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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33352 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 2023

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I understand the letter vs spirit distinction I don't see how it applies here.

How is spacing the births in order to benefit under the programs rules, gaming?

Simply having more children is (or should be) a part of the greater goal, which is to raise fertility and produce functional families. Improving fertility just so that you can have a generation full of ticking time bombs raised in dysfunctional homes is only a marginal improvement over the default of people having fewer kids.

We don't need to swell the fertility of the bottom quintile or increase the representation of single mothers. I don't see how spacing births to benefit under a program does either.

Arguably the spacing cohort is able to plan / delay in order to meet program requirements.

My wife also occasionally mentions a girl she went to school with who at this point has like 4-5 kids (I can't remember how many), each with a different baby daddy. "She finds some guy who is about to make a bunch of money working in the oil industry, convinces him that she loves him, and that lasts just as long as it takes for her to have another kid."

By her account, this woman is able to plan/delay in order to meet the requirements of the 'program' that she is pursuing. That doesn't imply that these are the types of behaviors we really want to promote as a society.

But in any event, the spacing/repetition to go several years with minimal working isn't, itself, an example of an atrocious consequence. It's just an example of how people will make adjustments to just barely meet the requirements, and we may or may not end up liking the results.

This sounds a bit like the dependapotamus seen near military bases.

It's distintinctly different from an employed women having a child every two years to receive a maternity leave benefit.

In your example is she really delaying, or does it just take some time to find a new mark and gain his confidence?

Different things are different, yes. But on the core question of whether they require planning/delaying/spacing/whatever, I think they're similar. At least, because I had thought that you were basically just resting something on the "ability" to plan/delay, as though such ability implied something about functionality/dysfunctionality of a family relationship. Dependapotamus isn't just a slave to her passions in the moment; she's not going home with broke-ass dude from the bar. She's capable of planning her strategy out according to the rules of the game she thinks she's playing.

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