In the Fiumara Mall, the rare mother pushing a stroller is generally speaking a foreign language. “In Italy, they don’t have children,” said Flor Ribera, a 42-year-old house cleaner from Ecuador, who plans to enroll her two children in middle school next year. “They have dogs and cats.”
The end of something big
Friday September 22, 2006
In Genoa, the city is dying for want of children. The only people having kids there these days are immigrants. Young people have resolutely chosen to have either no children, or only one child. Some claim that it's too expensive to raise kids, but that's a crock, given what generations of their (our) ancestors endured in terms of material privation, yet still had families. Here is a quote from the Times story that has the force of a prophecy:
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Michael Blowhard:
You've already called me an ass and a jerk in just two posts. Please calm down; this ain't the Daily Kos. You are frightening the children.>
M_David -- Fair enough. So long, anyway, as you realize that you've been calling others "humor-challenged," going-extinct, ignorant of Darwin, and opposed to God's will.>
"M.Blowhard has a good point. Why do religious conservatives assume that it is God's plan to fill the planet, shoulder-to-shoulder, with people."
Curiously, the automatic pro-natalism in some Christian circles neglects the importance of the celibate or vowed religious in Christian life. At one point in the rise of industrialism, monks and nuns were considered economic parasites who selfishly refused productive work or the begetting of more workers and soldiers.
Why don't people so concerned about population control encourage chaste priests, monks, and nuns? Can't they put aside the "dogs in heat" theory of human sexuality?
"2.8 billion people currently live on less than $2 a day."
Didn't the number used to be 3 billion living on less that $1/day? That seems like a sign of improvement, however small it seems to us.>
Let it be known that all religious conservatives are not all about having a brood of young-uns. I'm not. I decided that motherhood was not in my future inasmuch as I have a nasty temper and don't think I'm good mother material. My husband and I are both very happy with the decision. In the alternative, we don't hate children either. We get to be an "aunt and uncle" to our friends' children and love them dearly, but that's all the exposure we need to little ones. I don't necessarily buy the argument that without children you have no one to take care of you in your old age. If that were true, the nursing and retirement homes wouldn't be full of lonely elderly people. Sometimes you get stuck in there whether you have children or not.>
T.G. Scott writes:
I don't necessarily buy the argument that without children you have no one to take care of you in your old age. If that were true, the nursing and retirement homes wouldn't be full of lonely elderly people. Sometimes you get stuck in there whether you have children or not.
I see very few parents of large families dumped in nursing homes. If they are, the most likely have earned it.
I think our nursing homes are generally filled with parents who had a just a few kids, and raised their daughters for a job in the world, not for childrearing and caregiving. Large families with traditional daughters tend to fight over who gets to keep Grandma.
Case in point: cultures like the Amish don't have nursing homes.>
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