[selzer]

childbirth and puppy birth are natural.

Puppy mill bitches do not look awful because of being bred too many times, they look awful because they live in a poor environment, and are fed junky foods.

I do not have any kids so I must be one of the smart people too busy for brats.

I think that spay/neuter should be mandatory for all felons. And if a felon is pregnant when she goes to prison, her child is adopted out and she has no recourse to get it back. There should be repercussions for going beyond a certain point. We do not need play school wards in prisons.

 

[selzer]

I have no problem with the Duggars. They are practicing what they believe. Of course you will raise your children in your beliefs. That is why the family as an institution is such a vital part of society.

Someone mentioned that the mother could die from having so many children. My friends buddy's wife died in childbirth with his first child. It happens. Another person could say that it is selfish to raise an only child, because someday mom and pop will be dead, and that only will have no siblings. I have always felt sorry for onlies. But families with a bunch of kids, I find normal. Ok, maybe not nineteen. My brother's wife was one of fifteen. My parents had just six.

From the outside looking in, we might feel that the children doing chores or being responsible for younger children is hard on them. I think it raises up responsible children, but that is how we were raised.

I came home from Jr. highschool, carried my sister home in my newspaper bag from the babysitters. In highschool, I came home and cooked dinner every day so my parents could go to college at night. My younger brother and sister were then my responsibility until they came home at 10:30 PM Monday through Thursday. If I wanted to make money, I took them with me to babysit other people's kids, and then I forked over half of whatever I made to my mother. My brother was almost seven years younger than me and my sister almost eleven years younger than me. This was how it was until I finished high school at the end of the eleventh grade.

I came from working parents, and that was how I was programmed. Maybe I would have liked to be a stay at home mom, a housewife. My youngest sister is struggling with this now.

I think that while many people judge these people for raising up their daughters to be wives and mothers first, we could be judged ourselves for raising up our daughters to be professionals with little time for our homes and children.

I think in the end, we raise our kids to what we believe and to some extent what our experience was. If our experience was not good, we might go the opposite way. I do not necessarily think one better than the other, maybe just different.

Amish people have their kids work the farm from a pretty young age. They raise their daughters differently then their sons. Few go beyond grade eight. It is a society of people living what they believe. Those kids grow up, and some of them choose to walk away, some choose to continue, and some choose to rock the boat a little bit.

 

[selzer]

yes. Society determined who bred, how many children, who raised the children, what children got at what age, what children did for their life's work. They felt that they could create eutopia by managing these things.

Babies who did not make the grade were euthanized.

 

[selzer]

did not read that one, not sure I enjoyed The Giver

 

[selzer]

It is good that you have your eyes open. Sometimes our halls of learning are places for people who spend their whole lives within them, and do not know what actually is happening in the real world.

 

[selzer]

I am surprised by the quiverfull comment.

There is a proverb about children being like arrows, and happy is the man who has a quiver full of them. I do not have it word for word, but that is the jist of it.

Anyhow, I know that in Genesis, there is a command from God to be fruitful and multiply or to fill the earth with offspring, something to that effect. There has always been debate on whether or not birth control was ok.

The sin of Onan, where his brother died without leaving a son, so the brother's wife had a claim on him to give her a son for her husband. And he went and made as to comply but deliberately made sure that there would be no child. For this he was in trouble with God. I think the sin was in refusing to allow conception to take place so as to cheat his brother and his wife out of the inheritance, a widow with no children was in a bad situation. But various religions have used this story to suggest that at no time is it ok to prevent conception.

Anyhow, I do not see a problem with 19 kids. Small families have their plusses and minuses and so do large families. I think that kids are pretty resilient and manage to do ok in whichever family they are dropped into

I wonder how many serial killers were onlies, one of a few, one of many, one of a hoard? I think on either extreme, one or many, children may get a raw deal, but a child with a decent temperament will figure it out.