Being Quiverful

I was just wondering what people thought of the idea of being "quiverful" or having as many kids as possible. Alot of these families believe that they have children as god will give them.

I saw a documentary on it awhile back, and it seemed unfair on everyone involved. On the husband who usually is the only worker, since they believe in patriarchy. The wife simply because having so many children must put an extreme toll on her body. And other various reasons.. But some say that this brings a much happier larger loving family.

Thoughts?

 

It is so much easier to "allow" the Lord to plan ones family than make a conscious choice about what one can afford or handle. I have had friends in this system and really the women's greatest achievement is the number of children she can have. Its becomes a competition with real grief when one cannot have 10, 11 or 15 children.
As a midwife a lot of my clients have large families--some quiverful and some just want a large family. The mom has to take exceptional care of herself--nutritionally and emotionally to be able to do this.
I have 9 kids because I love kids and pregnancy.. my kids are close and are great friends and I made sure I stayed healthy and took time for myself. I also had all homebirths so I had to make sure i was eating right.

Its all in the perspective i believe.

 

It's very damaging to the environment

 

That is true, too.

While it is nice to have a large family, it is a lot of work and it is not good for everyone. If everyone thought like this we would have an even more serious population problem.

 

I just don't know how people do it. The thought of even being responsible for one life is scary to me. I can't imagine being responsible for the upbringing of so many.

 

My question is, why don't these people just adopt? There are plenty of children out there with nobody because they were given up. What about them? Having lots of children is a personal choice, but I don't see the point in constantly reproducing if there are so many already here that are not being taken care of at all.

 

I agree with you about the adoption...
I would never want that many kids.. i want two of my own and adopt one and thats it.

 

Again, I think it's a personal choice. Most people, I think, like the idea of creating life together: of bringing another person into the world just the two of them. I can relate to that. If I wanted children (something I haven't decided yet), I would want them to be my own. There's an undeniable beauty in it.

 

That's very true. It is a personal choice, but would you keep having children over and over again just because like these people? Have natural children and adopt some? I'm not saying having a child that is naturally yours is a bad thing, I just don't understand having so many and, like one poster mentioned, being competitive about it. For me to have a child naturally I'd have to do the whole artificial insemination thing and I'm just not comfortable with it. So, yeah, a round-about way of saying it is, indeed, personal choice.

 

Yeah, that would be kind of scary to keep up with so many children. I don't understand how those women do it, but....more power to them if they can.

 

In light of the already mentioned population problem - the fact that we will very quickly have far more humans than we will have resources to keep alive, which will result in a large portion of the population starving to death, and mostly everyone else living in poverty and barely managing to stay alive - doesn't it indicate that somebody who has as many children as possible is either incredibly selfish and doesn't care about the bleak future all those kids she had will have to live through, or that she is extremely dumb and/or lacking foresight?

No halfway responsible person, nobody who deserves to be allowed to have and be responsible for children, would make such a selfish and careless decision.

 

Well, not everyone believes that there is a serious population problem... I certainly don't think it's selfish to bring life into the world. I'd sooner be alive and have shit to deal with than never have lived at all.

 

Every generation says the future is bleak, we were supposed to be horribly short of food 30 years ago, 70 years ago, 150 years ago, but technology has allowed us to produce more then we ever have. The fact is there has never been a better time in history to bring life into the world. People are just angsty and spoiled these days, seriously when else would you prefer to bring life into the world in written history.

 

I was about to say "do the math," but you don't even have to work out any equations. It's really simple. The population grows exponentially, and, barring some massive collective effort to hold off on making babies, it will continue to do so. Each generation is bigger than the last, which means it can produce even more babies, meaning the next generation will be larger, and so on.

It's easy to say that we were "supposed" to have been in a dire situation now but that we're clearly not because we still seem to have plenty of resources in this part of the world. Well, look at China. Look at India. Look up some pictures of the slums in India, particularly aerial views. It is one of the most incredible and simultaneously depressing things you will ever see. Here, i'll do it for you.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FUIBQC-73lk/SNIurkFFDzI/AAAAAAAAAUU/51jZJLf_cdI/s400/Mumbaiwu8.jpg

http://adilmohd.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/dharavi-industry-lll.jpg

(I was originally going to post the photos themselves, but one of them was too big and would have stretched the entire thread, and I wasn't sure if there would be some forum rule violation, so I decided to just put the links instead)

Obviously the overpopulation problem doesn't hit the entire world at the same time. Some countries get hit first and harder. Inevitably and unarguably, the world population will grow too big to sustain itself on the resources. It may not happen in the next generation. It may not happen in the next five generations. But unless we figure out a way to generate resources out of thin air, or perfect space travel to the point that we can reach other planets with abundant resources before the population crisis really hits, our descendants at some point along the line are going to have to live piss poor lives, if they manage to live at all, because you decided it was your right to have 10 completely unnecessary children.

So, basically, if we want to prevent that, we have two options.

1. Be responsible and limit how many children you have. If EVERY couple in the world were to have one and only one child, the population would effectively half by the time the generation that made this decision died off.

2. Build a giant grinder and throw 80% or some such percentage of newborn babies into it.

Which would you prefer?

I would like to add that a more realistic scenario would involve one or a few countries hoarding resources so that its citizens can continue to live comfortably while the rest of the world suffers tremendously. AS i mentioned, this is basically what is happening now to some degree, and it is only going to get worse. More likely than not, by the time the shit hits the fan the US is not going to be top dog anymore, so you better hope your children's children, or whatever generation of your descendants have to live during the hard times, are born in whichever region happens to be on top.

 

I also wanna say that, though my post is mostly directed at some other posters, I do not mean to imply that they will necessarily be responsible in full or in part for the impending population problem. When I say "you" in my post i mean it in a general way. For all I know Zorba and MadCap don't ever plan on having children. I just want to make sure that my wording isn't misconstrued as a hostile attack of some sort.

 

Well I have to disagree about generations being larger than the previous. The Baby Boomers were, in fact, larger than the GI Generation (or is it Silent Generation?) but the generation following the Baby Boomers, Generation X, was significantly smaller. I don't know if Generation Y is smaller, or bigger, or about the same size as Gen X. I just know that some generations are smaller than the previous.

What the OP was talking about, the Quiverfull Movement, is that these men and women are part of a religious belief system that tells them they should have all these children. Even if you told them all about this population stuff, they wouldn't care. I'm sure they believe that they will be taken to Heaven by the Second Coming before any disasters happen. And their many children, too.

 

Very true: there are a lot of factors that influence the size of each generation. The Malthusian idea that population increases exponentially, while not entirely baseless, is a massive oversimplification in my view, and is probably more true when looking at a very longterm time frame.

 

The population of Earth isn't going to keep growing out of control. In fact it's expected to level out around 9 billion by 2060 and stable out or grow very slowly as third world countries industrialize. Populations throughout most of Europe are going to start falling within 20 year in most countries with some countries like Italy losing up to 1/4-1/3 of it's population by 2060. Even the US, while we're growing, it isn't due to births, our birth rate is just at the replacement rate, it's our immigration numbers that keep us growing.

 

People who don't believe there is a population problem will be sad when we get to the carrying capacity and billions of people die from disease and starvation and everything is deforested and nothing is left but a wasteland.

 

Having that many children, just because you have the "reproductive right" to do so, is simply evil. I don't beleive in eugenics, but I do beleive in forced sterilization for those who, nomatter what genetics they may have, simply keep poping out babies, with no reguard for what this world can handle. Mankind will go extinct, and it will be because of this type of stupidity.

Easter island, anyone? When you crap out enough babies, no matter how many stone heads, skyscrapers, or anything else you build to appease the gods, you will die off.

*edit* don't mean to imply having children is always "crapping out" babies, but people who have 10 kids or whatever, well, someone needs to get out the red hot coat hanger.<lolz at whoever got their nerd rage on over that one. I thought it was rather funny> That's just selfish and crazy, because some stupid people exist, our species will dissapear? fuck that.