[Un Canadien Errant]

Doesn't this article have the Brave New World feel that lefties love. Talking about "the trade-offs between child quantity and quality" makes children seem more like goods rather than gifts from God.

[Unam Sanctam]

Left-wing anti-life mentality strikes again.

[breakem]

thanx, thought provoking

[netmilsmom]

Welcome to FR, tomorrow.

[Restorer]

Dimwit.

A great many women have one or zero children.

Some significant number of women must have three or more just to compensate for them, or the birthrate will fall below replacement level.

The "subsidies" are merely a (very) partial compensation for the costs associated with raising children, an activity vital to the continued survival of a society.

BTW, our glorious European allies have much more generous childbirth incentives. They aren't working. Essentially all European countries are well below replacement levels in their birthrate.

[AZLiberty]

Yup. We want to be just like German or Italy, who are failing to reproduce themselves, and will starve in their old age due to lack of children.

On the other hand, there's sure to be some great bargains for us in European real estate as the older generations die off.

[kabar]

Europe is dying because of the demographics. An aging society with fewer workers supporting the economy and the social welfare system doom a country's competitiveness in the world economy. Countries like Germany are providing "kinder geld" to encourage more children. This article is nonsense.

[Temple Drake]

short-term idea with long-term dreadful consequences ... all we have to do is wait for the Islamo-fascists to reproduce their way into the majority and kill off our few great-grandchildren.

[Dan(9698)]

Who is going to pay your Social Securety?

[freeangel]

Most of the kids I see that are from large families are on medicaid. Somehow I do not equate that with any kind of support in "winning" the global economy. Just another drain on the the taxpayers. If you can't afford them--don't have them.

[grellis]

I could fertilize my lawn with the article and have lush green grass by morning...for my kids to romp around in. Utter hogwash.

[longtermmemmory]

conclusion, the left HATES children.

for the democrats Mother is a four letter word
for the democrats Fatherhood is a hatecrime
for the democrats Family is a sex act
for the democrats forced idividualism is a tool of power
for the democrats selfless acts are taxable.

[conservative cat]

Ah.. More BS from Slate. I have three children and will probably shoot for (or at least my SO will)a fourth. The same people who propose this BS are all for gay marriages and the associated benefits they like to claim all married people have.

[jihadjim]

But where would we get the taxpayers of the future to fund all the programs?

[Quix]

most of the large families I've known

Did much better at rearing kids than those with smaller families. Not sure why.

In any case, I'd be happy to allot my 2 to someone wanting a large family who demonstrated quality parenting!

[Jeff Gordon]

One's income must be of certain levels to take advantage of multiple child decuctions. You can only deduct to the point of zero tax. Deductions beyond zero tax do nothing for you and provide no encouragements for anything. The people referred to in this article clearly do not have the income level where they would benefit from multiple child deductions.

Contrary to the point of the article, we DO want to engourage larger families for those families that can afford to be larger.

[patent]

I found the paragraph where he described his methodology to be remarkably telling:

Here's where my research comes in. I deploy a natural experiment: I examine which sexes parents get for their first two children—a seemingly random event. The key is that families with two kids of the same sex are 17 percent more likely to go on and have a third than those with two kids of the opposite sex. As it turns out, no matter what most people say on surveys (or when their kids pop out), many parents desire at least one of each kind. So my research strategy boils down to the following: comparing children from families in which the first two were of the same sex ("treatment group") to those in which the first two were of the opposite sex ("control group") in order to see who fares better educationally. In other words, while only some of the variation in who goes on to have a third child is accounted for by the sex mix (that 17 percent), that variation is "pure"—that is, unbiased by all the other factors that determine family size and determine achievement—since it is a result of the random event of the sex mix. Its lack of bias is bolstered by the fact that it does not matter which sex the first two are—either way, parents are more likely to go on to have additional kids in search of a complete set.

He starts with assumptions based on a parental attitude that children are hood ornaments. He formed his study and control groups around parents who want one of each sex so they can maintain proper appearances with a matched set of the “child” accessory to go with their other accessories. He then bases his research around these “accessorized” families that had a third kid to round out the set, and he wonders why those families have a harder time educating all three kids?????

News flash: the kid is practically an accessory to them, and if that accessory takes too much time, they won’t bother. Just like the boat, or the lake cabin, or the Jet Ski. It’s easy to care for one such accessory, especially when it’s the first: its novel, new, interesting, challenging. It starts to get old and boring by the time you have to fix up the second one, whether it’s the “boat” accessory or the “kid” accessory. When you have kids for your needs, rather than theirs, you are far less likely to put the time THEY need into them. When it is new and interesting, you find the time because YOU want to. When it starts to get boring, you move on to other accessories. So of course these kinds of parents find it easier to fully educate two than three. Those last two have to compete with the boat for a very small amount of attention, and only a small part of that attention will go to the latter born kids, whether its one kid or two.

This is how social engineering works. You change how folks view families and kids into mere accessories and encourage them to have only a couple. Some parents develop a faulty and debased attitude about kids. Rather than having kids for moral reasons and focusing on what the kid needs, they start to think of kids (in part) as things the parent “needs” to round out the parent’s life. So, once you’ve changed parental attitudes you use that debased attitude’s results to design a new study that more kids are bad. It’s using a flaw to expand that flaw. Its like pounding a hole in a dam and then complaining that water is flowing through the hole, and we should make a bigger hole to better manage the flowing water.

What they should really compare is how parents who had two same sex kids, and then had a third, raised their kids when compared to parents who had one boy and one girl, and then had a third child anyway. In the latter case that third kid is far more likely to have been wanted for who or what it is, rather than to round out the “child” accessory.

patent

Note: I recognize that many folks in the past had kids for their own purposes as well, kings to have heirs, farmers to have slave labor, etc. I just think the kid as a hood ornament attitude is even more debasing to the worth of the kid, and even more likely to cause a situation where the kid is uncared for, except when he needs polishing before a big event.

[ArrogantBustard]

This butthead is whining about "large families" at a time when Western Civilisation is in the process of contracepting, aborting, and buggering itself out of existence. I think what's really scaring him is that it's "right wing" folks in general and Christians (of various sorts) in particular that are reproducing. Demographics are destiny.

[ArrogantBustard]

I'm sure you'll find this dude's "analysis" absolutely fascinating.

[No Truce With Kings]

Well, let's see. Take a country, any country. Remove all the DINKs, SINKS, gays, and those singles that will never have children. Come back in a 50 years. That country about is the same population as it would have been with those that are never going to have children.

Now take the same country. Remove all those that intend to have three or more children -- and their children while you are at it. Come back in 50 years. That country is on its way to depopulation.

Because a significant percentage of any country will chose to forego children -- and that is their choice -- large families are necessary if that country is not to depopulate.

Any country that discourages large families is headed for the dustbin of history.

[cherry]

I think that a goodly portion of all our "problems" today wouldn't be IF we had a strong birthrate among the working class citizens of the country....

now, we have unlimited immigration, diluting American values as well as driving up health and welfare programs to the verge of collapse...

Fact is, if every decent American couple had larger families, we wouldn't be seeing our economy OR our American values in the gutter....

not to disparge immigrants....we are afterall a nation of immigrants....but people used to have to get PERMISSION to come into our country....now, its a freeforall....