Psychic

During the last decades of this century, the world has come to know what is known as the western life style. On of the components of this life style is the sexual liberty.

As a direct effect of this style of living the marital institution lost its stability, marriage lost it necessity, and the statistics says that in the US for example 50% of marriages end up in divorce! And in Canada 54% of children below the age of 18 live with a stepfather or a stepmother. And children living with a step father or mother, besides not being given the appropriate care, are more 3-40 times more likely to be abused or hurt than children living with their natural parents. (Martin Daly and Margo Wilson).
Furthermore, regarding children, it is even more traumatizing than divorce to living in a house full of anger, hate, and parental fights. And this house is also provably a direct product of the excessive sexually liberty.

I say, stop this random process. I say, not every family should be allowed to have children. I say not every one has the right to have children.
Build devices that reversibly cause infertility. People should apply to a certain authority if they are contemplating having children, and that authority should refer to certain criteria before unlocking the couple’s fertility.

The criteria can be things like: a long-term stable courtship, a secure financial resources, compatibility …etc that on one hand should provide children with a healthy environment, and it might also provide a place for all mighty natural selection to revisit our species again!

I am only sharing this picture with you. Show your teeth and launch your missiles, or you can make any appropriate modifications to the picture.

yelyos

Where are your statistics from? I am an under-18 in Canada and I know very few people who live with stepparents. The 54% claim just doesn't seem consistent with what I have observed, so where did you get these statistics?

Abel Stable

Originally posted by Psychic
Exactly how did you come to this conclusion? Are such households a new development?

LHP Adept

Sure, impose the law you describe and watch the revolutionaries burn your capitol. Look for me there, I'll be right at the head of the column.

I can't beleive that you are seriously suggesting we curtail the right to reproduce. If some human agency is deciding who are and are not fit parents, corruption and incompetence will surely rear their ugly heads, as they do in approximately 100% of human endeavors.

Further, if having babies is limited to those who choose LESS sexual freedom (people who sleep around will be turned down by your hypothetical agency) then the birth rate will plummet, since for many people getting laid today will likely trump the possibility of having children at some time in the future. The species has survived in spite of our breathtakingly inefficient reproductive system only because sex is so pleasurable that people are strongly motivated to do it (again and again) even when it is costly or dangerous. Creating a situation where choosing immediate sexual gratification LESSENED one's likelyhood of reproducing woud stand the natural process on its head. In 30 years, you won't have enough young workers to provide for all your retired elderly.

Also, there are already more women than men looking for a marraige partner. If single women couldn't get a reproductive liscence, the ones who want babies would become women-looking-for-a-husband and the ratio of women-looking-for-husbands to men-looking-for-wives will become even more unbalanced.

Without enough marraige-minded men to go around, more and more women would become desperate enough to seek illegal countercontraceptives. If you think prison sentences will deter people from providing them, look how many drug dealers we have locked up right now and ask if this has reduced the availability of drugs.

You clearly have not seriously considered the consequences of the policy you propose.

The Other Michael

I strongly agree that there are many people who shouldn't be parents (actually a lot of them probably shouldn't even be entrusted witn an animal pet, which is what I think they probably actually wanted but having a child gave them more social cachet).

The problem is in the implementation of the idea.

Frankly, I've got a lot of other stuff to do, so you can't count on me to make the decision for more than a few of the obvious cases.

cheers,
Michael

Calzaer

You make that sound like a BAD thing. 6.3 billion people on the planet isn't enough for you?

While I'm not speaking out in support of this idea, I'd also like to point out that while you are required to get a license to CUT HAIR in this country, any pair of alcoholic drug-addicted neo-nazis can have a kid or twelve.

dk

Country Divorces (as % of marriages) Country Divorce Rate (Per 1000 population per year)

Psychic

The right to reproduce! Hmm… Did you get your driving license? .... What happened to the right to drive? Just because it has been allowed to happen unchecked for too long, doesn’t mean it is a natural law.
Which one do you think is the more serious, more complicated, and more dangerous; raising a child or driving a car? Which one of the two rights you think should be only allowed to those who are able? Drive without knowing how to drive and you’ll get the hang of the wheels after a month or so (maybe running over a few people in the process) but when you raise a child who had a rough childhood, by parents who don’t care about teaching him any good morals or anything useful at all, you are creating more chaos in the society. I think we see now which one is in need for a license.


of course not, the whole idea behind the hypothetical agency is not to intefere with the sexual liberty! the agency won't choose people because there are sexually resereved. they are choosen if they are able to provide a healthy environment for their children, it has nothing to do with there past.

we will not turn the discussion to "Do single women have the right to have children?" or to rephrase the question "how many of you around here would accept coming to this world finding not father? do you personally accept this?"


surly I haven't! I trying to do that with you guys.

there is no space here to go through the evoultion of social psychology, but you can compare "the victorian England" with the current England. or compare the conservative societies with the less conservatives societies. the buttom line is: people tend to be less content with their spouse if other options are readily available and within reach of sight. that what produces a greater percentage of such household in liberal societies.

nermal

There has never been a right to drive. That's a lousy analogy. Try something more natural and inherently physiological (reproduction is natural and physiological) like: "Did you get your walking license?....What happened to the right to walk?"
Oh, wait. That doesn't work. Maybe because your premise is lunacy.

Ed

Ovazor

I don't see how the erosion of marriage as an institution is a direct result from sexual liberty. I see it more as a result of secularisation, equality between sexes, and general increased emphasis on individual -not necessarily sexual- freedom.

Furthermore, many of the marriages ending in divorce do so only after a long time, after ten to fifteen years of marriage. Your criteria for breeding passes wouldn't do anyhting to prevent such couples having children.

Also, most couples I'd think bad parents arent bad because of sexual eccess butbecause of overuse of alcohol or other substances.

Just claiming that this situation is "provably a direct producit of sexual liberty" doesn't make it so. You wouldn't mind actually proving it?

I take it for granted that your criteria for "long-term stable courtships" would mean heterosexual relationship.

Your requirement for "secure financial resources" would in practise lead to very severe demographic discrimination as financial resources are not equally divided among various ethnic groups. Basically it could and would lead to a program to cull out various minorities.

Could you please explain to me how a selection by an agency has anything to do with natural selection?

Also, I'd like to know how comes a medical student write that ensuring that parents have stable relationship, financial security and psychological compability would bring about eugenic effects? Financial security isn't inherited genetically.

Ovazor