Letters to the Editor
LeCastor
Published Letters: 1916 Editor's Choice: 86
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"The children belong to all of us."
[Read the article: Why the barista can't breast-feed]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The children belong to all of us. It's in all our interest that they be healthy, well educated, supported, and safe. Why do we need to try to find economic arguments for this? ("My kid's social security taxes will pay for your nursing home" "No, my 40 years of property taxes will pay for your kid's public schooling"). My GOD, does everything have to be commodified? What happened to the universal, traditional idea that an entire community's health can be assessed by considering the welfare of its children??
Children belong to all of us, but they are cared for primarily by their families. In the interest of the welfare of all of us, families need some kinds of help to do a good job by their children. Is this so hard to understand? Can people not see how pathetic this bean-counting numerical equality is ("If you get days off for your child's sickness, I should get days off for my hobby?")? Whatever happened to the COMMON GOOD?
It's funny that you say that the children belong to us all, because actually, now that i think about it, i don't want other people to "help" me raise my child(ren) if i choose to have one/them. I don't want religious people, republicans, racist, sexists, etc., "helping" me raise my kids. I will raise them how i see fit, and i don't think you would want me telling you what to teach your children, or telling you how to raise them, because our ideas about child-rearing are probably very different. For example, i would never take my kids to church, or any other place like a church, for worshipping purposes.
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It's not the children i'm afraid of, it's their parents
[Read the article: Why the barista can't breast-feed]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... but I do ABSOLUTELY believe that it's in society's best interest to, if not "FORGET our own wants and needs for the benefit of children, even if they are not our children," then at least to put the children's needs first--yes, EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT OUR CHILDREN.
I don't see how one can have a humane and progressive culture unless there is more or less a communal consensus to do just that. Bad enough that anybody posting on Salon feels the need to question such an ethic; but I'm truly appalled by the idea that putting children first should be held up as self-evidently contemptible.
Yeah, because having children is your choice. what if i said, i choose to buy realy expensive gourmet food, so all of you need to put gourmet food first? Please, make sure your children don't touch the star anise at the store, get rid of mac & cheese immediately, there should be subsidies at my work cafeteria so i can have foie gras for lunch every day, and i don't care about.
Tell me, exactly how do these "other people's children" actually threaten your "wants and needs"? Is there really such cutthroat competition, such scarcity, in our society that rapacious brats and their predatory parents are TAKING AWAY something valuable from you? What are you scared of? That educated, independent adults will lose their homes and jobs and lifestyle preferences at the hands of power-drunk toddlers or politically privileged fourth-graders? That allowing SOME concessions of workplace flexibility to mothers of young children will somehow bring down our economy and our social contract (such as it is) in ruins about our ears? That investing SOME of our resources--even (horrors!) our tax dollars--in the health and safety of the next generation constitutes an intolerable loss of autonomy for those who, for whatever reason, do not personally engage in the work of rearing children?
It's not the children who are scary, it's their parents, who invoke "the children" to take away people's freedoms and rights to be adults. They wanat to burn janet jackson at the stake for her nipple, they want ban nuckleberry finn from the libraries, they want to eliminate sex ed, they want to "clean up hollywood." I mean, clean up Hollywood? I think hollywood is already too clean. I want MORE smut on TV, not less. People have children and then instead of parenting them to their liking, they want to change the outside world so that they don't have to control their children. That's why they want to put Cosmo behind those black magazine things so the children won't see "ten hot sex tips" while standing in line.
Anyway, I guess I'm awfully naive; I should have realized that childfree adults should never not waste their time working for social progess, environmental concerns, efforts for peace and justice--anything at all that doesn't address their own "needs and wants" right now. Because they won't live to reap most of the benefits, if any, from their efforts. The benefits will all go to OTHER PEOPLE'S KIDS! Clearly, not worth going to any trouble for. So, eat, drink and be merry, and screw all the future generations.
Well, duh. Everyone does what is to their benefit -- the "think of the children crowd" is trying to benefit their own children. I want to benefit myself. So, social justice, peace, environmental concerns, they can all very well benefit me, but publicly shaming janet jackson for her tit? not at all. banning huck finn and judy blume and sex ed? i think it's not only not beneficial, it's counterproductive.
-- episcomom