I'm listening to Talk of the Nation right now and they're doing a segment interviewing a dude who wrote this book. I'm buying it right now. His premise is that if women had reproductive freedom, and could actualize their decisions, that world population/consumption/global warming problems would resolve themselves. He supports this with historical and scientific data supporting this conclusion, and shows how population only became a problem when men began to take the control of population growth away from women. His solution is to give back reproductive freedom to women to conserve world resources and fix the dangerous population problem...that has, obviously, led to many other problems.
He says that throughout human history, individual women collectively making personally-driven decisions regarding having children actually made our population more sustainable at those specific times. In other words, the personal has been political throughout our evolution. And now that population control is largely at the hands of men, we are having big problems. Global warming, consumption costs rising dangerously, population itself, of course, and so on.
He discusses how contraception goes back to Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek mythology, the middle ages, etc., which I think most of us knew. And of course, he reports that abortion is ubiquitous throughout human history and evolution and is directly related to infanticide, which he also says is ubiquitous in history as a method of population control, although it is always linked to a lack of access to safe and effective contraceptives/abortions.
He has this website that has a few blogs, including some by veterinarians that see similar population control in other species. I'm adding it to the queue! It sounds like there are some very interesting discussions.
The radio show will be posted here at 7 p.m. central time, which is not very long (10 minutes maybe?), and they have more info on the page itself. I'm so sad he's taken ;) If you buy his book from that page, NPR will get a little kick-back, so I think you should!
5.30.2008
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16 comments:
I'm getting that book now, too. I like it when people have evidence to support my beliefs. :-)
By the way, Julia Keller TOTALLY wrote me back, Yo.
I totally want this book. It just makes sense that women want fewer children than men. It takes such a toll on our bodies and so much work to raise them. I hate that men use our bodies to prove their virility. I hate that so often, our bodies are not our own.
Something that is related to this that bothers me is people's obsession with having biological children. I don't like it.
The biokids thing bothers me too. I was going to comment about that on your recent post about that.
And what did Julia Keller say?
Yeah tell me what Julia Keller said!!! WILL SHE BE OUR BEST FRIEND!?!?!?!? Hahhaha.
One thing that he mentions in his book that I totally don't buy is how our first ancestral "double income household" was a man hunting and a woman gardening. There are a number of problems with this theory based on other reading that I've done, some of which came up in our discussion with My Biggest Fan on Erica's blog. Also, my sister, who is a nutritionist and has studied such things, says that those ancestors likely did communal raising of children, such as multiple women breastfeeding one child, etc., rather than a standard nuclear family structure that this guy is a proponent of.
But, I am willing to give the book a go, because it's such an interesting theory, and of course, one that jives with my own convictions against the patriarchy.
Re: Biokids, I super love that my sister had bio kids. I really feel like my niece is one of us, unlike my brother-in-law. Maybe I would feel the same way, though, if she were adopted, but it's really hard to say.
That, and if I had kids, which is a question I've been grappling with a lot recently, I'd want them to have some of my genes for absolute brilliance, not to mention unparalleled attractiveness. Don't argue. It's true.
But, Urs and Erica, explain yourself. I'm interested where you're coming from.
I gotta weigh in on the bio-kids thing. So in the beginning when we had to try forever to get pregnant I thought a lot about adoption. (I also have a few good friends that have adopted) I totally had those same thoughts Rock - loving something that isn't really your own must be hard. But from being around families with adopted kids I see it's not an issue. So if we wouldn't be able to have as many children as we want, I know in a heartbeat we would adopt and I know we would love the adopted child just as much as all the other kids.
Another little tidbit for thought: The adoption process is super expensive - my friends who are going through it again are saving up 25,000 to get a child. It's nuts!
Well, my argument is based on the simple fact that the planet is already overpopulated.
Julia Keller wrote:
What a nice note. Thank you.
Of course, to our dismay, things have only gotten worse; did you see the photo-shopped picture that accompanied Mark Halperin’s update in Time.com on Sen. Clinton’s chances? A picture of Clinton, tied to a railroad track – as if she’s a doomed damsel in a 19th c. melodrama, ripe for murder or ravishment.
Apparently it just isn’t going to stop. One day, we’ll look back on this period and be very ashamed of our media.
Best regards,
Julia Keller
Regarding adoption: All for it, but they have some crazy restrictions. Now, obviously, you wouldn't want abusive or neglectful people adopting kids, but I know that whether or not you're religious has weight--no religion equals no babies in a lot of agencies. I know of people who had to go through an adoption lawyer and find people they knew that were pregnant and adopt those kids because of some of the "rules" in adoption agencies regarding a strong religious background. But that is just one example, I know. And I agree that the overpopulation is a problem, but I think that a lot of that is societal pressure to have lots of babies--it maybe doesn't necessarily mean that people shouldn't be allowed to have bio kids. Maybe women should just get more of a say that is truly their own.
I struggle with Rock's dilemma on this matter of biokids. Especially when I think of how many inferior babies are currently out there being created and raised, and what awful things that will do to generations that will rule the world when I'm too old to. :)
It seems irresponsible of me to *not* pass along some genes with natural intelligence and high capacity for logic and reasoning. The beauty issue is irrelevant, as my offspring will go towanda on all violators of feminist ideals.
Rock - I totally heard that segment on my drive home yesterday. MPR is the only thing that keeps me sane in metro traffic, otherwise I'm overcome by urges to rage at all the idiot drivers.
If we ever have kids, I do want one biokid. It just seems like a neat experiment, even though I recognize that Justin and I will probably have a very awkward child. I don't think it's bad to want to pass on your genes. But if we decide on two kids, the second one will be adopted. That's the family that seems normal to me, I suppose. There is nothing magical about sharing some percentage of your DNA that somehow makes you into a family. Also, the world is overpopulated and there are a million little kids out there who could use a home.
That being said, I realize there are major obstacles in the way of adoption that probably prevent a lot of parents from going that route. Adoption agencies should do some digging to make sure you will be an adequate parent. But marriage or religious requirements are silly. My parents' major difficulty was a revolution in the Philippines, but because they didn't want a baby I think it was easier. I hear it's also a lot easier if you don't require a white child.
Jamie brings up another point that is worth talking about - societal pressure to have kids. How to disentangle societal/family pressure from your actual wants? Ugh.
Actually, with subsistence farming there isn't actually that much time to do anything but farm.
My friends will only adopt biracial children from Texas for a number of reasons. a) their first is biracial and they want to continue that. b)texas is the only state where once an adoption takes place it's final - some states the bioparents have legal rights up until the kid is 6 (legal as in a chance to fight for the kid back). There were a few more but those stuck out the most
to me.
Each family that I know that has adopted had to make this huge intensive portfolio of their life and then the birth parent(s) look through them and choose based on a portfolio.
It's nuts that kids can drive around with some person for a half hour and get a license to drive and yet to reproduce nothing is required other then you be anatomically correct. Usually, when I go to Rapids and visit the Wal-Mart i get so sick to my stomach seeing totally neglected kids running all over while their parents are milling around.
(this should be it's own post - oh well) Yesterday, I was at the park with the kids and there were these two young girls that barely looked out of high school toting around probably like a 4 or 5 year old boy. Totally hoochie mamas with shorts that showed their crotch when they bent over and tank tops that barely held them in and their conversation went like this, "Let's take "don't remember kid's name" over by the swings that dad looks like a hotty and he could be a good daddy to my kid. Are you kidding me?! I stopped and could not believe I heard that - they were dead serious! They were at the park looking for a baby daddy. Nice!
1. When my friend Shehla, who is brown, adopted her daughter, who is very-very-very white, it was a very smooth process. (I think it's interesting that it worked out this way, racially speaking, since it's usually the pale white folks getting the brown babies.) Shehla really wanted a kid and couldn't have a baby, and a friend-of-a-friend had a pregnant daughter looking to give one up for adoption. So...viola. Shehla had a kid within 6 months or something. She was even in the delivery room when Saira was born. It's an open adoption, so they see the birth mother about once a year, and...everyone's really happy. Shehla definitely loves that kid as much as anybody would love their "real" child. Or maybe more, because of all the frustration of not having a baby and then, deus ex machina, she had a daughter.
2. The ancient Greeks used infanticide as a form of birth control. Can you imagine what the pro-lifers would do if we re-adopted that method?
There is a group that lives in the Namib desert (the San? Khoi?) that still practices infanticide if the group/village/clan can't support one more person at that time.
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