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I don't normally play the writer's block game on LJ, but this question is one I've been thinking of often recently. I've been re-reading the Clan of the Cave Bear series of books, and am up to The Shelters of Stone, where Alya is pregnant. Reading the story from my modern perspective the part where everyone in the culture wants kids makes me uncomfortable. No, having children is *not* a fundamental human right. Perhaps back at a time when the total human population of the planet numbered less than one million people it was a right. Now that we number in the billions it is not. The planet cannot support this many of us. We are doing serious damage to our environment in so many ways, and the more of us there are the worse the damage is. The only hope is to drastically reduce our numbers.
If we don't choose to reduce our numbers ourselves the choice will eventually be made for us as food sources fail and we are starved to a smaller population. I don't like the sound of that option. Nor do I like the thought of reducing numbers via warfare, effective though it has often been. To my mind the best way to reduce our population down to a sustainable level is for most people to choose not to have children--to accept that for a number of generations there will be far, far, far more old people than young ones. Given how very many of us there are and the fact that people rarely die as soon as they've had children it will take many generations worth of "most" people alive not having children in order to bring numbers back down to reasonable. It is a very long-term solution to a problem that has been escalating since at before the time of the Industrial Revolution, but I like long-term answers better than short term ones.
Should there be restrictions? Hell yes! But the only sort of restrictions that ever work are the self imposed sort. The restrictions I'd like to see adopted by the people, for themselves: The first and foremost should be that *only* people who really, really, really want children should have them (that will make a bit of a population reduction right there--the number of children who are conceived because the parents weren't thinking at the time what the possible side effects of that particular behavior would be is still quite high, despite the existence of birth control). The next criteria should be a requirement of sufficient funds and/or income to ensure that the children who are born will have their needs met. This can be easily accomplished by forming family groups of more than two parents for each child (which, if children are as rare as I think they should be only makes sense--if each child has 6 or more parents then even though fewer people are breeding a reasonable number of folk who want children in their lives still get them). The other criteria is very important--choose the genetic matches for children wisely. Anyone who has serious genetically related health issues that negatively impact the quality of their lives shouldn't be one of the ones contributing genes to the next generation. Likewise the very few people who do actually breed should take care to combine their genes with those of someone whose genes are likely to result in a healthy child. There are a number of genetic issues that are dormant for generations and then suddenly cause problems when the genes were combined with the wrong person. Take care to avoid such situations in the first place. Finally, since even if all of the above are applied there will still be too many children being born, make it a lottery--any group of 6 or more people who meet all of the above criteria (and have chosen from amongst themselves the most compatible genes to be combined to create the child) can put their names on the list of people who want a child, and once a quarter a drawing is made to select which groups may actually breed.
I think the world would be vastly improved if only a tiny percentage of us had children, but 100% of us gave of our time and effort to care for those few children and helped them to grow into the sorts of people who care about the planet.
I don't really expect my plan to be implemented--most folk are far too selfish and aren't willing to give up their chance to breed for the good of the entire human race. But a few of us are doing our part on our own by not having them. Too little, too late, but it is one thing we can do on our own.
I don't normally play the writer's block game on LJ, but this question is one I've been thinking of often recently. I've been re-reading the Clan of the Cave Bear series of books, and am up to The Shelters of Stone, where Alya is pregnant. Reading the story from my modern perspective the part where everyone in the culture wants kids makes me uncomfortable. No, having children is *not* a fundamental human right. Perhaps back at a time when the total human population of the planet numbered less than one million people it was a right. Now that we number in the billions it is not. The planet cannot support this many of us. We are doing serious damage to our environment in so many ways, and the more of us there are the worse the damage is. The only hope is to drastically reduce our numbers.
If we don't choose to reduce our numbers ourselves the choice will eventually be made for us as food sources fail and we are starved to a smaller population. I don't like the sound of that option. Nor do I like the thought of reducing numbers via warfare, effective though it has often been. To my mind the best way to reduce our population down to a sustainable level is for most people to choose not to have children--to accept that for a number of generations there will be far, far, far more old people than young ones. Given how very many of us there are and the fact that people rarely die as soon as they've had children it will take many generations worth of "most" people alive not having children in order to bring numbers back down to reasonable. It is a very long-term solution to a problem that has been escalating since at before the time of the Industrial Revolution, but I like long-term answers better than short term ones.
Should there be restrictions? Hell yes! But the only sort of restrictions that ever work are the self imposed sort. The restrictions I'd like to see adopted by the people, for themselves: The first and foremost should be that *only* people who really, really, really want children should have them (that will make a bit of a population reduction right there--the number of children who are conceived because the parents weren't thinking at the time what the possible side effects of that particular behavior would be is still quite high, despite the existence of birth control). The next criteria should be a requirement of sufficient funds and/or income to ensure that the children who are born will have their needs met. This can be easily accomplished by forming family groups of more than two parents for each child (which, if children are as rare as I think they should be only makes sense--if each child has 6 or more parents then even though fewer people are breeding a reasonable number of folk who want children in their lives still get them). The other criteria is very important--choose the genetic matches for children wisely. Anyone who has serious genetically related health issues that negatively impact the quality of their lives shouldn't be one of the ones contributing genes to the next generation. Likewise the very few people who do actually breed should take care to combine their genes with those of someone whose genes are likely to result in a healthy child. There are a number of genetic issues that are dormant for generations and then suddenly cause problems when the genes were combined with the wrong person. Take care to avoid such situations in the first place. Finally, since even if all of the above are applied there will still be too many children being born, make it a lottery--any group of 6 or more people who meet all of the above criteria (and have chosen from amongst themselves the most compatible genes to be combined to create the child) can put their names on the list of people who want a child, and once a quarter a drawing is made to select which groups may actually breed.
I think the world would be vastly improved if only a tiny percentage of us had children, but 100% of us gave of our time and effort to care for those few children and helped them to grow into the sorts of people who care about the planet.
I don't really expect my plan to be implemented--most folk are far too selfish and aren't willing to give up their chance to breed for the good of the entire human race. But a few of us are doing our part on our own by not having them. Too little, too late, but it is one thing we can do on our own.
