good question.

yes i do think people who give up one child or more should be able to have more, i think giving a child up for adoption is a great sacrafice and shows how much you love your child.

about the low income families. it's not for me to decide, but yesterday we were at the doctors office and a family came in, they were really scrubby looking, and you could smell them and htey had two kids and a baby. the baby was 3 weeks old they said and it was sooooo skinny, she had formula but she was feeding it a bottle of water for some reason. anyway, i dont think they should have had more kids.

no money isnt everything, but you should be able to bathe your kids and put good clothes on them and if you can't do that then no you souldn't have more kids. materialistic things aren't everything, but you can buy nice clothes at a garage sale for a few dollars.. these kids were seriously dirty and i don't think they should have had another baby, but that was their choice.

unfortunately there are people all over the world having babies whent hey shouldnt.

should people on low incomes only be allowed a set number of children if it is proven they cannot finanically support them? Yes, I think that if a person is in a long term unstable financial situation which would make them unable to provide for their children, that they should not continue to have children until they are able to support them on thier own.

is love all a child needs? Nope. While, that is great in theory and love is important, it is not all a child needs to survive. What about diapers, clothes, a roof to live under?

should people who have given up their children be allowed to have more?I think this depends. If they had a child where they were in a situation that they could not offer the best for their child and gave them up to a loving home, and now are in a situation to provide for a child, then yes, they should be allowed to have more children. If they were taken away due to neglect or abuse, then no absolutely not.

it immoral to forcibly make someone get sterilized or have an iud? As much as I wish we could dictate who can have children and who can not. I do believe that it is immoral to forcibly make someone get sterilized. Though abortion would not be the right choice for me, I still believe in the womans choice.

thanks for your opinions- keep them coming ladies!

Should people on low incomes only be allowed a set number of children if it is proven they cannot finanically support them?
Yes

Is love all a child needs?
As important as love is, No, they need diapers, food, clothes, baths, and a warm place to sleep. They don't need to wear name brands or have silver spoons hanging out of their mouths, but it takes more than hugs and kisses to raise a child.

Is it fair to have lots of children and not be able to dedicate lots of individual attention to each one?
no, this isn't fair to the kids

Should people who have given up their children be allowed to have more?
If a person chooses adoption than they are showing a child that they loved them enough to put them in a situation that is better than they personally could provide.
If that person gave up their children because they chose a man over their kids, they should be forced to attend parenting classes and possibly get some counseling before having more.
If that person chooses to be with a man/woman that can not be around children because they have committed a crime against a child, and that person gives their child to be with that person, they should attend parenting classes

Can you think of situations where people shouldn't be allowed more children?
If their children are taken away because of something they were proven to have done to a child. Example: they were convicted of a crime against a child (abuse, neglect, etc)


Is it immoral to forcibly make someone get sterilised or have an iud?
I have always said that someone who has been without a doubt proven to have committed a crime against a child should be sterilized. They shouldn't have the chance to do it again.

Should people on low incomes only be allowed a set number of children if it is proven they cannot finanically support them?

YES.

Love is important, but it does not buy food, clothes, shelter, or pay for dr visits.

What a great question, beckster! You keep coming up w/ great topics.

Should people on low incomes only be allowed a set number of children if it is proven they cannot finanically support them?

While I personally think yes, I cannot imagine how it would be determined that the income is, and how this is enforced, and what to do about unwanted pregnancies, and if birth control should be required, and how this is not discrimination against class and minorities (as they are the folks with income disparities).

Should people on low incomes only be allowed a set number of children if it is proven they cannot finanically support them?

Definately

Is love all a child needs?

Love is important but love doesn't buy formula, diapers, doctors visits, clothes, etc..

Is it fair to have lots of children and not be able to dedicate lots of individual attention to each one?

No

Should people who have given up their children be allowed to have more?
Yes... giving up children for adoption is a completely different story than if a child or children were taken away for whatever reason. If the kids are .Taken away, then no, they shouldn't be allowed to have more.

Can you think of situations where people shouldn't be allowed more children?

Not financially stable.. If there was something against that person for doing harm to children..

I wouldn't support any legislation that would affect someone's bodily rights or personal autonomy. Ever. It is definitely immoral and disgustingly unethical to force anything like that.

It isn't fair to have lots of children (or one child, for that matter) when you can't give them your undivided attention daily. Love is not all a child needs. But some things are just going too far in my opinion. There are better ways to deal with these things.

people who abuse or neglact the children they already have

i have known a few cases of trhis personally

somone i had known from the trime i was 4 years old had her first baby at 15 and she was a wonderful mother, then a few years later sdhe met someone else and had another kid and then another and forced her older daughter to take care of the younger ones so she could go out partying, all 3 kids were oftern dropped off with me to care for them, then the mother lost her house and lived on the streets (thankfully she had the intelligence not to make her kids live on the streets too) she gave her oldest to her mother her middle to her sister in law and yer youngest to me to watch, then got pregnant again and ended up goin gto jail, she was let out and we took her in so she could have the baby in a safe place, once she was off house arrest she left with her husband and left the baby with me and only came back every other weekend to show her off to family, the baby was taken away when she was 8 monthes old because teh mum sent her to daycare after she had her for the weekend doped up on medication so bad she started having sesures....she should have never had more kids

another one an illegal immigrent to lives in a 2 bedroom house with 4 other adults and her 2 kids (2 years and 1.5 monthes) neither of the children have ever been to a doctor and neither have proper nutition, she wakes up at 12 or later and doesnt go to bed until at least 2 am and expects the 2 year old to sleep from 7pm until 12 noon, they have beat the 2 year old so bad he had cuts and blisters on his but and thighs just for not going to bed, and she just had another baby who is never held, his crys are ignored, he is changed probaby 3 or 4 times a day (hes had diaper rash so bad the first layer of his skin peeled off, his bottles get propped up...they cant spend time away from their computers to actualy take care of these children, and she wants to have at least one more if not 2....she should not have more children

i have known at least 2 others who should not have had more but these 2 are the worse

~alicia~

Idony, those are such terrible tales I want to cry.

I am another one who should not have more children. I can't go through another pregnancy due to terrible issues with post partum. Unless I adopted, but I think I have my hands full as it is!

I went to school with a family of 13 kids (catholic) and they were all polite, intelligent, athletic, musical, and all-around great kids. Their mom did it all herself, because a year after the youngest was born, their father was killed in a traffic accident. I have no idea how she did it, but they were a great family.

If you think about it, though, if every set of parents had 13 children, overpopulation would be a huge issue. The International population summit reccommends that we reproduce at no greater than replacement value, ie: 2 children per family. There is, of course room for variant, in that some people choose to have no children.

This may sound terribly harsh, but I think that anyone who has abused or neglected their children to the point of having them removed from custody and having their parental rights terminated should be sterilized.

it's an interesting issue when you talk about it in terms of money. you are then saying that people with money deserve to have family while people who are poor do not. it's just another case of the haves and the have nots. i grew up poor and i turned out okay. we struggled a lot but those struggles taught me not to judge people who are less fortunate than i am. if there were laws like that i guess i wouldn't exist and supposedly the world would be a better place.

as for population, there is at least one country i know of where the government dictates how many children you can have. in china there is the one child rule. you are fined if you have more than one child. they had to create laws to prevent people from aborting all the female babies because everyone wanted to have a boy if they were only allowed one try at it. now there are more boys than girls. that is a communist country so i don't know what the implications would be to advocate for something like that in a so called free society. (the land of the free?)

i think it's a moral issue and one that the government shouldn't need to be regulating. there are already laws to fight and prevent child abuse and neglect and there are many agencies that are doing their best to deal with children's welfare. i believe that people who are abusive or unable to parent their children should not be having more children but it's a pretty touchy subject when it comes to human rights. it's like the abortion debate, whose rights take precedence? the parent or the unborn child? and also, if you were to go around sterilizing people, would it only be the women or would someone put in the time and money to find the fathers of these children and make them responsible and sterilise them as well? we can't even get them to pay child support as it stands. it's all well and good to moralize but it's a pretty murky issue when it comes to human rights and living in a free country.

There's a difference between being poor, and literally being unable to feed your child. I do not think anyone rich or poor "deserves" to have children. It is not a right. It is something that should be earned, by being in the proper mindset to care for a child. If you truly care, you're going to make sure you have enough money to feed your baby.

you don't feed money to a baby. if it's a matter of having enough food to eat there should be more than enough to go around in a country like the united states where food is wasted on a vast scale every single day. people who are unable to feed their children in the states have the option to give them up or to find help through food banks and other social networks. who is to say that their situation isn't temporary? are you seriously advocating sterilizing someone because of their economic status? if someone fails to find the resources through neglect, that is a different story because neglect is the same as abuse and, like i said before, there are also agencies in place whose mandate it is to deal with that. i don't really get this argument. who is going to judge who can and can't afford to have children? how would you enforce it? forced sterilization? i could see there being a basis for an argument on the grounds of abuse but i also believe that some abusers can be rehabilitated so how do you know which to sterilize and which to give another chance to? i also think it would be stupid to even consider it if you aren't going after the fathers as well. but the situation is the same; who will pay to enforce it? if people are whining about the social welfare system costing them too much (which i believe is what this argument is really about), are they going to be willing to add on to that price tag and pay for the process of finding, judging and sterilizing not only mothers but fathers who are accused of being unfit? and where do we draw the line? people who have had too many children? people who are having six children at a time and risking defects because they are taking fertility treatment? people who are deemed too old to give birth? or are they allowed as long as they have the economic status to back it up? should women in africa all be sterilized?

* i just want to add that i'm not arguing just for arguments sake. there is a precedent for forced sterlization in the states. there are a literally thousands of native women and men who were ordered sterilized in the 70's. there were women who were given hysterectomies without their consent or even knowledge during other procedures. if we are going to start talking about eugenics, why not just become facists and get it over with. let's breed out the poor and minorities.

Have you called CPS? Please please please do!!!

I'm with you, kaerbear- forced sterilization delves way too deep into a quagmire of civil rights issues. While I think that many people should not have children, a lack of financial resources is not the top reasons on my list. A lack of intellectual resources is.




Sh*t happens. This isn't always the case.

Duh. You use the money to buy food.



You'd think. But there's not. People are not benevolent as they should be. So either you have the money to buy food, or your child starves. Should our country be fixed? Yes. But for now, you need money to feed mouths.



This is not about giving up a child you cannot feed.

This is about not even giving birth in the first place if you can't feed the child. That's true responsibility. Not giving up your child for someone else to deal with or, leeching of of other people.



If it's temporary then that's a completely different situation. Even my parents used food stamps when I was a baby. But again, that is a completely different situation from someone who is below the poverty line and who has no way or no intention of rising above it.



Absolutely not!! I never said that!! Where the heck did you get that idea from!? Dear god... o.o



No. It's all idealism. Duh. This is a hypothetical discussion... Don't get tied up in such knots about it!



In the case of abusers and child molestors, none of them get a second chance. It has been shown time and again that rehabilitation almost never works. I'm not making that up. That's why pedophiles have to have signs on their front lawns and the neighborhood is alerted of their presence.

They don't get better, period.



I certainly would. It's not just about the mother, and I never thought it was...



Again, it's just hypothetical idealistic thinking. It's not gong to happen.



No, it's not.



I'd never heard of that, but I think it's horrible. No one deserves to have their body mutilated.

sigh. why does everyone think that you means you specifically. if everyone else is talking hypotheticals and rhetoricals why pick apart everything i have said? several people agreed that people who "can't afford" to have children shouldn't be "allowed". i am asking the questions that just naturally progress from statements like that. like i said, it's one thing to preach and moralize but this is a debate forum and there are plenty of things to debate on a topic like this.

You cannot sterilize someone who is poor just like you can't force them to give birth or abort. However, in the case of criminals I believe there is precedence. We kill them, so why not sterilize them? Chopping of a pedophile's nads ought to get rid of any desire he has to rape children, and I think it's a fitting punishment.

it would be nice but it probably wouldn't stop them. pedophilia is a sickness in the mind not in the nads. there are other ways to rape someone, unfortunately. i know, it's sick, but it's true. still, some of them deserve it anyway.

I took a sexual abuse and trauma class in college and the prison where they housed the rapists and pedophiles gave them shots of depo prevera, the same shot that women get for birth control. It caused them to not be able to get an erection.

I am with you .Erie. Kill them. There is no cure or therapy that is successful for a sexual offender, so death is certainly the answer.