Large Families, Care Of Children & World Population

[CV75]

So I return to an earlier question: Who determines what is "reasonable"?

So, where does the family fit in here? After all, the first recourse seems always to be "call social services".

Who pays for it when "society" does err and freedom is trampled on the way to the buses? (Hint: it's not "society".)

The determination of what is reasonable, on a societal level, is accomplished by both “whos” and “whats.” Typically, individuals (the whos) enter into a public discourse and come up with a set of agreeable standards and means for implementing the common good (the whats). The whos then apply those standards and means to the best of their ability. It is not atypical to find a measure of variance and compromise when whos are engaged in developing and applying the whats. One result, among other tradeoffs, is a tolerable balance between safety and freedom.

The family is the fundamental unit of society and is where we first find whos developing and applying whats. Sometimes this involves revealed religion and sometimes not, but both types of families interact in the next layer of society.

I don’t believe society is the immediate or fundamental problem, but the individuals and families that form it and formulate its economy. When inevitable mistakes are made in protecting either children or freedom, individuals suffer and the aims of the society are undermined; everybody pays to some extent. This is why the whats must include checks and balances and recompense for the wronged, and why the whos must be vigilant in learning from and preventing future mistakes.

Once freedom is trampled enough without redress a revolution will follow.

[thesometimesaint]

HeatherAnn:

It's a concern. Six Indian(India) families live off what just one American family can. I'm not too sure that most American familes would even want to live like that. But it does show what is possible.

The Bible says we are to be good stewards of our garden. This earth is the only garden humanity will ever know in this life. So we are to take good care of it.

God didn't make an open sewer, that's man doing. He made a Garden with all types of plants, flowers, trees, and shrubs in it. He placed man, and woman, in that Garden to tend, and take care of it, and the Garden would take care of them.

An old Chinese saying goes something like; keep your house so clean that only a single cockroach can live off it. That was long before pesticides.

We should do much better than we are.

Edited August 26, 2011 by thesometimesaint

[seriously honestly]

Though this family makes me think there might be hope:

http://abcnews.go.com/watch/nightline/SH5584743/VD55107238/nightline-119-big-family

Them and the Duggars

[LeSellers]

The determination of what is reasonable, on a societal level, is accomplished by both “whos” and “whats.” Typically, individuals (the whos) enter into a public discourse and come up with a set of agreeable standards and means for implementing the common good (the whats). The whos then apply those standards and means to the best of their ability. It is not atypical to find a measure of variance and compromise when whos are engaged in developing and applying the whats. One result, among other tradeoffs, is a tolerable balance between safety and freedom.

I've read this several times and arrive at this conclusion: The whole is more important than the individual, but there is no standard by which we can judge what is "reasonable". It's all conjecture.

A child born in Lithuania is not subject to the same "protections" as one born in Nebraska (and visa versa) because the "society" of each place has decided how parents should raise their children differently.

As I said, if it is subject to the whims and vaguaries of "society" to determine what is right, then we are all subject to being hauled off to court whenever anyone disagrees with our approach. If the majority defines what is just, we are doomed.

"So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause." Padmé

Lehi

[katherine the great]

That's a fine answer to a totally different question than the one I asked. BTW, why do you need the state to intervene? If you really have the courage of your convictions, stop it yourself.

Because that is the society we live in. In an emergency situation, I very well might step in myself however, I consider myself part of a "group" and that group provides services that specialize in certain things. I have taken advantage of 911 services in the past and been very grateful for them and I would not hesitate to do it in the situation I cited. I am not as single minded as you are. I LIKE the American way (for the most part.) It is far from perfect, but I think it's pretty good and it would have to get a heck of a lot worse before I would make myself angry and miserable all the time fighting it tooth and nail all the way. I enjoy being happy.

[Calm]

BTW, why do you need the state to intervene? If you really have the courage of your convictions, stop it yourself.

I can see some significant problems with this if everyone approached problems they think they see this way....vigilantism is only one of them.

[LeSellers]

I can see some significant problems with this if everyone approached problems they think they see this way....vigilantism is only one of them.

And the difference is ... ?

Ratting out your neighbors to the cops seems cowardly to me. It goes against Gospel principles, too. If there is a problem between two people the first "contact" should not be with your enemy and a guy with a gun.

And, to be clear, I did not imply anyone should administer "justice" himself, I meant going, in person, and explaining why you think the act is wrong.

Lehi

[seriously honestly]

And, to be clear, I did not imply anyone should administer "justice" himself, I meant going, in person, and explaining why you think the act is wrong.

Lehi

Just march on over to their house and tell them their wrong? You honeslty think that would solve the problem? You have no legal authority to prevent someone from abusing their child on your own, and, seeing how your telling someone they are abusive and lack parenting skill and you have a problem with it, you are not trained to handle the situation should it escalate.

[LeSellers]

Just march on over to their house and tell them their wrong? You honeslty think that would solve the problem? You have no legal authority to prevent someone from abusing their child on your own, and, seeing how your telling someone they are abusive and lack parenting skill and you have a problem with it, you are not trained to handle the situation should it escalate.

That's why God invented cell phones.

Every case may be different, but there is one thing about most states' "Child Protective Services" laws that really irritates me: anyone can make an anonymous phone call and ruin someone's life and family. Children have been seized based on such calls. Social workers seem to be trained to ignore the law based on the IV amendment about searches and seizures, and the V regarding self-incrimination. The Constitutional right to confront one's accusers is erased, too, and it's far too easy for the police, the neighbors and anyone from CPS to abuse (and it has been repeatedly).

People's refusal to take responsibility for their actions leads to this sort of thing. I nkkow there are weird people out there, scary people. But that does not mean the first recourse should always be the lethal power of the state.

Further, the fact is that CPS (or whaterver it may be called in your neck of the woods) has an abysmal track record. They are paid a federal bounty for "placing" children for adoption, and often do so without just cause, not to mention the laws that give them "just" cause are skewed to make it all too easy for the state to step in, and confiscate the chldren, even when they follow those laws to the letter, which they do not in far too many cases.

I can't think that Father is pleased when people step in where they are not needed and destroy families like this. It's not His plan.

Lehi

Edited August 26, 2011 by LeSellers

[seriously honestly]

That's why God invented cell phones.

Every case may be different, but there is one thing about most states' "Child Protective Services" laws that really irritates me: anyone can make an anonymous phine call and ruin someone's life and family. Children have been seized based on such calls. SOcial workers seem to be trained to ignore the law based on the IV amendment about searches and seizures, and the V regarding self-incrimination. The Constitutional right to confront one's accusers is erased, too, and it's far too easy for the police, the neighbors and anyone from CPS to abuse (and it has been repeatedly).

People's refusal to take responsibility for their actions leads to this sort of thing. I nkkow there are weird people out there, scary people. But that does not mean the first recourse should always be the lethal power of the state.

Further, the fact is that CPS (or whaterver it may be called in your neck of the woods) has an abysmal track record. They are paid a federal bounty for "placing" children for adoption, and often do so without just cause, not to mention the laws that give them "just" cause are skewed to make it all too easy for the state to step in, and confiscate the chldren, even when they follow those laws to the letter, which they do not in far too many cases.

I can't think that Father is pleased when people step in where they are not needed and destroy families like this. It's not His plan.

Lehi

And when the abuse continues? At what point do you acknowledge the situation is beyond your control, and who do you turn to? (and yes, it is call CPS where I live)

[LeSellers]

And when the abuse continues? At what point do you acknowledge the situation is beyond your control, and who do you turn to? (and yes, it is call CPS where I live)

If there's abuse, and if it does continue, and if you're absolutely sure it's abuse (a lot of people think spanking is "abuse": there was an incident in Philadelphia a few weeks ago when a mother swatted her kid's butt and yelled (profanity) at him that got called "abuse"), then, after you've told the parents your position, then you call CPS. But don't make it the first resort.

Now, back to the topic.

Would you call CPS if a family with nine children announced they were having twins? Because that's not child abuse.

Lehi

[ERayR]

If there's abuse, and if it does continue, and if you're absolutely sure it's abuse (a lot of people think spanking is "abuse": there was an incident in Philadelphia a few weeks ago when a mother swatted her kid's butt and yelled (profanity) at him that got called "abuse"), then, after you've told the parents your position, then you call CPS. But don't make it the first resort.

Now, back to the topic.

Would you call CPS if a family with nine children announced they were having twins? Because that's not child abuse.

Lehi

Lehi you are right on. What about calling CPS if one thought they are teaching the wrong religion? What about not letting the children go to a movie or a dance? What about two families arranging a potential marriage of their children? Is it abuse for children to have to share a bedroom with 2 or 3 siblings of the same gender? Where do you draw the line or how far do you extend it. There are some things we can all agree are abuse but there are some who are strict parents. Where do you draw the line?

[CV75]

I've read this several times and arrive at this conclusion: The whole is more important than the individual, but there is no standard by which we can judge what is "reasonable". It's all conjecture.

A child born in Lithuania is not subject to the same "protections" as one born in Nebraska (and visa versa) because the "society" of each place has decided how parents should raise their children differently.

As I said, if it is subject to the whims and vaguaries of "society" to determine what is right, then we are all subject to being hauled off to court whenever anyone disagrees with our approach. If the majority defines what is just, we are doomed.

"So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause." Padmé

Lehi

I certainly didn't mean it to come across that way. It seems to me that the whims and vagaries of society boil down to the net whims and vagaries of the individuals comprising them; the same holds true for its plans and standards, making each individual of utmost importance. The more individuals have the divinely-inspired interest of their brethren at heart, the better that society will fare as they participate in it.

A Zion society has no whims and vagaries and reflects the Lord’s plan for each of His children. How well things turn out in the societies of this world, and how well we influence them, depends on each how well each individual responds to the Light of Christ and how the Lord prospers their circumstances as a result. Furthermore, the Lord is not constrained by a fallen society in how He blesses obliging individuals.

The Lord has set up a system to maximize this world's blessings for everyone if each would respond to the Light of Christ that they are given. But since each doesn't, we have individual enmity, contention and the cascade of societal issues that flow from them.

[seriously honestly]

If there's abuse, and if it does continue, and if you're absolutely sure it's abuse (a lot of people think spanking is "abuse": there was an incident in Philadelphia a few weeks ago when a mother swatted her kid's butt and yelled (profanity) at him that got called "abuse"), then, after you've told the parents your position, then you call CPS. But don't make it the first resort.

I'm talking actual abuse, not spanking. I'll agree with your position now (earlier you made it sound like you would never get the authorities involved). However, I still believe there are times when immediate action needs to be taken. Recently there was an abuse/neglect case reported in the area where a women had her two year old twin girls locked in a room with an open heat source and a mattress outside the door to muffle the noise from them while she played video games and downloaded music all day long. There was fecal matter on the walls, floors, the girls themselves as well as burn marks (newer and old) on their bodies. Long stroy short, simply telling this women she was wrong would have done nothing to help those girls and I'm glad someone went straight to the cops.

Would you call CPS if a family with nine children announced they were having twins? Because that's not child abuse.

No I wouldn't.

[katherine the great]

And the difference is ... ?

Ratting out your neighbors to the cops seems cowardly to me. It goes against Gospel principles, too. If there is a problem between two people the first "contact" should not be with your enemy and a guy with a gun.

And, to be clear, I did not imply anyone should administer "justice" himself, I meant going, in person, and explaining why you think the act is wrong.

Lehi

Wow Lehi. After all we've been through you call me a coward. I'm hurt. People who are out of control and beating their children (and NO I would never call authorities for spanking or hosing off a muddy child) are not going to listen to reason from a concerned neighbor. I'm old enogh and wise enough to know abuse when I see it.

[HeatherAnn]

Thank you for your thoughts - I asked for them & got them, which I appreciate.

I've seen abuse & neglect cases that makes my stomach turn & heart ache.

Yet, I'm aware that abuse & neglect are sometimes difficult to define & spot.

We don't always know, but I'll tell you, I will & HAVE reported abuse when a child told me flat out that it was happening, when I questioned suspicious behavior.

I was scared to death - probably the worst panic attack I ever had - because the parent was a prominant person in society, but my conscious would not let me ignore the child.

Sometimes the worst abuse is sexual abuse - confusing to the child & even more difficult to spot.

In my experiences with large families, I've realized an ignor-ance of what some of the children are experiencing.

The parents are too busy to see it, or maybe they just don't want to.

Yet, often times it's the subtle neglect that goes without notice but is most harmful. (IE: Babies in orphanage were fed & changed, but rarely touched & died from lack of affection).

I'm not suggesting we be paranoid. And I do get annoyed when some (esp. those who aren't parents) are judgmentaly condemning of a mom who's baby is crying in the store.

What I am suggesting is that we consider each child's needs. Each child we have is our responsibility, as parents. They are precious! Yes, they need responsibility & yes, it's good to help out & learn to take care of themselves & others... but they are KIDS! They are NOT parents!

HeatherAnn:

It's a concern. Six Indian(India) families live off what just one American family can. I'm not too sure that most American familes would even want to live like that. But it does show what is possible.

The Bible says we are to be good stewards of our garden. This earth is the only garden humanity will ever know in this life. So we are to take good care of it.

God didn't make an open sewer, that's man doing. He made a Garden with all types of plants, flowers, trees, and shrubs in it. He placed man, and woman, in that Garden to tend, and take care of it, and the Garden would take care of them.

An old Chinese saying goes something like; keep your house so clean that only a single cockroach can live off it. That was long before pesticides.

We should do much better than we are.

lol (about the cockroach)

Good points!

I know I can always do better!

Edited August 27, 2011 by HeatherAnn

[HeatherAnn]

Because if my neighbor is beating or starving his child I WILL report him to social services or intervene in anyway possible. I care for children--not for irresponsible and uncaring adults. If that makes me a busybody in your eyes I don't care.

Hi Katherine,

I agree, mostly. A lot of people who abuse or neglect children were treated that way (or worse) themselves, as children.

Yet, I side with children - who are much more vulnerable. Not only that, but they are our future!

As a mother, I feel like a mother to my kids and also to any other kids I become aware of.

Edited August 27, 2011 by HeatherAnn

[ERayR]

In my experiences with large families, I've realized an ignor-ance of what some of the children are experiencing.

The parents are too busy to see it, or maybe they just don't want to.

Yet, often times it's the subtle neglect that goes without notice but is most harmful. (IE: Babies in orphanage were fed & changed, but rarely touched & died from lack of affection).

lol (about the cockroach)

Good points!

I know I can always do better!

In previous posts I have pointed out your fallacy that it is the large family that is the cause of child abuse, yet you still keep coming back to that theme. So now I am asking you to define the abuse caused by the busy, ignorant parents of large families.

[Loran Blood]

Concern about world population isn't new & I was taught that it was hype to scare people, a tool of the adversary.

Whoever taught you this was precisely and exactly correct. The myth of overpopulation has been a tool of the secular philosopher kings of modernity forged as a weapon against the family, marriage, normative (gospel based) sexual ethics, and human liberty for much of the last century. It is one of the core principles in the philosophical and political arsenal of the Great and Abominable Church of the last days.

Its fundamental principles are based on a body of critically fallacious empirical and mathematical assumptions. Scratch the concept of overpopulation, just a little bit, and below the surface you will find the ideology of birth control and a deeply authoritarian mindset dedicated to the mass application of convenience abortion and "family planning," across the entire human spectrum, and especially in the Third World. You will find, in other words, the anti-natalists; the sexual revolutionaries, the feminists, the communitarian utopians (Vandana Shiva etc.) post-modern nihilistic hedonists, and the environmentalists, all deeply concerned about preserving for themselves what crumbs are left in the zero sum world all of them envision as the natural order (or would, for various reasons, like to bring about as the natural order) The fact of the matter is that the entire world population could be put into the state of Texas and it wouldn't be all that different from living in Hong Kong or Tokyo.

Food production capacity has far outstripped population growth since the first green revolution in the fifties, and if we don't allow the anti GM and anti-modern agronomy ideologues to destroy that technical progress, we will, in time, be able to feed many more that at present.

Edited August 27, 2011 by Loran Blood

[Loran Blood]

I can't help but feel some resentment to your automatic assumpption that large families are abused. It has been my observation that it is not family size that makes the difference. Your cited study had more to do with unplanned children than with large families.

Indeed, and most pertinent, from a gospel standpoint perhaps, is that the core of abuse seems to be among single mothers with serial live-in boyfriends. The great liberating practice of "cohabitation," in other words. Two parent, intact families, even when the marriage isn't perfect and pristine, is optimum, all others being sub-optimum and, in some cases, statistically dangerous for children.

[Deborah]

In previous posts I have pointed out your fallacy that it is the large family that is the cause of child abuse, yet you still keep coming back to that theme. So now I am asking you to define the abuse caused by the busy, ignorant parents of large families.

Ditto! The large families I have seen have consisted of loving, happy children. I think that sometimes too much attention from parents, say for an only child, can also be detrimental to someone. It depends on the people.

[Loran Blood]

I know what you're saying, HeatherAnn. It seems every day the world is getting smaller (by far). Bursting at the seams, what can we do? Zero population is the answer. Without it the rest of us are doomed!

Who can survive? Not one of us will be alive. Who can be strong when every inch is gone?

Not only that.

Every day the food supply is shrinking away. With starvation at our door what can we do?

Licensing of children is the answer - without it, the rest of us are through!

Though this family makes me think there might be hope:

http://abcnews.go.co...-119-big-family

All of the above is, to be very, very generous, unrelieved nonsense. This is the Ehrlichian fantasy that was debunked decades ago by serious economists and social philosophers. Much of the developed western world is facing, within a few decades, a cataclysmic economic collapse precipitated by the "birth dearth" that began in the early seventies and has produced utterly unsustainable demographic conditions relative to those working to provide benefits to the elderly, and the vast concourses of the elderly who depend on various tax funded social services for their support (families and the responsibilities of the young to take care of their elders in old age having been, for all intents, destroyed by the relentless hedonistic materialism of the post WWII age and the welfare state) and for whom those benefits will not be possible in the very near future. The numbers are clear, both for the United States but especially those countries who are not replacing themselves in a sustainable manner, the U.K., western Europe, Japan, and some other countries. Tiny groups of wealth producing workers cannot provide social services for ever expanding seas of elderly people without dire consequences, and vast seas of non-productive citizens supported by an ever shrinking base of the productive (many western European nations, and the U.K., have long been below replacement) is not viable. Not having children on a mass scale is nothing more or less than an assault on the future itself.

The end of ZPG is poverty, broad, deep, and inveterate, throughout the world. The only real answer people like you can provide to the stark world of want and economic blight a world of aging and infirm people supported by a tiny demographic of young wealth creators, is really something on the order of Logan's Run.

[Loran Blood]

Liscensing will just create a large pubic bureaucracy. A more viable solution was offered in this modest proposal.

Not to mention that how many children I have is none of the state's business.

[Loran Blood]

Lehi you are correct. Who can forget the news clips of the Baptist buses pulling into the fundamentalist neighborhoods in texas and the authorities loading hundreds of children on and hauling them away. Slippery slope indeed.

And indeed again. The horror stories regarding the behavior of numerous rogue HRS and child protective services agencies across the country are now legion, and anybody familiar with them will understand both that these agencies tend to be staffed and led by a specific kind of ideologue with deep animosities toward the traditional family, marriage, and Judeo-Christian, middle class norms of child rearing as well as that they operate, to a great degree, well outside the constitution. Children can be removed from a home by force without the slightest evidence or probable cause based on the word of an unknown busybody who doesn't like you or the way to raise your children, and you will be understood as guilty until you prove your innocence, reversing the constitutional standard. Then, even when innocence is proven, agencies will drag their feet, dither, and play drawn out bureaucratic games while they keep your children in the orphanage system. They're very much like the IRS and other similar agencies, in that, even when found to be in error or in violation of the law, they will never admit wrong, dig in their heels, and double down.

Need I recall the damage done by the ritual Satanic child abuse hysteria of the mid-eighties to mid-nineties by social workers, government psychologists (using the now infamous concept of "repressed memory syndrome") and pop culture day time talk show hosts, all in the name of "child welfare?"

[Loran Blood]

I can't imagine a child-limit being legally enforced in the US... nor many other countries.

I think the key to naturally having families of cared for children is education...

Planning ahead - based on:

-Health of Marriage

-Health (Physical & Psychological health) of both parents

-Finances

-Self-awareness in realizing what one can handle

-Considering what it takes to raise a child - from birth to college

-Parenting strategies - (My favorite is the "Love & Logic" method)

I must disagree, based upon my reading of social history. Living the gospel is the key to the raising of children. Education is purely an adjunct, and this must come with the proviso that such education is really "education" and not indoctrination. Secondly, such "education" is best done by precept and example within the family of origin itself, where children learn to be parents by observing their own. "Experts" from sundry branches of the "social sciences" have been conspicuously unpersuasive in their efforts to "educate" since the late sixties/early seventies era, when all of this became largely fashionable. Over the last several decades, social pathology has metastasized as the couches of psychologists, the social worker's caseload, and government educational programs have bloomed.

Long ago, we came to understand that sex education and drug education were actually promoting and supporting the very behaviors they allegedly were created to forestall (with sex education as perhaps, a wild card, as the purpose of sex education developed into, precisely, a vehicle for the inculcation of the sexual ethics of the counterculture). It will not ever be the case that classroom education on parenting skills will ever measurably slow the deterioration of our culture due to the breakdown of the family. Those skills have to be learned, over a long period of time, ensconced in an environment in which those skills are a living reality. As the family continues to disintegrate, those skills, among much of the population, will eventually be lost, and they cannot be regained again, or developed at all, but through immense effort, of which textbooks are the least of the methods available.

Edited August 27, 2011 by Loran Blood