country?
Quite. Certainly not the far left who care only about world revolution and a one world superstate.

I don't want the UK seen as a cash machine, people should move to countries because they like the culture/history/climate etc.
Agree with that point, people who wish to assimilate and adopt the culture of their new country rather than clinging to the old. These 'when in Rome' types are usually (but not always) people who have married into the culture rather than more typical immigrants. Sadly British people have had their self confidence in our culture so undermined by years of far left denigration in the media that many are convinced our ancient culture is entirely 'borrowed' from elsewhere and that generations of our British ancestors did nothing of value whatsoever to create our amazing country with its peaceful comfortable way of life .

Possibly if they are in very specific, small industry or if there is an occupational shortage in a particular area that for some reason can't be filled by training the local population.
Yes world class experts for example. I don't think we should be importing doctors and medical staff from countries which desperately need to hold on to them, especially when many of our own young people would love to train as doctors and nurses if only there were enough university places to train them.

I have to say I have serious doubts about open borders as an 'ideal' even in a world of economic equality, as I suspect some parts of the world would still pull many more people than others, and such freedom of movement robs the people born and bred in the more pleasant parts of the world of the right to prevent them becoming overcrowded, and thus ruined. We have experienced this on a more limited scale in the EU, with too many people flooding in from the East, and us being unable to prevent it. One persons "freedom to..." robs others of their "freedom from..", this is the flaw in libertarianism

European populations are not going to be decimated. Our population has grown exponentially for centuries. If the native uk population shrank a little bit then housing would be more affordable.

The native population HAS shrank. You are below replacement levels. Some European countries are dangerously below replacement levels, they are in real trouble.
Housing has got a lot more expensive at the exact time that the native population has been shrinking. You can't seriously believe that you could buy a house if only some of us didn't have a third child?

For those people banging on about everyone should only have two children, you do understand that its ON AVERAGE. not individually? And on average, we DO have less than 2 children already?
So what the fuck are you talking about, exactly?