My dad said something rather outragious at the weekend and I thought to myself, hmmm, mumsnet would love that!

[heQet]

He said that we were going to, in another generation or so, run into serious problems because...

The intelligent, articulate, well educated (good?) people are not replacing themselves and adding to their numbers (only having 1 or 2 children) while the (to cut a long story short) jeremy kyle society genes are proliferating, with their 6 or 7 kids each.

He fears for the future of mankind.

whoops. This was meant to go in chat! I am not actually asking if I am being unreasonable in any way!

I think this is known as 'survival of the less fit'.

But having more doesn't necessarily mean that they will 'survive' and 'take over'.

The rest of the animal kingdom shows that , where there is a a likely that offspring are not going to survive they have more young . You could look at it that way.

could be an interesting discussion ....

as far as I'm aware, there has been a film made along these lines called idiocracy. I've never seen it myself, but here's a quick synopsis from imdb.com:

Joe Bauers, an Army librarian, is judged to be absolutely average in every regard, has no relatives, has no future, so he's chosen to be one of the two test subjects in a top-secret hibernation program. He and hooker Rita were to awaken in one year, but things go wrong and they wake up instead in 2505. By this time, stupid people have outbred intelligent people; the world is (barely) run by morons--and Joe and Rita are the smartest people in America.

Hmm. Not particularly relevant to what's going down in this country, but the 'have lots of children in case a few of them die' argument is what is holding back communities in the developing world. Better birth control would not only slow down the spread of aids but they would all have a better chance of survival if food, water, work, medical supplies, education etc were not so stretched.

I think he has a point (though he put it rather crassly) that responsible people know they cannot afford to support loads of children, and neither can the country afford to support them, no jobs, no affordable housing, crap pensions and now we are all going to be forced to stay alive until we are 119. Trouble is, they've worked out how to keep us all breathing until 119, but they haven't yet worked out how to keep us out of an armchair from 80 onwards, and we have at around 20-30 years of comatose dribbling in front of Countdown to look forward to, living on prunes and mashed potato, shovelled in by a nice filipino, getting through our own bodyweight in nappies each day and not recognising our own families. And having to pay every penny of our accumulated savings/home equity for the privilege. At least the Jeremy Kylites he talks of have the good fortune to drop off ten years younger than the rest of us, and if they find they've succumbed to the middle class disease of extreme old age they can at least expect the state to pay for their care home. They may even be in the bed next to the poor lady who needs to die in the next eight months because that's when her savings run out, and she doesn't want to be a financial burden on her children....

obligatory xkcd link

He has a point.

But to discuss it would be futile.

And at some point benefits will be brought up. And Katie Price. Mark my word.

lmao@quint ..... how the hell does Katie Price end up as you rightly say in all these kind of topics .

ohhh how i missed mumsnet last night .

this is why my university educated friend and her equally educated hubby have 4 kids, they always say they are doing their bit for the gene pool!LOL

what saddens me though is the numbers of, lets say less priviledged parents, who have no aspirations of a better future for their DC. I know some do, that some parents who have struggled in poverty really DO push their DC to do better, and give them the opportunities they themselves never had, but having taught in rough schools, its sad to see history repeating itself in terms of poor achievement and low aspirations.

Tiggy jolly good show.

Excellent post! TiggyR

Does your dad want to meet up with my grandma? She's in hospital at the moment and rather bored and she's been quoting almost that exact line for at least 25 years (and probably a lot longer)..........

It's all the schools' fault -- even if the children are bright as bright can be they are utterly failed by our crappy schools and crappy National Curriculum.

Oh that's right blame the teachers for all the woes of society.

Oh and BTW schools didn't invent the national curriculum' many teachers hate it.

God - was your dad at a dinner party with me on Saturday night? I had to sit through similar comments from prats who self-identified as the "intellectual elite" and who were also predicting the rise of the"plebs". After that experience I am longing for the rise of the plebs - I shall be leading it.

obligatory xkcd link

heQet, when I told a (childless) friend of mine that I was expecting DD3, he said something very similar, and congratulated me for improving the gene pool. And he wasn't entirely joking......

probono - I will be the first to admit that SOME schools fail SOME children, but a hell of a lot more kids are let down by their parents attitudes towards their education.

With the best teachers in the world, even a very bright child from a poor background will struggle to do well as they need parental support - I am talking parents who NEVER came to parents evenings, or NEVER heard their DC read, and don't get kids to do even the most simple "find out for homework" task because "thats not my job"

No honest hands up it's the National Curriculum, the management, the philosophy, the policies teachers are probably the best thing about the schools.

gah

That's what the schools should do -- as must as they possibly can to save them from their chaotic lives.

They can't do it all but they don't do enough -- not the teachers' fault at all. Hands tied and all that.

So it all comes back to the government failing schools some of whom then fail children. I'd say that was fair.

I have to say I have said stuff like that before in my younger days (ok about 4 years ago). In my defense I was pissed off at MIL who had decided to have a fifth child despite being on benefits forever, with two tearaway kids (6 and 9 at the time), a daughter of 15 with a newborn whom she had promised to help with and my DH who was about 22 at the time.
I got cross and DH got cross and we had a rant (never to her face).

However, my DH is a productive member of society having paid taxes since he was working at 16 and although he is 'uneducated' schoolwise, he is very intelligent because he wants to learn and acquire knowledge.

My SIL is that Torys fave: a single, teen mum in her own council house, but she's a brilliant mum and is putting herself through college to get a job and support herself. She is also learning to drive so as to be self reliant.

So far out of this brood of children who have been raised to believe they can take, take, take and never give, two have chosen to do otherwise and they are doing their best to impart this onto their younger siblings. It doesnt always mean that a child born to parents who would be perfectly at home on Jeremy Kyle will follow perfectly in their footsteps!

To be honest, he is right about the fact that lower socio-economic groups have more children than higher ones - BUT intelligence and aspiration and worth ethic is only very slightly genetic, it's FAR MORE nurture than nature.

Which means that there is hope... and also makes it EVEN MORE important to intervene through schools and other state-institutions to raise the aspirations and opportunities for children from families which cannot do this themselves.

School is supposed to iron out some of the inequalities of opportunity that children are born into.. however currently they have become obsessed with black and white results and fail to do that equalising role as children from supportive homes clearly do much better than children without support.

There was something in the news about how good parenting can help poorer children progress educationally here - [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8513340.stm] which is similar to what Peedoffwithnits said.

I think this govt has done lots to improve the chances of children with tax credits / sure start etc but theres still a long way to go.

And I think teachers do a great job in often difficult circumstances where they are hampered by admin and league tables and if they don't have the support of the parents it makes things doubly hard

We have to face up to the fact that lots of parents will never do it, will never read with their kids, never do times tables, never turn up, because they won't, or can't, are overworked, or mentally unstable, or poorly educated.

No point saying "they ought to" because they aren't going to.

So their best chance is school. But in the 21st century we can't even teach them to read and write -- what an embarrassment. More than a hundred thousand children two years behind with reading and writing when they leave primary school. Destined to fall even further behind at secondary.

We should expect more from children whose parents can't help, not abandon them with low expectations.