Deciding to have a child

I recently took part in a debate on Amazon about Parenting and more specifically about whether to have kids and if so, how many. It was an interesting debate with many different turns and side issues and was sometimes quite heated with some participants deciding to no longer participate.

It is an emotional issue for so many people. Through nature, we are drawn to having children - it is one of our most basic instincts. But, in modern society we finally have a choice. We can decide to have children or not and it doesn't limit our desire and need for intimacy and sex. We also can now try to balance the root desire for children with our ability to support them and the appropriateness of having more children in an already crowded world (see world population counter).

Unfortunately, the people willing to strike this balance and who consider the choice of having children against the bigger picture (world over population, global warming, financial stability, etc.) are the very people who would best serve humankind by having children. I once wrote a lengthy paper on The De-Evolution of the Human Race that included research on the sinking intelligence and abilities of humanity in western civilization because of the propensity for the middle and upper classes to not reproduce at will and the lower classes to ignore the choice. Unfortunately, there hasn't been enough years of this potential de-evolution to substantiate the idea. There has also been general increase in apparent intelligence and capability (or productivity) because of new technologies like the Internet that introduce free and easily available information to the masses. But, look around and you will see many capable, successful people who are unwilling or at least hesitant to have children. On the other side are people like the woman who rented a house of mine at one point and told me that her job was to make babies for the state - and indeed, she was getting paid more each time she had another baby. She didn't care who the father was and she was on number nine at the time.

So, in the debate on Amazon, I argued that anyone asking the question of whether or not to have children is already likely to be a better parent, a better provider, and someone who would produce better citizens than the average person out there having children. That argument started the first firestorm. It was interesting to see the reactions - they were emotional and heartfelt, but few had any logic or reasoning behind them and I stood my ground as there was nothing in the arguments to counter what I was saying.

Then the discussion turned to only-children (one child in a family) and again I started a firestorm, this one probably more deserved. I have observed many families and parenting situations (part of my research into writing Humanism for Parents - Parenting without Religion and found many parents that mistakenly enable their children - in other words give them what they want to quiet them down. Sometimes this is done as part of an (IMO invalid) parenting philosophy, but more often it is because they struggle with conflict and the personal will power it takes to stand up to a screaming child. In multi-children families where the parents tend to enable, the children end up learning that they can't always get there way. In single-child families, the child really is the center of the universe. In childhood s/he almost always gets his/her way. Then, later in life it is difficult for them to be happy because they never can get back to that situation where they get whatever they want. It makes for an adult who is difficult to please and struggles to be happy.

Of course all of the people in the debate who were only-children vehemently objected. They believed they had turned out fine thereby disproving my arguments. Of course my arguments were never about a single person and they shouldn't have taken it so personally. Also, any person tends to think s/he is "ok" (turned out well), it is an attribute of human psychology. There also hasn't been (to my knowledge) impartial studies on this, so it is difficult to prove. But it does make a lot of sense.

On the other hand, anyone who is thinking about having children and actually spending time trying to decide is much more likely to parent a single child better than those who just have children without deciding to. Again, don't take any one case and object to this - it is a blanket statement that can't be applied to a specific situation.

This isn't exactly a Humanist issue, but you can try to look at it from a Humanist standpoint. In that case we would use logic, reasoning and compassion to explore the ideas for validity (and leave emotion and reaction aside). In this case, however, I don't know of any applicable research. Maybe it is time for a graduate student or team to do just such a research project.

Incompetent Gonzales finally gone

WASHINGTON (AP) - Alberto Gonzales, the nation's first Hispanic attorney general, announced his resignation Monday - ending a nasty, monthslong standoff over his honesty and competence at the helm of the Justice Department.

It is about damn time.

One of the few things the Republicans and Democrats have agreed on recently is the need for Gonzales to resign. He has proven incompetent at best and at worst a threat to the checks & balances that keep our democratic system alive by turning the justice department into a political arm under the Bush administration.

Now they need a real (read independent) leader who can clean up the mess. But, that isn't likely with the current administration's inability to admit any wrong.

Christian Proselytizing in the Armed Services

This has, frankly, been an embarrasement for some time - our armed forces have proven some of the most prejudicial organizations in the government today (second to the white house of course). Humanists, Atheists and non-Christians have all been harassed and shunned by all the services. The Air Force being one of the worst offenders.

Finally, some good news on this front:

Three faculty members from United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in Colorado Springs, Colorado--one of whom is also a former cadet--have gone public today with their criticisms of evangelical Christian proselytizing at the USAFA. They are joined by another former cadet now serving in Iraq. Of the three faculty members, only one now remains at the Academy. Two have been reassigned, one to the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama and one to Afghanistan.

See The Humanist Magazine article published by the three faculty members.

Improving on your Parents

One of the most impressive things I can think of for a parent is something my father (Edward M. Curley) accomplished. His father abused his wife and kids; actually beat them up when he was upset and/or drunk. Then, when my father was around 12, he left them to fend for themselves and disappeared for 40 years.

But, not only did my father never beat us up or hit his wife, he only ever spanked us if it was for a lesson. He broke that cycle of child abuse and that has to be one of the hardest things to break. I have felt the deep-rooted desire to hit a kid many times and if I had grown up in an environment where I was beat up, I wonder if I could refrain from hitting a child during any of those many times s/he was completely misbehaving. But, I don’t have to struggle with that because my father broke the cycle and taught me that physical punishment should only be used when trying to train or accomplish something, not out of anger or spite.

I’ve often thought that every person would do well to try to improve on one thing s/he thinks his or her parent(s) did poorly. I’ve told each of my four kids this – that one of their jobs as a parent will be to improve on what my wife and I have done as parents. But, in no way did I ever think I could match the improvement my Dad did. And I didn’t need to. There are many other ways I’ve thought I improved on parenting from what he did. Some are:

• Played with the kids a lot more
• Participated in their lives a lot more (births, events, competitions)
• Talk with them a lot more (as a confidant)

These were things my Dad didn’t do, but that I do at least better than he did. Obviously they are nowhere near as important as his breaking of the abuse cycle.

Then the other day I began reading The End of Faith by Sam Harris. He made an interesting point in how difficult it is to break away from religion and it started me thinking that maybe the biggest improvement I made isn’t on the day-to-day tactical sense that those above are, but rather in my breaking away from religion.
Religion is so out-dated and detrimental to society and so difficult to break out of that my going from the hardcore Catholic school boy (I was an alter boy and frequently lead the rosary during my lunch hour) to the Humanist advocate I am, is just about as difficult as my father breaking out of the child abuse cycle.
I know that there are many (very many) good religious people. But as a whole, religion has been responsible for more atrocities in the world than anything else. Most recently is the total destruction of the World Trade Center and the resulting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite what politicians say, these are totally about religion – do you think the Taliban would have attacked the WTC without Islam? And think about the Bible and Koran that both basically say that if another does not believe in God as this book says (and you believe), then you must kill them. The Islamists are just living by the book they believe in – in some ways that is more admirable than the Christians who say the Bible is the word of God, but then don’t live by it.

Anyway, Religion is so archaic and unneeded and in fact damaging that we have to as a race stop the irrational faith in it. But, taking that step is very difficult. When you grow up in a family that totally believes and has total faith (something you believe with no evidence), then it becomes very difficult to break away. It is also scary for many people to think that they aren’t going to live past death and that they have nobody to rely on but themselves. This stance of course would make everyone stand up and be responsible for who they are without relying on some deity, but it is still scary to most and one of the reasons they can’t easily break away from it.

So, I’m now wondering if maybe I did improve on something really big instead of those little things. Not that I wasn’t happy with them – I didn’t say that every generation had to improve to the level my Dad did; that is pretty much impossible.

Your job of course is be to improve on something that you think is important in the way of parenting. It doesn’t have to be huge, it just has to be something – if for no other reason than that this will make you think about what good parenting is and who you want to be as a parent.