Thread: Should there be child restrictions

I have to agree with Repo here... I'm all for not overpopulating the world, but I don't think the government should have the power to force people not to have babies.

Originally Posted by Hidden

I have to agree with Repo here... I'm all for not overpopulating the world, but I don't think the government should have the power to force people not to have babies.

IMHO having more than a few kids is just a lack of self-control, that should be controlled. We're clearly failing at that.

Originally Posted by Puffin

Before we started relying on hospitals and medicine to keep our population up and consistent, we were only having one or two children because the mortality rate was higher. Now, people are multiplying like flies because of both the increased amount of medicine and the lack of rule saying there's a limit. Now there's asses like the Gosselins having eighteen children, not only damaging the population but also donning a sort of "fake lifestyle" to their children. I agree 100% with the statement that there should be a child limit per family.

Erm... Source? From what I've read, people have less children now than they did before.

People don't need more than one or two children; it just gets too messy. Each new child to a parent will have half the attention they'd have received if they were the only child. Then there's the issue of poverty... I feel that there's not enough resources on the planet to keep all of us alive because there's too many of us to begin with.

Yes, although I think there are also benefits to having siblings.

Originally Posted by Puffin

IMHO having more than a few kids is just a lack of self-control, that should be controlled. We're clearly failing at that.

It's more than just a simple lack of self-control. I'd say it's more from poverty and a lack of education. The general trend seems to be that more affluent families have less children than poorer ones.

Edit: Sniped.

@cygnus: Well then, bring people out of poverty and educate them if that will deal with overpopulation. I was only trying to say that the government shouldn't be able to directly limit the number of children a couple can have (which probably wouldn't happen anyway, as you said, so it's kind of a moot point).

Originally Posted by Hidden

Erm... Source? From what I've read, people have less children now than they did before.

Overall trends say our population is going up.

Originally Posted by Puffin

Overall trends say our population is going up.

Originally Posted by cygnus

that's a little off - a higher mortality rate actually means that people have more children. the point is that the infant mortality rate in developed countries is lower, life expectancy is up, and it's more sensible to not have such large families. those in developing nations have such a high rate of population growth partly because they need children to support them, especially as they age.

That's what I meant to say. The population may still be going up, but its rate of growth is going down.

Originally Posted by Hidden

The population may still be going up, but its rate of growth is going down.

yeah, that's the thing... the death rate went down and the birth rate went up after the industrial revolution. for a country to survive and do well, the birth rate needs to be much closer to the death rate (as is the case in many european countries).

indeed the world birth rate should be slowed but in europe it needs to be increased slightly.

Saying dumb people should have less kids would end disasterously. Would 5 GCSE's equate to a pregnancy licence? The thing is, the more educated people complain about the fact that less educated people have higher birthrates, then refuse to have children.

Originally Posted by Hidden

It's more than just a simple lack of self-control. I'd say it's more from poverty and a lack of education. The general trend seems to be that more affluent families have less children than poorer ones.

this is also because of fundamentalists who think contraception is evil because according to their religion, every sexual act must be an act open to life and between two married people - assuming the woman is a virgin before the marriage or she'd have to be killed. so be abstinent or just take it in the ear \sarcasm

in addition, that kind of control wouldn't happen because the christians who run this country also believe that it's virtuous to have a number of children.

Originally Posted by Hidden

Erm... Source? From what I've read, people have less children now than they did before.

Originally Posted by Puffin

Overall trends say our population is going up.

as i said earlier, people have fewer children in developed nations. this doesn't consider overall population growth and especially high rates of growth in developing nations.

our population is growing exponentially.

during my first year in a university the world population was 6.5 billion, now it's fucking 6.8

Originally Posted by cygnus

our population is growing exponentially.

Sorry if someone's already pointed his out, but, no, it's not.

It's still growing at a very high rate, but in recent years that rate has steadily decreased as people in developed countries choose to have less children in order to save more money for themselves (lol) so technically it's not exponential growth any more.

I have to agree with Spartiate here, go on about educating the poor masses and all that, and globalizing contraception or whatnot, but the reality is -- it's not going to happen.

Keep dreaming.

A more realistic approach would be to do absolutely nothing.

Baby factories like India and China will be stricken by plague and lack of sufficient food resources, there will be death on a massive scale, and meanwhile the wealthy people in the elite countries, with their much-lower, more sustainable rate of reproduction and better technology, will be fine.

The population will be much reduced (or at least stabilized), and the average intelligence of those remaining will increase!

And what's more, we don't even have to do anything!

Win-win!

Call me a cynic but that's my take on it