A bumper sticker I saw the other day "Can't feed em, don't breed em"?

Question

Why can't the sick and dying poor of this world grasp this one idea, and I don't want any, cultural, yada, yada. A starving baby should inspire a person to not have s*x, Is it a grasping of Math or what????

Answer 1

Unfortunately many ppl don't think about the "what-ifs"...just the present.  And many ppl who sometimes do think of the "what-ifs" tend to see parenthood through rose colored glasses as far as the financial hardships that can arise.  A shame.....

Answer 2

I'd like to say that to the inner city people and the trailer trash who make that an issue in America with their careless making of children. You can thank them for where half our tax dollars are going (the other half to the rich conservative snobs who live lavishly).

Men: If you gotta snack it, wrap it.

Women: If you don't want a future of ill, use the pill.

Or better yet, abstinence. But just in case, follow above slogans.

In other words, its called Birth Control people. Not abortion, BIRTH CONTROL.

Send them condoms and teach them about safe s*x. s*x education wins out and should be taught worldwide (and not the abstinence-only type).

Answer 3

Michael Jackson once said "If you can't feed your baby, then don't have a baby, & don't think maybe, if you can't feed your baby." Something I agree w/ him wholeheartedly.

Answer 4

It's the kind of world we live in my friend. People often let their minds get overcome by pleasure and fail to use any rational thinking.

And you also have those who are complacent, you know the mentality of "i won't get pregnant", or "i won't knock her up because I'll pull out before i finish"

Answer 5

I agree. I feel very sorry for peopel in thrisd world countries etc who are starving and homeless and it's awful they are living like that. But....if your life is so terrible why on earth inflict that upon poor children?! They should be sterlilised.

Answer 6

Some people still don't completely understand how babies are made...

Answer 7

I would take that more to 16 year olds who thinking getting pregnant is OK and that they're adults but they're not, but either one works!

Either way, that is the most ingenious statement ever.

Answer 8

Most people have this funny idea that babies are delivered by storks when you ask for them still, I think.  Or at least that's how it seems sometimes with how little people think before they rush right into acting on impulses.

I don't think I'd try to even push that as far as the poor and starving of the world, though.  How about just the large population in first-world countries who relies on the government to be able to buy food for their kids?  I'm pretty sure they don't actually *need* to have kids to be okay in old age and they're not malnourished enough that they probably would have difficulty in the pregnancy department.  Work harder, because millions on welfare depend on you!  (I should get back to work. . . .)

Hmm, I'll have to go look for one of those bumper stickers now.  I don't know if I'd actually put in on my car as I'm not a fan of putting random stickers on my vehicles, but it might be nice to put up somewhere.

Answer 9

I always wonder why people still have children when they can't support themselves. Imagine if the government spent more money imposing a mandatory bc method to prevent unwanted pregnancies, how much would it save on the welfare system?

Or, going even further, perhaps there was some sort of class that you had to take and that you had to prove that you were financially, mentally, emotionally, etc. capable to have kids before you could even try, we would never have issues with poor people having lack of daycare or ability to support themselves and their family. The only people left to take care of would be those who were actually unable to work due to medical conditions or whatever.

BUT, that's too much government control, who are we to say who can and can't have children, and yet those people use our tax money to pay for those children.

Answer 10

So people, simply because they live in a poor country, should stop having children and just allow themselves to die out?  Why?  Having children is a sign of hope in the future, and to stop having children is to abandon hope.

A shrinking population would not mean less poverty, many of the poorest countries in the world are not the most densely populated, but the most sparsely populated.  Famines do not occur in democracies, for instance.  corrupt political regimes are often the cause of famines, food simply isn't getting to the people, rather than there being a lack of food.  in 'The Skeptical Environmentalist' Bjorn Lomborg writes:

'The number of people is not the problem.  Many of the most densely populated countries are in Europe.  The most densely populated region, Southeast Asia, has the same number of people per square km as the United Kingdom.  The Netherlands, Belgium and Japan, are far more densely populated than India, and Ohio and Denmark are more densely populated than Indonesia.'

In 'All the Trouble In The World' P.J. O'Rourke writes:

'The modern era has witnessed an enormous increase in food, an enormous increase in people being fed - and an enormous increase in famine.  Between 1958 and 1961 as many as thirty million people starved in just one famine in China.  At least five million more starved in the Ukraine during the 1930s.  Three million starved in another chinese famine in 1928-9, three million in Bengal in 1943, a million in Cambodia in the late 1970s, and uncounted millions more in Biafra in 1967-68.  Ethiopia in 1972, Bangladesh in 1974, and sub-Saharan Africa in 1983-84.

  When a thing defies physical law, there's usually politics involved.  The Chinese famine of 1958-61, the worst famine in history, resulted from the imposition of Marxist theory on traditional peasant agriculture.  the same thing caused the ukranian famine of 1932-34 and the Cambodian famine of 1975-79.

  Some famines were deliberately created.  the Nigerian government used starvation as a weapon of war against the Biafrans.  The Ethiopians did the same thing to the Eritreans, and the Muslim Sudanese are doing it now to their Christian and animist countrymen.

  Some famines came not from political organization but from lack thereof.  A government can't very well provide famine relief when there is no government, as there was none in China in the late 1920s.

  Famine can occur when there is a food surplus.  One of the worst recent famines - Bangladesh's in 1974 - took place in a year of unusually high rice production.  Unfounded rumours of a rice shortage caused prices to double.  Then the government of the "People's Republic of Bangladesh' led by self-styled socialist Mujibur Rahman, set about making things worse.  The army was sent to arrest hoarders, convincing people that Mujibar had lost control and fueling the price surge.  The price surge led to a huge black market Black marketeering exacerbated the already-wonderful corruption of the Mujibur regime.  And people starved for no reason.'

In short, famine is caused by politics rather than by people having babies.  Denying themselves children will not make the poor of the world any less poor, any more than having children has led the densely populated prosperous areas of the world to be any less prosperous.

Answer 11

I agree. They should use birth control.

Answer 12

A main reason why impovershed people have so many children in areas with high mortality rates is to ensure that they have someone to care for them once they are older. Another big factor is that women often to not have control over their respoduction. Birth control is not available and the woman has little or no right to refuse s*x with the man.

Also when areas get hit by famine, it is usually not foreseen. It is usually the result of an unexpected drought, political tensions, or in the most recent case, a rise in food prices brought on by demand from global markets.

When the mother is malnourished, she is far less likely to get pregnant. Her body is conserving its nutrients to stay alive. So it is not usually true that she is getting pregnant when the baby is starving.

In any case, if the problem is with limited resources, it is people in the first world who are the real culprits. In the modern west we use far more resources and produce far more waste than the billions in the third world. When we consider that it is pressure from our markets which sometimes induces malnutrition in the third world, it is even clearer that we are at least somewhat to blame.

Of course you said you don't want to hear any of this, but I thought it would be nice to pretend you were approaching this with an open mind.

Answer 13

First of all, it's not only the sick and dying poor who have more kids than they can sometimes feed, or support properly, or even love fully.

Second, I'd expand it to "If you can't love (let alone feed) them, don't breed them." I see too many parents that can feed or even keep their kids over-fed, but can't provide love and education, and help their kids grow up to be people who make the world better.

Personally, I'll go even farther... we have a license for all kinds of things, including a license to drive. We should have a license to breed, and it should mean people have passed the minimum parenting classes that people of all walks of life could basically agree to; the facts. Like how much of a challenge it is (e.g., think about a crying baby at 3 am, or a sick baby that's 'constantly' crying), and how much it will cost to raise a child, and some of the rest of the facts involved with raising a child (or children) in this world.

So, about the "cultural, yada, yada." By ignoring the broader view, IMNSHO, means that one is likely to have a closed mind to what might actually begin to solve problems like poverty and over-population: Keeping an open ear, an open mind, and an open heart. I would encourage people to educate themselves on the issues, vs. ranting about the problem. Be a part of the solution; be the change you want to see in the world.

Answer 14

People are gonna have s*x...that's a fact of biology. Poorer people have limited access to birth control, abortion, etc. And in some areas of the world, they have none.

That's it.

Of course, "student" covered this much better than I just did...I'm feeling lazy....

EDIT-To begin with, you can take your personal references about ME and cram it. HARD. You know nothing about me, or my ability to "feed" a baby. My husband and I are VERY much in a position to "feed" our child (and drive him around in a Mercedes), and any others we may have, and even any number of orphans we may adopt...but I can also AFFORD birth control, unlike a lot of poor people, or people in developing nations. Your assumptions only reinforce the narrow-minded, uneducated, red-neck impression your question imparts.

That being said, s*x is a biological drive, the need to procreate is in our DNA. Of course we can overlook and overcome these needs, but not many do.

You talk about not wanting to "hear about culture," but culture, and the way women are treating in those cultures, has everything to do with this question, and only an ignorant person would think otherwise. Ever notice that the more rights and freedoms WOMEN have in a culture and society, the LESS poverty and starving children there are?

Why don't you think about that for a second...I'll expect to hear back in an hour.