Stop having so many damn kids; population control, anyone?

[Big girl banded 0]

FYI the FBI has been monitoring some of the fundamentalist mega churches along with the "compound" living Churches of the Mid west. I think that says alot. I feel compassion for the congregation... how did they get to a point that they allow ANYONE to run their life like that.

They are being monitiored for funding issues, child sex laws being broken and a slew of other reasons that I wont get into. When i think of fundamentalist i think of this, not everyday churchgoers.

My godsons parents are black baptists. Church for them is almost 5 hours long. Crazy? To me yes, but once or twice a year i visit with my godson and I have a lovely time. I do not and will not devote that much time to anyone. If i do it wil lbe to hang out with my parents or my sisters family, but it makes them happy and I am glad they found it for them.

Money making, mega church stuff is weird. I would think it an insult for my pastor to show up in a Benz and i drive a hooptie bc i give all my money to the church. It would be a slap in my face. That is why i shy away from oranized religion. It is not religion itself really, just SOME of the people that run it.

[Carlene 12]

(I don't care what you say, 18 kids will not fit into a three bedroom house

The Duggers currently live in a 2400 square ft home with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths.

[Big girl banded 0]

And the Dugger teens need privacy... they need more bedrooms. I think its is a shame that they have to share with siblings. There is a certain point where they need their own space.

I am sure some of them will have mega families when they grow up , but i wonder how many, after having to share such little space, and natural sibling rivalry, i would think some would want to free themself from that life. And I doubt dad can afford college for them.

[the best me 6]

Carlene, that link takes me somewhere I'm not sure I want to surf around in (bad sentence, eh) anyhow, it doesn't link to the Duggar site, if there is one? I'll see what I can find.

There have been several shows, the first being "16 children and pregnant again". That baby was a boy, she has since had a girl. That's 18. The funds from the show, apparently, went toward finishing the huge home. TLC even gave them a new grand piano, since all the children play and need to practice.

Anyhow, interesting family. If I find a different link, I'll post it.

http://www.jimbob.info/

You were missing the B on Jimbob...

and yup, you were right Carlene, looks like 16 kids, the most recent, a girl, born in 2005. the first show must have been "14 kids and pregnant again". Anyhow, loads of kiddos, all with "J" names.

[DrewsLou 3]

The last time I saw the Duggars on TV they were moving into their new digs. Amazingly beautiful house and family. I have no clue how they pull it off, where there's a will there is a way I suppose!

[green 6]

FYI the FBI has been monitoring some of the fundamentalist mega churches along with the "compound" living Churches of the Mid west. I think that says alot. I feel compassion for the congregation... how did they get to a point that they allow ANYONE to run their life like that.

They are being monitiored for funding issues, child sex laws being broken and a slew of other reasons that I wont get into. When i think of fundamentalist i think of this, not everyday churchgoers.

My godsons parents are black baptists. Church for them is almost 5 hours long. Crazy? To me yes, but once or twice a year i visit with my godson and I have a lovely time. I do not and will not devote that much time to anyone. If i do it wil lbe to hang out with my parents or my sisters family, but it makes them happy and I am glad they found it for them.

Money making, mega church stuff is weird. I would think it an insult for my pastor to show up in a Benz and i drive a hooptie bc i give all my money to the church. It would be a slap in my face. That is why i shy away from oranized religion. It is not religion itself really, just SOME of the people that run it.

Benny Hinn is currently raising money for his new personal jet, to be called the Dove. He claims he needs it for his missionary duties. Hahahahaha!:heh:

[Big girl banded 0]

Benny Hinn is currently raising money for his new personal jet, to be called the Dove. He claims he needs it for his missionary duties. Hahahahaha!:heh:

Perfect example! If i funded that plane but was eating ramen noodles at home everyday i would be P*ssed!

The dove. That is hysterical. Thanks for the laugh.:biggrin1: :biggrin1:

[green 6]

I've celebrated Solstice for decades.

However, if our country were NOT formed with belief in a Supreme Being, how do we interpret THIS part of the document:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"???

It seems to me that the above statement was carefully crafted. Creator was left unspecific, undoubtedly deliberately so. America was designed to be a pluralistic country by its founding fathers.

[green 6]

I highly doubt anyone will read this, but if you would, maybe you would understand a tiny bit better where I'm coming from:

1. What is overpopulation?

Overpopulation occurrs when an area is populated too heavily for the available resources and the capacity of the environment. When an area is overpopulated, its population cannot be maintained without destroying nonrenewable resources and without affecting the carrying capacity of the environment (the earth’s ability to support current and future inhabitants).

2. Is overpopulation a problem in the U.S.?

The U.S. is the only major industrialized country still growing, and we show no signs of stopping. The Census shows we grew by 13 percent between 1990 & 2000--and by 83 percent the last 50 years! You can see evidence of the problem all around you--vanishing open spaces, Water and energy shortages, soil erosion, and air pollution, as well as overcrowded schools, urban sprawl, and traffic congestion.

At 292 million Americans, we’re already well over our carrying capacity, and Census projections say we could grow to over 400 million by 2050–that’s another 100 million people to feed, clothe, educate, and house.

3. Isn’t overpopulation a global problem?

Overpopulation is indeed a problem around the globe, but population issues must be solved at the national level, as global agreements are largely unenforceable and fail to recognize the unique history, customs, and challenges of each country.

From an environmental standpoint, U.S. overpopulation is far worse for the environment than overpopulation anywhere else, because of our inordinately high use of resources. And of course, we have the most power to effect change right here at home.

4. What size do you believe the United States should be?

NPG has surveyed scientists over 30 years and asked: What’s the optimum population size before you start exceeding an area’s carrying capacity and harming the environment? The scientific consensus is that 150-200 million is the ideal population size for the U.S. That’s about the size of the U.S. 50 years ago.

5. What is the optimum population size for the world?

Considering food production, the load that human activities are imposing on the biosphere, global warming, chemicals and pollution, labor and wages, issues of social equity, and the problems of crowding, disease, and misery, NPG believes that a world population size of two to three billion would be optimal.

6. I ’ve heard that the entire population of the world could fit inside Texas.

People need more land than just the land they’re standing on–they need land for raising food, producing their oil and water, recreation and entertainment, shopping, transportation, waste handling, and much more. And overpopulation isn’t about how many people you can jam into a given area; it’s about what the optimum population size is before you start destroying resources and quality of life.

7. The U.S. is growing at about one percent per year.

Why should we be worried about such a small rate?

Although an increase of one percent may sound small, such a rate is monumental when talking about a population the size of the United States. A one percent increase means 2.9 million new people in a year and 29 million in a decade.

8. Isn’t the real problem that we will soon have too few working people to support the elderly? Why are you worried about population growth?

You’re thinking of Europe and Japan, which comprise a very small fraction of world population–about 14 percent. There, fertility decline is leading to a reversal of population growth. This offers those countries the opportunity to decide what population size is best for them. If they decide a larger size is better suited for them, they can raise their fertility back to replacement level or increase immigration.

Worldwide, however, population is still rising quickly. The United Nation’s medium projection is for an increase of more than 50 percent by 2050.

9. Does the economy depend on population growth?

Population growth benefits business interests, since it means more development. But as an area becomes more populated, its infrastructure starts straining under the weight of all the new people who must be served. Police forces, roads, and schools no longer satisfy the demands of a growing population. Farmland and forests are sacrificed to strip malls and housing developments. And as more and more schools, sanitary systems, roads, libraries, and water services must be built, eventually growth no longer lowers the average cost of services, but instead raises it. When this point is reached, growth increases the tax burden on communities; the revenue brought in by new growth is outweighed by the costs it creates. Meanwhile, congestion increases, schools become more crowded, and pollution levels rise.

10. Do we need more people to support the Social Security system?

There is no denying that Social Security's viability requires some tough decisions. But adding scores of millions of new workers would at best postpone, not solve, the Social Security problem–and at an enormous cost in resource depletion and environmental damage. Rather, we should see the aging of America as an opportunity to begin transitioning to sustainability.

11. Food and basic commodities have been getting cheaper at the same time our population has expanded, so why should we worry about resource scarcities?

In order to produce the greater and greater quantities of food needed to satisfy an expanding population, our lands have been deforested and overgrazed and our soil eroded. And don’t forget the quality of life issues associated with population growth: more pollution, more sprawl, tighter housing markets, overcrowded schools, traffic congestion, and vanishing open spaces.

12. How can we achieve lower population?

Three factors influence population: births, deaths, and migration. We can reduce population by lowering our fertility rate (the average number of children per woman) and reducing immigration. If almost all women had no more than two children, our fertility rate would drop to 1.5, because many women choose to have just one or none. Immigration levels are currently over one million a year–five times traditional averages–and should be returned to more traditional levels of 100,000 to 200,000 annually.

13. Can we tell people how to make a personal decision like family size?

We believe people should be educated about how overpopulation affects the environment and everyone’s quality of life and have access to family planning, and then–on their own–make responsible family planning decisions.

14. How could we lower overall fertility?

We could achieve a smaller, more sustainable fertility rate through a combination of social leadership, non-coercive incentives to stop at one or two children (such as tax incentives), free access to family planning education and contraceptives to anyone who wants it, and education. Studies show that as education level goes up, fertility (particularly early fertility) goes down.

15. What is NPG’s position on family planning?

We believe that anyone who wants it should have access to family planning education and contraceptives. It's essential that we raise awareness about family planning and not allow taboos to prevent open discussion about issues so vital to our nation's health.

16. What is NPG's view of abortion?

We support Roe vs. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court interpretations that affirm but limit women's right to abortion and protect the fetus if it has arrived at a viable stage.

There is still a debate about regulating human fertility, because those who oppose it have not yet come to understand what the theory of evolution tells us about human behavior. Charles Darwin had a titanic role in the history of human thought. Out of his observations of finches in the Galapagos Islands came the theory of evolution, which explained things that had never been explainable before about population.

All successful species, he said, have the ability to bear more young than their environment can support. This enables species to recover from food-short periods and it enables the best adapted to expand and fill new environmental niches when the opportunity presents. It also leads to overpopulation. The successful survive. The others die off.

That excess fecundity is central to the population dynamics of living creatures. It was true of human populations until we learned to practice fertility regulation by family planning. Like other animals, our population growth was limited by high mortality, particularly of the young. Medical and public health advances, sanitation and the growth of agricultural yields saved us for a time from that fate, but the process goes on. As human populations continue to grow, they are meeting those limits. The Darwinian controls, imposed in part by our destruction of the ecosystem, will stop the growth.

Seen in that light, family planning is perhaps the most fundamental advance in the human condition. It permits the human species to control its growth by regulating fertility, rather than waiting for the control to come from misery and rising mortality. Family planning is not just something that we are entitled to practice for our own purposes. It is something that the Earth itself badly needs, to escape the damage of continued human population growth. It is essential to the preservation of ecological balance in the face of a species grown far too successful. Within our species, it is desperately needed by the poor and fertile of the world so they can escape the evolutionary curse of excess fecundity and so their children will not be trapped in high mortality.

Such foresight is good in theory, but it may not be sufficient in practice. The common good is probably the last thing on people's minds when they are making love, and abortion may be necessary, for the good of the woman and of society, when contraception is not practiced. In the United States, there is one induced abortion for every three live births. If many of those pregnancies had come to term, fertility and population growth would be much higher than they are. Without legal abortions, there would be (1) more illegal abortions, which are usually septic and dangerous, and (2) more unwanted children, many of them presumably to single mothers less responsible than other women -- and they are hardly ideal parents.

Abortion is the least attractive means of managing birth rates. It has been declining with the widespread availability of contraceptive techniques. It would probably decline further if the other measures were in effect -- including over-the-counter availability of morning after pills. The medical profession, including the scientific advisory council to the Food and Drug Administration, has recommended that they be made available, but the FDA has deferred a decision.

The very idea of family planning is not very old, and the idea of tying it to social ends is a new one in human experience. We are far from knowing how to do it. Until we have learned, abortion plays a role as the final resort for women who don't want children or can't raise them. And Roe vs. Wade provides the legal framework to reconcile it with other societal goals.

17. Won’t technology save us from the problems raised by population growth?

Despite technological advancements, human numbers will ultimately overwhelm our ecosystems. We will eventually run out of finite resources, such as space and water. Even the CIA has weighed in on the issue, predicting in its “Global Trends 2015” report that parts of the U.S. will experience water shortages by 2015. The report stated that water conservation, expanded use of desalinization, developing genetically modified crops that use less water or more saline water, and importing water “will not be sufficient to substantially change the outlook for water shortages in 2015.”

18. Could we negate the results of population growth by reducing our consumption?

Increasing our population means increasing consumption. Every new person consumes resources, takes up space, and disposes of waste products. Even if we can reduce consumption by half, no progress can be achieved if we allow the population to double.

19. Won’t “smart growth” plans help accommodate our increasing numbers?

Rather than packing more and more people into more and more crowded areas, we need to tackle the problem at its source: an ever-growing population. When populations continue to expand, communities must find places to house, educate, and employ new residents and thus, even the best-intentioned smart growth efforts will eventually run up against population pressures.

20. Isn’t immigration just a shifting of people? Why does it matter where people are living?

From the earth’s perspective, population growth is particularly significant in the affluent U.S., where even the environmentally conscious have levels of consumption far exceeding the rest of the world. The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population but consumes 25 percent of its resources. When immigrants come here, they adopt our lifestyle and ultimately have a far worse impact on the earth than they would have had in their home country.

21. Isn’t the United States a nation of immigrants?

Immigration levels today are far higher than traditional levels; in the mid 1950s, our immigration was less than one-third what it is today. Additionally, the U.S. today is a very different country than in years past. We’ve settled the last frontiers and open space is no longer a commodity. Further population growth now means diminishing farmlands and otherwise harming our environment.

Sunta, I love this piece which you have posted. Thanks for doing so. You might be interested to know that up here in Canada there has been a belief for sometime now that the States will eventually run into a fresh water crisis and that your country will end up by looking north at our splendid fresh water resources. Indeed there are those Canadians, ones who might be considered to be a little paranoid, who foresee a time when Canada might be taken over (*read invaded*) for this reason.

You might also be interested to know that although there is a sizeable chunk of underpopulated property to the north of America this land is underpopulated for a reason. Even with the already noticeable effects of global warming taking place up here in Canada the fact does not change that much of this chunk of real estate is rock and not lush and fertile farm land. Man cannot live on minerals alone.

As for our coastal waters which were once a source of food, well, they have been pretty well fished out. And even though our own government has placed a moratorium on fishing - thus tossing lots of locals onto eternal welfare - these protections only extend three miles past the Canadian coastline. European and Asian fishermen who choose to fish outside these limits can do so and are continuing to do so.

The issue of population is both interesting and frightening. Mammals were designed to breed fairly prolifically in order to handle times of famine, disease, and predators and this balanced out before mankind began to develop his superior intellectual resources and was thus able to tinker with the natural birth to death ratio. (We can see an echo of our own extravagant growth in population in that of our house pets. Animal shelters complain bitterly about animal owners who refuse to neuter their pets. An on-line visit to any animal shelter is always heart-breaking.)

At the same time, while some creatures, notably humans, are flourishing, others are disappearing at an increasingly rapid rate as their home turf is torn down to make space for us. Biologists and Environmentalists tell us that biodiversity is important for the stability and the health of the planet. This kinda makes sense to me and as we are part of the planet it strikes me that we must wake up and pay attention to this message.

Sunta has chosen to open this thread by discussing the issue of attitudes towards population. Though most of the industrialized nations have low birth rates it is true that America is an anomally. Your birthrate is 2, and that is replacement level, and many of the other affluent nations are quite envious.

Mousecrazy has raised what I personally consider to be a more powerful point and that is the issue of the western lifestyle. She's saying something very interesting here, in my opinion, for the truth is that we now all leave much bigger footprints in the environment due to our current lifestyle expectations than our grandparents or great-grandparents did. We do this regardless of the number of kids we have chosen to have.

[DrewsLou 3]

Just came across this.... very interesting article about the Duggars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Bob_Duggar

[DrewsLou 3]

And some info on "quiverfull"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiverfull

[green 6]

The last time I saw the Duggars on TV they were moving into their new digs. Amazingly beautiful house and family. I have no clue how they pull it off, where there's a will there is a way I suppose!

Oh, that Green! She is doing a lot of posting, eh? Well, re the Duggars, I have reviewed the website and I really can't see anything wrong with this family so far. It is true that they are a little square but so what? They seem to be happy, healthy and loving. As long as they are also brought up to accept and respect those who are different from them - Jews, Muslims, atheists, people of colour, and other foreigners - I really do not have any problem with this family.

[DrewsLou 3]

Another view on the Duggars....

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/10/19/notes101905.DTL

Okay, I'm done now.... I swear! :rolleyes

[Big girl banded 0]

Taken from the Dugger site --

Our daily routine begins with personal hygiene (get dressed, brush teeth, comb hair, etc…). Each older child has a younger buddy or two that they help. We eat Breakfast & read Proverbs at 8:00a.m., then we ‘quick clean’ the house (older child & their buddy work together to clean their jurisdictions). Throughout the day we try to pickup as we go along, but naturally things tend toward disorder. So, it is a constant training process with ‘quick clean’ times throughout the day. At 9:00a.m., the older children help their buddies with their studies in phonics, math, violin & piano (J-O-Y- Jesus first, Others second, & Yourself last!). Then the older children start their music & individual studies- math, English, spelling & typing. We break for lunch at 12:00pm. Jill (age 13) prepares lunch & we all help cleanup. After lunch we work to finish individual studies. At 1:30p.m. the little ones go down for naps (4 & under). Momma & older children are around the table at 2:00p.m. for Wisdom Booklet group studies - science, history, law, medicine. We work on one subject until we complete the study. At 4:00p.m., we break from group study to complete individual studies, otherwise this is free time. We have dinner at 5:00p.m. Jana (Age 14) prepares dinner & everyone helps cleanup. We do another ‘quick clean’ of the house after dinner & then have free time. Some may still be finishing up music, seeing we have to take turns with one piano to 11 students! 8:00p.m.is snack time. Then we get ready for bed (baths, brush teeth, pick out clothes for next day). 9:00p.m. is Bible time with Daddy. This is probably our favorite time of day. Daddy reads the Bible & we discuss the passage together. We talk about the day & bring out points of how to apply what we have learned. We enjoy making up skits & acting out examples of right responses & wrong responses. Often our little ones will fall asleep as Daddy begins Bible time, still they love to be with us at this special time. Bedtime is 10:00p.m.

We had chores and all but geez, when i was 13 and 14 i PLAYED alot. I was never asked to feed a platoon everyday. .... I think that this really shows what the posters early on were talking about, that is just not fair. There is never mention of friends......

Drewslou... that article was awesome. I think it does sum it up. Nuff said.

[DrewsLou 3]

BGB.... From what I gathered from the articles they have no life outside of their family home. Seems weird to me but what do I know? I can't imagine being 13 and being responsible for a younger sibling as well as myself! I could barely take care of myself at that age!