Oh, I don't know: if Beethoven, Descarte, Susan B. Anthony, Francis Bacon, Jesus (reputedly), and so on had no children, I wouldn't mind being in that company. By what measure would we count their lives meaningless and hollow? Despite the stereotype, it's not as if our contemporary childfree are actually sitting on their hands without children to occupy their time. Many devote the time they would have spent with children to charities, some even serving the children of others. Nor are all parents examples of good human beings, enough of them spend less time with their own children than the childfree spend with children in general. Even before our child is born, I look forward to the day I'll be free of responsibilities to them in order to work on my pet projects, included a new education model. It might be nothing in the end, but suppose the figures listed above had decided it was pointless before even trying?

While, honestly, I have heard less intelligent things than "you shouldn't breed if there are any diseases anywhere in your family history," I can't say as I'd heard that meme until you said it. I hope you're not attempting to attribute it to me, it would sound ridiculous to anyone who'd read my original entry.

Having children, by no means implies they'll share your values when they've grown up. In fact, I suspect that the better a parent you are, the more your children will think for themselves, implying less of a guaruntee they'll share your perspective on things such as the environment. I could have a dozen children to see each of them buy SUVs in their middle age, or I could work with children and fight for better education thereby influencing many more children than I could ever bear myself.

Either tack I take, no amount of educating the young will change the fact that every human being requires a certain amount of land producing food for them and a certain amount to live on. That amount may vary depending on their educated choices, but there is a minimum we can't go below. All that cleared land means less room for wildlife and native ecosystems, which is the very thing depleting our biodiversity today. Certainly, I doubt my child is likely to opt into the suburbs with requisite SUV and 100% carnivore diet, but the more there are the more resources they'll consume.

As I see it, the answer is education of everyone and the freedom afforded to children to think for themselves, no matter how much parents of any political stripe might kick and scream about it. It will be interesting to see whether they make the same fertility lowering choices we've made, and what impact that has on the world.

By the way, you shouldn't need to pin labels such as "feminist tree hugger" on others if your argument is sound. While some of us might take it for a compliment, it doesn't disguise the fact that the attempt was for an ad hominem rather than a logical argument.

Brightstar and Cartman,

I've never heard this one before. We've all heard that if feminists continue in their feminist ways, they'll become too educated to be happy, they'll have no one to marry because they will have pushed men out of college, they'll stop being pretty or having sex because they think it's too objectifying, but i've NEVER heard that one of the consequences of feminism is that feminists will DIE OUT! That's a great new scare tactic to convince feminists to quit their cushy jobs and go have children.

Feminists don't come only from other feminists. There are plenty of feminist women out there who came from non-radical regular old families, or even conservative families. Feminism isn't a genetic trait, so it won't be filtered out.

Glimmering, you wrote

I presume no one's arguing that uneducated women are better mothers, or that motherhood should be encouraged by reducing a woman's education. (Ok, nobody but Focus on the Family: http://www.boundless.org/2005/answers/a0001241.cfm)

Well, actually, on another message board, Brightstar was just advocating this.

I wrote about non-american women:

<< The overwhelming majority of these women ...have to marry men out of societal pressure or to acquire any sort of financial stability or status. It's not because they like men more than american women. hehehe.>>

And in response, brightstar wrote:

"Most women on Earth despise men, this is a given. Face it, not all men are experts in the sack or look like Brad Pitt, so men need some leverage to convince women not to hate them so much all the time.

Otherwise we end up with American culture, which has been a disastrous failure with regard to marriage, kids, and companionship.

Unless their guy is at their beck and call, acting only the way American women want them to act, most American women in the end prefer their vibrator and their cat for their pleasures."

Cartman writes:

By not having any kids, you guarantee that your feminist, tree-hugging values will be shared by that many less people in the future. However, if you have four kids, you could teach them all to be passionate environmentalists, the whole family can recycle and do earthy projects for the betterment of man, and you and your mate can be the matriarch and patriarch of a long happy line of people working to further the ideas of conservation and green living.

Glimmering aptly pointed out that your children don't necessarily have the same beliefs you do. It seems like you're a proponent of creating a brood of brainwashed minions to do your bidding, not having children. That's not what having children is about, in my opinion. :)

I think it's really great to see that British people don't have as many hangups about admitting what they want from life as Americans do. This is not a scientific hypothesis at all, but perhaps americans have such a high divorce rate because so many people want to "do waht adults do" and get married and have children, and don't ever admit to themselves what they really want. If only the people who really want to get married got married (instead of everyone), maybe there would be less divorce and fewer "screwed up" children.