Baby Three Hundred Milion
Via The Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, President, Human Life International:
The US population is set to cross the 300 million mark next week, a sign that our population is prosperous not only in dollars but also in people. But instead of celebrating, many Americans will look at their kids, nervously wondering whether they are contributing to the inevitable downfall of civilization that we've been told will follow as our population grows. You see, we have been indoctrinated to think that more babies are a bad thing, especially if those babies may not have pre-paid college tuition accounts while in utero. Because of our anti-baby bias, Americans, in general, need a good primer both on population issues and on generosity, so here it goes.
First, why is it that “growth” is only a problem when it concerns humans? When a new calf is born to a farmer he knows he’s a richer man; but when a new baby is born to him we call him irresponsible. We crave growth not only in our flocks but also in our stocks, our opportunities, our freedoms and our reputations, but when it comes to the growth of our families, our attitudes are strangely determined by a careful cost-benefit analysis of how much another kid is worth. A US News and World Report cover some years ago showed a baby with a bar code stamped on her forehead and an alarmist headline that the little creature will eat up nearly $1.5 million before age eighteen. That icon of the prevailing attitudes is not only wrong, but it betrays a fundamental selfishness of our culture. Children are not commodities, they are gifts that make us richer in every way. But that message is hard to convey to a materialistic society.
Second, there is a deep-seated hypocrisy in the attitudes of westerners toward world population growth: that is, we only become alarmed at the growth of the populations of poor people, not rich ones. Ask the average American what areas of the world are overpopulated and she will inevitably tell you Africa and Asia. She may add Latin America due to the number of people who are undoubtedly so populous that they have to sneak across our borders to feed themselves. She will be wrong on all counts but facts are not relevant to overpopulation propaganda. Ask her what country has the third largest population in the world and she will likely not know that it is her own. We’ve been programmed to intuitively connect population growth with people of color and then to think that the best way to eliminate their poverty is to eliminate them. My favorite icon of this hypocrisy is Ted Turner who has given $1 billion to the UN to reduce the birthrates in the Third World but has five kids himself. I guess it’s okay when those five are spread out over several wives. [Entire Story]
The US population is set to cross the 300 million mark next week, a sign that our population is prosperous not only in dollars but also in people. But instead of celebrating, many Americans will look at their kids, nervously wondering whether they are contributing to the inevitable downfall of civilization that we've been told will follow as our population grows. You see, we have been indoctrinated to think that more babies are a bad thing, especially if those babies may not have pre-paid college tuition accounts while in utero. Because of our anti-baby bias, Americans, in general, need a good primer both on population issues and on generosity, so here it goes.
First, why is it that “growth” is only a problem when it concerns humans? When a new calf is born to a farmer he knows he’s a richer man; but when a new baby is born to him we call him irresponsible. We crave growth not only in our flocks but also in our stocks, our opportunities, our freedoms and our reputations, but when it comes to the growth of our families, our attitudes are strangely determined by a careful cost-benefit analysis of how much another kid is worth. A US News and World Report cover some years ago showed a baby with a bar code stamped on her forehead and an alarmist headline that the little creature will eat up nearly $1.5 million before age eighteen. That icon of the prevailing attitudes is not only wrong, but it betrays a fundamental selfishness of our culture. Children are not commodities, they are gifts that make us richer in every way. But that message is hard to convey to a materialistic society.
Second, there is a deep-seated hypocrisy in the attitudes of westerners toward world population growth: that is, we only become alarmed at the growth of the populations of poor people, not rich ones. Ask the average American what areas of the world are overpopulated and she will inevitably tell you Africa and Asia. She may add Latin America due to the number of people who are undoubtedly so populous that they have to sneak across our borders to feed themselves. She will be wrong on all counts but facts are not relevant to overpopulation propaganda. Ask her what country has the third largest population in the world and she will likely not know that it is her own. We’ve been programmed to intuitively connect population growth with people of color and then to think that the best way to eliminate their poverty is to eliminate them. My favorite icon of this hypocrisy is Ted Turner who has given $1 billion to the UN to reduce the birthrates in the Third World but has five kids himself. I guess it’s okay when those five are spread out over several wives. [Entire Story]
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