NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/alt/polyamor/1884

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-24 | 3.1 KB

Xref: sparky alt.polyamory:1884 soc.singles:31714 alt.pagan:13261 misc.kids:29064
Newsgroups: alt.polyamory,soc.singles,alt.pagan,misc.kids
Path: sparky!uunet!tcsi.com!hermes!miket
From: [e-mail] (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.)
Subject: Re: raising children
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Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1992 02:55:31 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Dave Mentis) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (markbr) writes:
>>I want there to be a *requirement* for a marriage license that you have
>>taken an approved course (like the defensive driving courses) on parenting,
>>and one on relationships.
>
>A nice thought, granted ...
>Some people say I'm cynical , but I doubt it.     ;-) x 0.5
>I suspect these tests will soon be brought to a neighborhood
>near you by the same fine people who gave us voter qualification
>tests in the past (that a US Supreme Court Justice couldn't pass
>if (s)he weren't of the right race).

Maybe you don't even have to draw a parallel to voter qualification,
because (de facto) race-based "parent-disqualification" is a reality
of government already.

I saw "Malcom X" this weekend.  A scene in it has a social worker
disqualifying Mrs. Little from the job of motherhood.  This happens
even more often now, I'm sure.

I think the idea of qualifying people for marriage and childbearing
is the product of the individualization and atomization of our culture.

Nuclear families have fewer "components" to rely on, so "failures" are
more catastrophic.  The notion of doing "quality control" on the
components then becomes attractive, but only from a control
perspective.  Arguably, however, it was this very control perspective
that caused the nuclear family in the first place.  Government, union
and corporate labor policies promoted the idea of the single male
breadwinner as a form of protection against the impoverishment of women
and children, and got higher labor mobility as a temporarily useful
side-effect.  Unfortunately, the long-term effect of this mobility was
the fragmentation of extended families and communities, which in turn
has had a corrosive effect on the nuclear family.

The pendulum seems to be swinging back.  It's only recently that
grandparents have been able to get AFDC benefits for taking care
of grandchildren.  To me, moralizing about how this might encourage
teen mothers and delinquent fathers is pointless.  Who says that it's
necessarily a dysfunctional family pattern to have children when
you're a teenager and turn a lot of the childrearing over to your
grandparents?  You will likely be a grandparent yourself one day, so
it's not like the responsibility won't come around to you again.
In fact, you might be bearing children at what is physically the
ideal time (when you're young and resilient) and then raising
children at the ideal time (when you are more mature, and have a
stable income.)
---
Michael Turner
[e-mail]