The west needs to grow up and have kids

[ScottSA]

This article by Steyn raises an interesting point about the malleability of language. As someone who makes a living which *shudder* occasionally involves writing marketing copy, I know all too well how ideation springs from the flogging of words. But at some point Steyn takes a left turn and begins talking about something else: the death of the west; and it's a very good article.

About a decade ago, Bill Clinton developed a favourite statistic - that every day in America 12 children died from gun violence. When one delved a little deeper into this, it turned out that 11.569 persons under the age of 20 died each day from gun violence, and five-sixths of those 11.569 alleged kindergartners turned out to be aged between 15 and 19. Many of them had the misfortune to become involved in gangs, convenience-store holdups, drive-by shootings, and drug deals, which, alas, don't always go as smoothly as one had planned. If more crack deals passed off peacefully, that "child" death rate could be reduced by three-quarters.

[]

Omar Khadr is not just a terrorist legal matter. He represents one of the critical questions at the heart of the West's twilight struggle: what is a child? As readers will wearily recall, since 9/11 I've become a big demography bore. Recently, I was on a panel with Claire Berlinski, who, like me, has written a book on how Europe especially is running out of children, and we were, as is our wont, swapping horror stories. The Italian rural wedding full of aunts and uncles and grampas and grandmas - but no bambini. Seventeen Continental nations have deathbed fertility rates from which no society has ever recovered. Thirty per cent of German women are childless. Among German university graduates, that statistic rises to 40 per cent.

http://www.steynonline.com/content/blogcategory/15/100/

[geoffrey]

Why have kids? They require babysitters and cost too much.

[Leafless]

Why have kids? They require babysitters and cost too much.

You need a place to live, so how can you own a house and have children at the same time, unless of course you make an extremely healthy salary and besides, builders do not generally cater to renters with families and those who do , rents are high.

Heterosexual marriage provides more stable relationships but is being destroyed by advancements of common law relationships and secular believes which also destroys religious teachings relating to values and morals. Why should I want my children going to school with vulgar, unrefined children.

This is on top of the fact schools are corrupt as well as many neighbourhoods corrupt and invested with crime.

Who can raise children under these conditions, better still, who wants to, except those who wanted a liberalized Canada.

Edited September 21, 2007 by Leafless

[Visionseeker]

Love how Stein minimizes the idea that 2 kids under 14 die each day from a gun in the US. I’m even more impressed how his crunching would have us believe that of the 10 a day fatalities of 15 - 19 year olds, they're all on crack. None are Jane Crebas or Anastasia de Sousas.

Regardless, the gun violence amongst youth both here and the US is largely driven by disaffection and marginalization. We like to simplify it and call it gang violence. Like some deterministic design that exists so that we may have the benefit of fighting an ever- resilient evil.

Well, I suppose we are half-right. There are ever-resilient evils in our midst that precipitates much of this violence; some call them racism and prohibition. But that’s another topic. Let’s turn our attention to Khadr, or Master Khadr as our friend Stein opines in consideration that he was 15 when he killed Sgt. First Class Christopher Speer.

Khadr didn’t just decide to toss a grenade on that fateful day; he was groomed to do so almost from the time he was born. Most here should be somewhat aware of his father's exploits and should consider that Omar was in terrorist training camps from the age of 7. Now I ask you, if Omar were a white boy trained by his reclusive white supremacist parents to fight the government from the age of 7, and then subsequently killed an ATF agent during a raid on their compound when he was 15, would we vilify him so?

Ah, if you don’t see my logic, maybe Dan Gardner can succeed where I failed.

[Visionseeker]

Who can raise children under these conditions, better still, who wants to, except those who wanted a liberalized Canada.

Number 3 due in March. Guess we're liberalizing the country. Having a blast doing so too.

[August1991]

Why have kids? They require babysitters and cost too much.

Kids, their education and knowledge, are the purpose of life.

[August1991]

This article by Steyn raises an interesting point about the malleability of language. As someone who makes a living which *shudder* occasionally involves writing marketing copy, I know all too well how ideation springs from the flogging of words. But at some point Steyn takes a left turn and begins talking about something else: the death of the west; and it's a very good article.

It was a silly article. Steyn meanders around, like any intelligent but half-educated journalist looking for a cheque, and tries to figure out when someone is no longer a "kid" and when they are an "adult". I'm not certain I know what Steyn thinks about the question. If I understand properly, he notes that modern society has changed its concept of time. Amazing.

Then, Steyn concludes - as always - that the Muslims are having lotsa kids but we in the West are not.

Steyn sounds like Denys Arcand about 30 years ago. Demography. Not only is it boring, but it's no place for smart people who are bad at math.

Sometimes I feel like sending an email to Steyn and telling him not to worry, at least if his kids are studying Mandarin.

Edited September 21, 2007 by August1991

[Visionseeker]

It was a silly article. Steyn meanders around, like any intelligent but half-educated journalist looking for a cheque, and tries to figure out when someone is no longer a "kid" and when they are an "adult". I'm not certain I know what Steyn thinks about the question. If I understand properly, he notes that modern society has changed its concept of time. Amazing.

Then, Steyn concludes - as always - that the Muslims are having lotsa kids but we in the West are not.

Steyn sounds like Denys Arcand about 30 years ago. Demography. Not only is it boring, but it's no place for smart people who are bad at math.

Sometimes I feel like sending an email to Steyn and telling him not to worry, at least if his kids are studying Mandarin.

Steyn, silly article!? Say it ain't so.

I sometimes get worked-up about what Steyn commits to print, then I remember that he quit school at 16 and, as a result, I'm effectively reading a school newspaper column.

To take Steyn seriously is to accept health advice from a bartender.

[Wilber]

Why have kids? They require babysitters and cost too much.

Geez Geoffrey, if your parents had felt that way, we wouldn't have the pleasure of reading your posts.

[kimmy]

I can't speak to Germany, but I believe that economics have done far more to change the way we build families than "liberalization" or "the erosion of Christian values" or "feminists" or similar favorite complaints.

People want to raise their children in a nice house with a yard in a nice neighborhood. Not a crappy little apartment.

But in most of Canada's major cities, it now takes two good jobs and a 4000-year mortgage for a couple to afford the kind of home that their parents were able to provide for them with often just one parent working. My mom was already finished having children by the time she was my age, and my dad had already purchased our first house.

For all the supposed progress we've made, the dream of owning a home is farther out of reach than it was when my parents were my age. People start having their families later because they want to try to establish themselves economically, but a second income seems necessary to do so, and the second income probably comes to an end when the babies arrive.

-k

[ScottSA]

I can't speak to Germany, but I believe that economics have done far more to change the way we build families than "liberalization" or "the erosion of Christian values" or "feminists" or similar favorite complaints.

People want to raise their children in a nice house with a yard in a nice neighborhood. Not a crappy little apartment.

But in most of Canada's major cities, it now takes two good jobs and a 4000-year mortgage for a couple to afford the kind of home that their parents were able to provide for them with often just one parent working. My mom was already finished having children by the time she was my age, and my dad had already purchased our first house.

For all the supposed progress we've made, the dream of owning a home is farther out of reach than it was when my parents were my age. People start having their families later because they want to try to establish themselves economically, but a second income seems necessary to do so, and the second income probably comes to an end when the babies arrive.

-k

I don't think economics develops in a vacuum. The advent of women into the paid workplace of industrialized nations rocketed the west ahead astronomically, for about three generations, while in the meantime all the little brown people went about the business of making babies. We seem to have outsmarted ourselves in the west, though. Now we have no babies and the western wave, it seems, is about to crest. Some suspect it already has.

The breakdown of the family is also part of that dynamic. The erosion of Christian values is just part of the hedonism that always attends generations of great wealth, plus the intentional atomization that obviously has to occur in order to deify multicult.

[ScottSA]

It was a silly article. Steyn meanders around, like any intelligent but half-educated journalist looking for a cheque, and tries to figure out when someone is no longer a "kid" and when they are an "adult". I'm not certain I know what Steyn thinks about the question. If I understand properly, he notes that modern society has changed its concept of time. Amazing.

Then, Steyn concludes - as always - that the Muslims are having lotsa kids but we in the West are not.

Steyn sounds like Denys Arcand about 30 years ago. Demography. Not only is it boring, but it's no place for smart people who are bad at math.

Sometimes I feel like sending an email to Steyn and telling him not to worry, at least if his kids are studying Mandarin.

It's not the tightest article he's written, but it's not supposed to be. He uses a device some poeple with a lack of writing experience tend not to get. But that aside, you seem not to have any substantive argument to counter his, a misfortune not surprisingly shared with you by Wilbur and Microdot...oops..."Visionseeker." Quite simply put, he's quite right. But you already know that.

[M.Dancer]

Why have kids? They require babysitters and cost too much.

You get a $100. a month from the Conservatives for babysitting till they are in school. After that they can pretty much look after themselves.

[M.Dancer]

Steyn sounds like Denys Arcand about 30 years ago. Demography. Not only is it boring, but it's no place for smart people who are bad at math.

I take it you won't go to Steyn's directorial debut, should we be afflicted with that possibility?

[M.Dancer]

He uses a device some poeple with a lack of writing experience tend not to get. .

What device is that? And given that 99% of the reading world have little writing experiance, is he a fool for using this nebulous device?

If this device is interesting, I may be tempted to read my second Steyn article.....the first I didn't finish because it had a quality not found in articles normally read by intelligent people.

[ScottSA]

What device is that? And given that 99% of the reading world have little writing experiance, is he a fool for using this nebulous device?

If this device is interesting, I may be tempted to read my second Steyn article.....the first I didn't finish because it had a quality not found in articles normally read by intelligent people.

Oh, I'm afraid the device is unavailable to liberals too. It's a shame, but liberal minds just aren't, well, made that way. It's just that folks with left-leaning minds find it difficult to associate concepts not reduced to a slogan of appropriate length for a bumper sticker. So when an author begins with a point, then makes an associative point, and allows the subject to drift within a group of associative points before returning to either the initial concept or an outgrowth of that concept, as in this case, left leaners tend to fall right over, to the left that is, in confusion. I imagine your head is hurting just from talking about it. Take a tylenol and try to avoid Steyn articles. You're a liberal.

[M.Dancer]

Oh, I'm afraid the device is unavailable to liberals too. It's a shame, but liberal minds just aren't, well, made that way. It's just that folks with left-leaning minds find it difficult to associate concepts not reduced to a slogan of appropriate length for a bumper sticker. So when an author begins with a point, then makes an associative point, and allows the subject to drift within a group of associative points before returning to either the initial concept or an outgrowth of that concept, as in this case, left leaners tend to fall right over, to the left that is, in confusion. I imagine your head is hurting just from talking about it. Take a tylenol and try to avoid Steyn articles. You're a liberal.

So this device is basically the emporer's new clothes? But if I take a hammer to my head, start thinking like Steyn It will become apparent? That being said, isn't steyn just a long winded slogan? A bumper sticker in 100 words? Say what you will about bumper sticker writers, they are succinct. His blunt points are alarmingly populist and therefore, boring and usually inaccurate.

At least that's what I make of it through the regurgitated postings offered here and there.

But so far I haven't been tempted to read my second Steyn article.

[ScottSA]

So this device is basically the emporer's new clothes? But if I take a hammer to my head, start thinking like Steyn It will become apparent? That being said, isn't steyn just a long winded slogan? A bumper sticker in 100 words? Say what you will about bumper sticker writers, they are succinct. His blunt points are alarmingly populist and therefore, boring and usually inaccurate.

At least that's what I make of it through the regurgitated postings offered here and there.

But so far I haven't been tempted to read my second Steyn article.

I'm afraid head hammering won't help you understand the device. It tends instead to slide folk's thinking even further left, often accompanied by a sloshing sound. But you seem to be confused about Steyn, alternately accusing him of being vague, succinct, long winded and sloganish. Tell me you haven't already started the hammer experiment?

[M.Dancer]

I'm afraid head hammering won't help you understand the device. It tends instead to slide folk's thinking even further left, often accompanied by a sloshing sound. But you seem to be confused about Steyn, alternately accusing him of being vague, succinct, long winded and sloganish. Tell me you haven't already started the hammer experiment?

Now I understand why you like steyn, you ahve reading comprehension difficulties.

I didn't say Steyn was succinct, I said bumper sticker writers are succinct, which is more than you can say for Steyn's long winded articles which are not much more than a slogan of a thousand words. Let me sum up steyn's articles;

Islam Bad, Islam Scarey Scarey.

That's the gist of it, now add 350 nouns, 350 adjectives and 295 verbs and you have another jejune frothing at the mouth diatribe.

Boring.

[ScottSA]

Now I understand why you like steyn, you ahve reading comprehension difficulties.

Apparently there's a good reason for that.

[geoffrey]

Kids, their education and knowledge, are the purpose of life.

That's cute and fine and all, but my statement was probably the most accurate reflection on the reason why the west doesn't have kids. We have other personal ambitions and kids get in the way, rightly or wrongly. Kids are not the purpose of my life, currently.

Geez Geoffrey, if your parents had felt that way, we wouldn't have the pleasure of reading your posts.

That was their choice and I'll make mine. I have nothing against parents, I just don't wish to be one myself (note that I'm still relatively young too).

People used to be married and starting on their first bunch of 'em by my age not so long ago. My mom was only a year older than I am now when I was born. People in their early twenties have little interest in producing kids, especially these new career driven women. So they hold off. And then they are held up by the impending promotion. Then the newer house purchase. Then the epic vacation. Then retirement and soon enough... out of luck.

People having kids young was likely the reason for higher rates of birth before. I think the 25-35 demographic of parents remains relatively unchanged over the last few decades.

But that's just heresay.

[Wilber]

There was a segment on the news last night about how women are delaying having their first child until well into their thirties. Apparently our birth rate is 1.57 kids per woman and 2.1 is the minimum needed to sustain our population so it looks like we will have to import around 20% of our population just to maintain the status quo.

[August1991]

That's cute and fine and all, but my statement was probably the most accurate reflection on the reason why the west doesn't have kids. We have other personal ambitions and kids get in the way, rightly or wrongly. Kids are not the purpose of my life, currently.

No doubt but the point is what are your personal ambitions and where did they come from?

Most of us like potato chips but we all know what happens if you eat too much of them.

In any case, the world's problem is arguably not a lack of kids. We've got too many of them. Our problem is that we don't have enough educated kids. People like Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton didn't just wake up one day.

Islam Bad, Islam Scarey Scarey.

If that's how you characterize Steyn, then I can describe Chomsky (or Fisk or [Put Leftist Name Here]) as "America Bad, America Scarey, Scarey".

Now, between these two caricatures, I'll go with Steyn's.

[Wilber]

QUOTE(Wilber @ Sep 20 2007, 10:49 PM)

Geez Geoffrey, if your parents had felt that way, we wouldn't have the pleasure of reading your posts.

That was their choice and I'll make mine. I have nothing against parents, I just don't wish to be one myself (note that I'm still relatively young too).

Perhaps I should have put a smiley face or something at the end of that comment. I'm certainly not suggesting that people have kids that they don't want.

However, unless we produce enough kids of our own to keep our society functioning, we will have to rely heavily on immigration to avoid becoming a nation of geezers.

Edited September 22, 2007 by Wilber

[Guest American Woman]

I can't think of worse reasons to have kids than having them out of a sense of duty or obligation, or because other races are having more, or because they'd get some kind of kickback from the government. The only reason to have kids is because the people making that choice want them. Parenting is expensive, time consuming ... and rewarding unlike anything else, if that's what is wanted. If it's not, then it's showing that one IS "grown up" when he/she recognizes it and decides not to bring unwanted kids into the world just because 'it's the thing to do' because not having kids brings a different set of 'rewards.' So it's a personal choice, and one can't say one choice is right and the other is wrong.

Women are delaying having kids now because they realize they have other choices, and that's a good thing-- having choices. People are having less kids now, too, because they want to give their kids the best life they can. That also is a good thing.

As a side thought, we might be bringing fewer kids into the world, but more are surviving and living longer, so I wonder if that kind of balances things out in the end. Also, seems to me we had to reach a point where there had to be a slow down in population growth or the world would become overpopulated.

Edited September 22, 2007 by American Woman