Strictly speaking, should only rich people have kids?

Having wealth is not a guarantee against hardships and unnecessary suffering.

Yikes! Sounds like social engineering to me!

Yeah, ideally but not really.

I am in my 50’s now with a grown daughter who is 26.
No, one does not need to be rich to raise a child well, there are no laws saying you must provide an Ivy League education, but, basic necessities and good health and safety, absolutely.
The very reason I insisted on moving to the country when my daughter was small.
My ex commuted to the city but we could afford a much better lifestyle in the hills here than we could have in the city.

I was a stay at home mom til my daughter was in middle school and she had a great childhood. Lived in a beautiful and safe place, learned a love of nature and animals and wildlife, attended good schools and while we didn’t have the money for lots of extras and drove used cars and entertained ourselves at home a lot, it was a very good lifestyle.
Being the hippie/bohemian type, I think the greatest gifts we can give our children are the gifts of loving the planet, its inhabitants, encourage creativity, imagination and curiosity.
None of which money can buy.

Well, poor people definitely shouldn’t have 6 of them.

^^^ No shit! lol
It’s one thing to not be able to buy your kids the latest and greatest of everything, but entirely another to not be able to afford diapers and shoes and decent food.
I did my part, I am an only child of only children and had an only child.
Personally, I think in these times of mass over population a zero-one child policy is best.

The problem isn’t too many children but rather too little family. We seem to have moved into a time where parents don’t raise children but rather the state does. One parent families are the norm and of course that parent either works or has little time for the kids. We expect the schools to pick the slack by teaching morals, ethics, and of course how to get pregnant.

Parenting is a lot of work and it takes two people to do it effectively. If your not willing to put in the effort, don’t have the kids. If you are willing to put in the effort, you don’t need to be rich to do it.

@Jaxk Agreed,
I coined a saying when I was pregnant with my daughter and planning on being an at home mom during her major formative years.
My saying..” You don’t get a puppy and keep it in the neighbors yard.” haha
One of the tragedies of the last 40 years, not being able to have one parent in the home to raise the kids, mom or dad. When it takes 2 people to just survive on a 50–60 hour a week work schedule, relationships and families fail.

Personally, in an ideal world, I like the buddhist philosophy that 6 hours of work a day is more than enough if you wish to lead a balanced life.
I despise what it takes to survive in the modern world, and because of these pressures more and more relationships/families fall apart, not to mention the massive amount of substance abuse just to cope with the stressors of it all.

Only dedicated parents, prepared to make a lifetime commitment should have kids, everything else is just “noise”

@Coloma so, whether we want to admit it or not, it is wrong to bring a person into the world these days knowing that things will turn out to be just as tough and even tougher for him/her in future. It is selfish to a certain extent, isn’t it?

Rich people often produce spoiled entitled brats who will then make lousy parents. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs have come from poor single parents homes where they learned the value of hard work in order to succeed and excel.

@ZEPHYRA Yes, it is, but then again, it is also true that one never knows when the next Einstein, MLK, or Ghandi might come along. Thing is, just like pet over population, the odds are that only about 1 in 100 might end up getting a good home or maturing into someone that will change the world as a human.
I am for zero population growth at this stage of the cosmic game.

I am also strongly opposed to this narcissistic push to live to be a fucking 120.
The senior population is going to hit an all time high by 2050 of over 70 million people age 65 and over. Our planet along with government, healthcare issues and the burden on families cannot cope with these staggering numbers of ancient ones that, at the rate things are going, will be sick, old, frail and without a pot to piss in.
We either quit reproducing like rodents or we start euthanizng old folks around age 70. haha

Hey, I have every intention of taking responsibility for my old age and will certainly remove myself from the stable if I come up lame and run out of money to keep myself in hay. lol

@Coloma brilliantly put!!!!

If you restrict the birthing of children to only the rich, you will close the gene pool and soon have children far crazier than what we now experience.

You do understand that wealthy, gated communities are ghettos, too.

@Dan_Lyons We can’t make sweeping blanket statements like that, good and bad arise from every socioeconomic background. Plenty of Ghetto kids rise above as do plenty of affluent kids. It all depends on the health of the individual family.
There is no shame in having plenty and I am one that has been on both sides of every financial fence.
Money never changed me, it just made me more of who I already am, a generous, good natured person.

Why?

Necessity is the mother of invention; those who need little don’t get inventive the way the needy do. Rich kids never learn consequences the way less well-off kids do; if I kill someone, my parents won’t hire an expensive legal team to let me get away with it. And there are other things you can’t just throw money at.

No, socioeconomic standing has little bearing on the quality of life a kid has; rich people can be horrible parents too. The only difference is that they don’t rob houses to fund their drug habits.

No.
1. Rich people are a small minority among the human population. Only them having children will, in the long run medium run, lead to humanity’s extinction , both due to an almost nonexistant birthrate, as well as massive generational inbreeding.
2. It will lead to societal and economic collapse. Within a single Generation. If non-rich people do not reproduce, who will be the future workers? Robots?
3. It will almost completely destroy scientific progress. Remember Faraday? If the “rich parents only” rule had been in effect back then, the harnessing of electricity might never have happened. The entire modern world would not exist.

@ragingloli said it before I could get here.

If breeding was limited to 10% of the population, who’s going to take care of the aging population? Everyone wants to live 40 or 50 years after they retire – who the hell is paying for that and doing all the real work?

Only rich people? So, the question is not only excluding the poor, but the middle class also?

No, I don’t think only rich people should have children, that is ridiculous. Let’s take the US, so you are saying maybe only the top 10% of the country (if that) in income should have children?

I don’t think income should have much to do with it except that I think parents should give some thought to their income and how many children they can afford. Middle and upper class people consider that usually, they plan how many children they will have considering many different things, not just income. The poor too often seem to not think those things through, but I am not saying the majority of poor people don’t think about, just that it is enough people that it is noticeable.

Back in the day when we were more of an agricultural country large families made sense the kids helped to work the farm, and there was usually food to go around. Now, in modern cities having so many children doesn’t make much sense, it is a burden on society and a burden on the parents themselves and the children. There are still rural communities of course, but specifically in urban areas large families don’t make much sense usually. Unless the people can afford it, then I am fine with it.

A close friend of mine had a priest who used to say things like it doesn’t how much you can provide for your kids financially, providing siblings enriches the family. He didn’t care if having 6 kids might mean only some could go to college, or none, because money was spent just raising more kids. He is still wanting women to pop out as many as they can. Not all Priests talk like this, I am just talking about this one. Not that everyone has to go to college, but maybe one or two of the 6 might want to.

Sometimes your child is the only part of your life where you have any hope.
Now you want to take that away?

@filmfann That’s an awful big burden to put on your child.
I sure don’t want to be anyones hope. haha

@Coloma I agree. I tried to explain to a friend of mine what a horrible burden it is for children to know they are the primary source of their parents happiness. She didn’t understand what I meant at all.

Some would say that separate licenses should be required for birthing and/or raising children. Those who birth children without a license should be fined heavily until they get a license for each child, even retroactively. Those who raise children without a license should be fined heavily until they get one for each child.

Those who would say such things claim that licenses are required to drive a car. Another license required to burn trash. A license required for dumping toxic waste. I license required for real estate brokering, doctoring, banking, etc…

They would ask us which of this things is more difficult, or more important for society, than birthing and raising children.

I think you should only deliberately bring children into the world if you can afford to keep them warm, fed, watered, dry and clothed. I don’t think you should have to be rich to raise a child but, if your current financial situation causes you to have to rely on benefits/hand outs then I don’t think it is right to deliberately have a baby. Sadly, in the UK at least, it seems that a lot of people are doing just that and they know that this will keep them entitled to those benefits. I don’t think that is a good message for future generations. I grew up in a fairly poor situation (mainly caused by my parents divorce) but my parents always worked to give us what little we had.

I have no problem with benefits for people that really do need them but I don’t think it is responsible or fair on the tax payer to have to pay for yet another child that someone decided to have while being on benefits.

I really don’t want the government dictating, or licensing, who can and cannot have children, although I have been known to say we should do something to penalize people financially who have children while on public assistance to discourage it, which basically agrees with what @Leanne1986 just wrote as I am writing this.

@Coloma I am saying that the families will become sick if we enforce this inbreeding of the wealthy only.
The actual having of the money is not shameful. It is what the inbreeding will do to these people after a few generations of inbreeding.

We have seen what inbreeding does to Europeans like those nutty Germans of WWII and how about that totally insane wack job, King George III?

It isn’t the money itself, it is the inbreeding, which the rich already practice anyway.

@JLeslie

Penalize people financially for having a child whilst on benefits?

Seriously?

Can you say “blood from a stone”?

@Dan_Lyons I don’t think the wealthy are so small a group that we have to worry a lot about inbreeding. It isn’t like royalty, which is even a smaller group of people.

@Seek How do we get them to stop? I think plenty of poor people do use birth control and consciously think about being able to afford their children, so I just want to be clear that I am not trying to paint all poor people with one brush. There certainly is a percentage of people who just keep having babies who cannot afford their life or to support their children. Maybe we don’t penalize them for the first baby, but now that they know they can get pregnant, if they do it again I think don’t give more money to them. I’m ok with providing social systems for the children, because I certainly want the child cared for once here, but I don’t want to hand the mother more cash.

What do you think would happen if the government said anyone who has a baby while on government assistance will have their food stamps cut in half, or their tax deduction cut in half, or whatever we can name? Do you think people who can’t yet seem to understand they can’t afford children might actually realize they can’t afford them? I am fine with giving them free contraception.

I admit to be conflicted though, because I feel so strongly about low wages being a horrible thing for the country, and that is not corrected yet, so in the end I probably would not vote to actually penalize people, but there has to be some way to incentivize people to plan pregnancies. Educating them causing a cultural shift would be the ideal. I guess some people might see that as ethnocentric to judge the culture of a group, but if that group can’t survive on its own with its practices how should we deal with that? I actually think it is very complicated.

I would rather the multi-billionaires that own Wal*Mart pay the workers a bit more so the workers could have children and raise happy families without needing public assistance. But you know, one yacht is never really enough.

@johnpowell Exactly.

Well the problem with licensing for wannabe parents would do nothing more than ascertain they were fit and stable in the moment. Things can change in a heartbeat as we all know. Todays well adjusted licensed parent can still become tomorrows divorced, jobless, addicted, depressed and crazy parent. Nothing remains static, not finances, relationship, or ones health mental or otherwise.

@JLeslie “What do you think would happen if the government said anyone who has a baby while on government assistance will have their food stamps cut in half, or their tax deduction cut in half, or whatever we can name? Do you think people who can’t yet seem to understand they can’t afford children might actually realize they can’t afford them?”

No. What would happen is that the children would suffer even more.

^ No doubt. It’s not like they can be like “Oh, I guess I can’t afford canned beans this month. Better return the baby to the baby store!”

A poor person who has 4+ children is a burden on society. Middle class people aren’t having 4 kids. Know why? They think about it. Think about the expense, the work, etc. Why do people with some money think about it more than the poor? Again, not all poor people and not all middle class people, I certainly do know middle class people with 4+ kids, but not many anymore. I am talking about the extremes. Having a couple or few babies while on Medicaid and food stamps is a problem. Is it too much to ask poor people to think about what they can afford regarding their own children? I would assume most of them do, but the ones who don’t, why not try to come up with a way to try to get them to think about it.

What should we do? It isn’t fair. Not fair to the taxpayer and even more importantly not fair to the children. Poor children are at a disadvantage in many ways in our society. Even if we don’t cut any benefits to poor mothers, they still, I would assume, are better off financially having fewer kids, which gives their kids they do have more potential.

You know what’s not fair to the taxpayer? Corporate subsidies. Yep. $92 billion dollars a year so some wealthy bigwigs can get another $15 million bonus at the end of the year.

But you know, it’s much more important to squabble over whether the single mother or underpaid employees of the above-referenced bigwig can afford to feed their families.

http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-welfare-statistics-vs-social-welfare-statistics/

^ This is an entertaining read. I normally don’t link to partisan websites, but I just love how this one was written.

Low cost spay and neuter clinics maybe? lol

Hey, I’d get it done if it didn’t cost me anything. As long as it’s voluntary, I don’t see a problem. But writing legislation limiting families for people with low incomes is ridiculous. Talk about violations on inalienable rights. And the ammosexuals want to get in a twist over their rights being violated. Oi vey.

@Seek Of course, JK.

@Seek I agree with those things being unfair also. Are you going to tell me you think it is ok for people to have 4 kids when they cannot afford them? Forget about what I said about taking away money from them. Just the basic concept of being able to care for ones kids. Don’t you think people should think about it? Consider it? Consider the life their already born children will have if they add more children? I am talking about the people who really don’t think about it, I want them to think.

Wunday once talked about how some subgroups in our country gain status by having babies. This was a discussion about teen pregnancy mostly. Another jelly talked about his mother who worked in poor neighborhoods. He they did not think about planning a family, it just happened. They might be getting better now, he was talking about probably 20+ years ago, I don’t remember how old he was. My sister had a little sister (big sister program) who when she told my sister she was thinking about sex and my sister discouraged her and then asked her if she knew about birth control, the girl said she can’t do that because it would be like a worse sin to have sex and use birth control. I’m sure you have heard me tell that story before. Getting oregnant was not really on her radar, she wasnt worried about that risk. I don’t know if my sister got through to her, but she didn’t get pregnant as far as I know through high school.

Like I said, I wouldn’t actually vote to reduce funds for a child born, but defending poor people dependent on government services having multiple children I just don’t understand. Don’t you want them to be able to be less dependent on the government? Giving them $15 an hour instead of $7 still is not a great financial position for someone with 4 kids.

On sheer principal alone, I will not give anyone the power to tell me or anyone else what we can and cannot do with our reproductive organs.

That is the end of the conversation. Money has nothing to do with it. Social status has nothing to do with it. Parenting skills have nothing to do with it. This is bodily autonomy. Period.

From a purely logical sense without emotion getting in the way, it is a tacitly plausible theory. However, to really be effective you would have to include the upper-class, they can still afford children easily. As said before, the uber rich are too small of a pool. Many kids are born into families that would be rejected if they were trying to adopt, but their meager situation is OK for biological children. In the end if the poor and middle class were excluded it would be no different than if for some reason 3/5 of the population cease being heterosexual, the amount of births would be roughly the same. If mankind can survive that, they can survive just the upper-middle class and rich having kids.

@Seek Who is talking about telling someone what they can do with their reproducttive organs? I am not forcing anyone to do anything. I just want them to think. Most people don’t get more money from their employer because they had another baby.

No. But anyone who wants children should be limited to one. And ONLY one!

@kritiper Congratulations: You just doomed the human race to a maximum of 28 generations.

Kids do not know if they are poor until later in life. They don’t know if they’re rich either, until someone tells them.

They do know if they’re wanted and loved. So, only people who want kids should be allowed to have them, how about that?

@Seek We’re doomed already. There are over 7 billion people on the planet that can only support 500 million.

Well..I’m getting old, so one of you younger people can have a kid and I’ll die. haha

@funkdaddy Yes, please. GA.