Letters to the Editor
alarajrogers
Published Letters: 446 Editor's Choice: 86
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The solution to the birth rate is not for educated Westerners to stop having kids.
[Read the article: Are the Germans dying out?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The notion that one Westerner not being born will free resources for ten Africans is ludicrous; most of the problem with resources in Africa has to do with poor resource allocation and warlordism *there*, and while this is the result of the colonial past sucking resources out of Africa, reducing the number of Westerners *now* won't help them. (One Westerner not being born will probably free up gasoline for a good number of Chinese, but somehow I don't find that a compelling argument.)
The solution to the worldwide overpopulation rate is:
1. Give women the ability to control their own reproduction.
2. Give them something valuable to do with their lives besides have babies.
3. Make sure the babies they do have live to grow up, so they don't feel the need to have extras to compensate for infant mortality.
Basing the economy on something other than subsistence farming would also be helpful, but really, the gold standard is female control of reproduction. The *moment* women can control their own reproduction, the birth rate drops. Give them education and the opportunity for jobs other than being a baby factory, give them the resources to invest highly in a small number of children for great opportunity rather than having to have lots because none of the children will have good opportunities in life, and you get the rest of the way there.
Western women ceasing to have children *does not help* this issue. It hurts. Western women, with our unparalleled educational and career opportunities, are the model to the women of the rest of the world that a better life for them could exist. Of course, when that model is coupled with rapacious colonialistic theft of their natural resources or unjustified wars on their people, both women and men of those cultures are likely to look askance at us, and not particularly want to model themselves on us (and of course, some aspects of our lifestyles they absolutely should not model, like the gas guzzling.) So our obligation to the rest of the world is not to stop having children; it's to enjoy the great opportunities we have as Westerners, greater than women anywhere else in the world, raise the children we do have to be respectful of other cultures, and agitate our leaders to stop antagonizing and/or stealing from the rest of the world, as well as actively trying to help women, children and people in general have better lives in the third world, while trying to develop a more sustainable lifestyle ourselves. Underreproducing in comparison to either the rest of the world, or compatriots of ours who, shall we say, have a much more selfish outlook on the Western role vis-a-vis the rest of the world, isn't exactly helpful (and while taking up excess Chinese girls who've been abandoned by their biological parents and adopting them *is* helpful, women who don't want their own children because their career will be damaged aren't going to want to adopt either.)
Germany needs to make it easier for women to be mothers and still achieve things with their intelligence and ambition. So does the US, for that matter. No woman anywhere should ever be forced to have a child, but no woman anywhere should ever be forced to forego having a child because she feels that becoming a mother will destroy her as a person.
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Childfree, or simply afraid of the mixed messages of motherhood?
[Read the article: Are the Germans dying out?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"No woman anywhere should ever be forced to have a child, but no woman anywhere should ever be forced to forego having a child because she feels that becoming a mother will destroy her as a person."
Any thought to the idea that some women don't feel it is necessary to become a mother at all?
Sure. But in a society where, as another poster pointed out, mothers are demonized no matter what choice they make, where mothers are reduced to accessories for their children and their own personhood is denied, a lot of women will choose not to have children when they *might* have made another choice had they felt they could be mothers and still be respected.
There are plenty of people, male and female, who just don't want kids, but I suspect that if it were biologically possible for as many people to "just not want kids" without social forces pushing them in that direction as there are women not wanting kids in Germany, the human race would have died out already. Some people who don't have kids are making a free choice. Others are being pushed by cultural pressures. And I think the existence of those cultural pressures is destructive to the future of the human race and definitely to the future of women (as a different poster pointed out, if only women who are enslaved to men have children, then eventually all girl children will end up being slaves. That's not the feminism I signed on for.)
Women should be equally free to have kids and not have kids. Right now they're not actually fully free to do either.