Trophy Children

It strikes me that there is an all pervading expectation that adults have an ordained right to have child as and when it pleases them. No questions, this is an absolute, I want a child, I want it now so why are you not making it happen? Nature of course is very complicit in this and more often than not, sometimes to all-round consternation, pregnancies come along easily. That is for most young heterosexual couples. Just because perhaps it can be too easy to conceive we mistake that as a right to conceive. Now children are great fun, through them we can rediscover and enjoy once again our childhood, through the contacts made around children we can slide easily into new social circles with multitudes of opportunities to boast, display our child or parent skills and engage in all manner of one-upmanship contests and with a child as entry ticket we can exalt in all manner of events and occasions. Should the child's needs clash with your ongoing adult life there are plenty of opportunities to park them out with all manner of educational enrichments to boot. Or failing that option then just parking them infront of a TV or a computer console will ensure you can get on with those essential adult tasks with the minimum of distractions. So good to have children around, it feels right, familiar and is after all what every other couple expects. You are conforming to the social norms. You have child, purrr.

When child mortality was so high in the past, the supremacy of new life, any new life, was paramount to the survival of the nation. We are in a different era, there are too many of us on this planet, beyond what it can renewably sustain but we each want to add our child into the pool, to reproduce and further increase this pressure of just too many people. We have outgrown our planet. The sanctity of life is no longer a prime issue, instead we should be thinking deeply about the quality of the children we already have and even more so about those children that might come in the future. Those that are born to carry our genes forward, what should we set as a benchmark when considering all the deprived children, the maimed children, the children born with life challenging abnormalities, the children yet to be born or at the moment of conception? We should want all our children to be self-confident, enthused and full of hope as they launch out into the world. Sure children are highly resilient and can overcome the most dreadful of beginnings but they do carry those emotional and physicals scars, from that childhood, into their adult lives to pass on reflections of their horrors endured into the next generation. So with a reduced pool of children going forward we should want to encourage that the most assured and confident children carry our genes forward and not the scarred and maimed.

We should be aware of a range of concerns that impinge on whether or not the children we choose to have occupy this pole position of assured and confident. Same sex couples are biologically incapable of having a child sharing genes from both partners. Surrogate genes are just that, apart from many other issues, the motivation and or selection of genes thus acquired has to be questioned. I go further, the right environment for a child to grow is within that tension between the male and female roles. Only here can the child truly explore and understand this complex relationship and learn where they fit within these complimentary but almost opposing models. When career choices and or the ability to afford a home pushes back the mothers age for a first child beyond the early thirties in to the forties and even further on into the sixties, the risk of foetal errors increases as does the inability to readily conceive. If the career is the first choice then the honour of creating the genes to be passed on should move over to others fully committed to the mother role. Nowadays the stable family unit is no longer the norm instead serial partners with half-siblings are the new units. There are many strands to why this is occurring. The key issue is that a family unit that has overcome the tensions that arise between the male female bonding is a stable model and a good environment for child development. A pairing which, for whatever reasons, fails, leading to separation and new pair relationship to be formed, damages the children involved leaving them scarred, confused about their identity and their self-worth. This does not bode well for their development or their induction of future generations. Just because a woman is a natural mother with an inexhaustible appetite for yet another baby to care for, does not automatically mean that she is the right choice. Beyond some number there are just too many children in one family to be given full attention and the woman's body cannot recover from successive pregnancies, leading to runt babies. A final thought, we be protective of our gene pool and make sure, short of breeding for specific characteristics, that inherited defects, such as cystic fibrosis, are not passed.  

Nothing could be further from my intention that any couple wanting to have a child should be prevented. Perversely, such is life, the most unlikely child parent circumstance may well turnout an exemplary child. The State can and does choose to influence how society responds to issues. Often using taxes as a way of nudging behaviour in a direction. So I have nothing more in mind than that. A nudge, a financial incentive, where the outcome favours the emergence of a self-confident, enthusiastic and hopeful new adult. A tax regime with a nominal tax credit for any children during the first three years. After the third year the child tax credit cranks up significantly until a substantive level is reached only to taper off from sixth form until it ceases on graduation. However there are key criteria. The genetic parents must still be in a viable live together relationship, else it reverts to base nominal level. The benefit for all children in the family tapers off sharply with each succeeding child after the third.

I sense howls of protest, discrimination, fault, blame, victimisation but society does have to make choices. It has to promote what is in its best interest, not the individual interests. Individual respond and make life style choices based on the freedoms they perceive society offers them. Singles parent should not be on the choice list, IVF should not be there on demand. Serial Partnerships should not be on the same footing as a longterm stable marriage. The trophy child should be confined to history. We have to make choices. We should choose carefully to ensure the children we do have emerge healthy, bright-eyed, confident and eager to take on tomorrow's world, carrying us along with their enthusiasm.



ps: Initially this was just going to be a post in https://somersetspiess.wordpress.com/ just airing some passing thoughts. But the more I considered the more I realised this is a mainline political theme that strikes at the core of our society. So this Blog is the better location. I hope you find it.