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Published Letters: 345
Editor's Choice: 17
I'm all for the more equitable sharing of child-rearing responsibilities, but I thought the interviewer brought up an interesting and important question that the author was dismissive of.
First of all, the snippy remark "and that's on a liberal website" is way off, since childless by choice people are much more likely to be liberal. Conservatives would be unlikely to even question the "natural" and "god-given" task of bearing and raising children.
Secondly, you are engaging in logical elision with the talk about caregiving. When one speaks of taking care of the sick or elderly, these are people who have already been living in the world. With parenting, you are talking about bringing new people into the world which then must be taken care of.
Is parenting (that is, child-bearing as well as child-rearing) actually "critical economically"? Bear in mind, I am not arguing for the simplistic "overpopulation crisis" view. At the same time, I certainly do not think we are suffering from underpopulation or underemployment, which is what that comment seems to suggest.
None of this addresses the simple central point that having children is a voluntary choice, and being that our country is not suffering from a declining birthrate, one sees no reason why it should be encouraged or subsidized. Childless by choice people are already excluded from much of mainstream society, and this article's dismissal of them as conservative cranks certainly didn't help. And that's on a liberal website!
Why not just push for more frequent testing instead?
