Letters to the Editor
healthyskeptic
Published Letters: 671 Editor's Choice: 14
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family friendly is also independance friendly
[Read the article: "40 Reasons Not to Have Children"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In countries such as France which have some of the most family friendly policies, the high quality of life also encourages people to enjoy their own lives, and some naturally choose not to commit to raising children. Those who choose to raise children do so entirely of their own volition, without any economic of other coercive reason to do so. As such, they tend to be the most dedicated parents. Those who choose not to, are also choosing the best lifestyle for them, and have social infrastructure to help them age with dignity. And during their productive years they pay more into the system which makes all this choice and freedom possible.
That is perfectly healthy and as it should be.
Those who will be the best and most dedicated parents are free to be that. Those who would not choose to be parents are not coerced into doing so. Everyone contributes to the continuation of the species, the care of the young as well as the old.
Also, France, Europe, Japan and such are highly populated countries emphasizing education, technological growth, and efficiency; over population growth. For example Japan is creating robotic assisted bathing for the infirmed for example, to help care for the elderly, which they love. That requires a highly educated work force of computer programmers, engineers and skilled labor to create. And their children are highly educated to create such industries, as well as the cars, electronics, and many high end goods the world consumes.
By comparison, America is hoping to create more low skilled and low pay jobs in nursing for the elderly, because our work force is much less educated and so much of our capitalization of innovative technology is now occurring overseas.
If they choose to let population drop a bit, while better educating and caring fort their children, good for them. They'll have more physical space and more skills per capita, which is the direction post-industrial economies should be moving. Eventually towards a post-scarcity (or less-scarcity) economy.
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btw, on population stability
[Read the article: "40 Reasons Not to Have Children"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Eventually the population levels of Europe (and all developed countries) should self-stabilize at an optimal level.
The main reason is that factors such as economics and land scarcity drives the cultural norms for population growth, which are highly plastic. They tend to automatically find equilibrium.
Currently some European countries have slightly negative population growth, which may be supplemented with immigration. That scares some people into thinking Europeans are becoming weaker, less virile, or such. In fact, their society is becoming more efficient, so they have a higher quality of life with shrinking population. At some point if population shrinks, there will be surpluses of resources, which encourages growth.
Also, those who have children are slightly divergent culturally towards having children, as opposed to those who do not. So, while the overall culture is presently slightly less than at replacement levels for various reasons mostly having to do with over population and scarcity of resources, there is always a tendency for population to rebound to optimal levels.
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Missing the point
[Read the article: Battered and fired]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Helping the victim recover is the burden of the state, not of the daycare. Investigating and trying the case to determine who was at fault and mete out consequences is also the burden of the state, not the daycare.
The children of the daycare and their parents are not social workers. They're not police. Nor judges. Nor rehabilitation workers. Their responsibility is to give the best care possible to children.
btw, the people here have really been duped into the Republican scheme of shifting all the burden of social justice to employers and private institutions while slashing social programs.
In a country like France, where they actually have social programs to make sure the victims of crime get help, first of all they have socialized medicine and services to make them cost efficient enough to be afforded. Also the government puts up matching funds for paid medical leave, and helps subsidize essential services like childcare, so this wouldn't even be an issue. In France, this woman would get good medical care, her medical leave would be partially subsidized by the government, and the daycare would be able to do this because kindergarten and childcare generally has a much more robust economic foundation and can survive such disruptions.
You can't have paid leave and health care and such in an American system where all the medical care is for profit and so costly nobody can afford it, and the daycare for poor and even middle class families often operates on the brink of bankruptcy. Small daycares in America are operating on shoestring budgets, and HC costs are already killing them. Paid leave is financially impossible for them.