Tweet
I don't think I have said it in this thread, but I think that the way to stop abortions is to stop people from wanting abortions. We saw pre-Row that banning abortion didn't really stop it, the central problem is people wanting it.
And I think the central reason why people want abortions is isn't that 'people are selfish' or 'young people are selfish' or 'liberals are selfish'. I think the central reason why people want abortions is because the US (as a whole) is just so anti-child and parent unfriendly. We need pre/post-natal care. We need free childbirths. We need parental leave (for both mothers and fathers). Raising children is a huge cost and, when done right, a huge benefit for society, but we force the burdens all on parents and we structure society to do this.
Here is a report (I didn't read this one, but I think I read an article that is about the same study) showing that children cause unhappiness in the US and that this is primarily because of how we structure society to put all the burden on parents (this isn't seen in other countries as much).
https://sites.utexas.edu/contemporar...ing-happiness/
The bad news is that of the 22 countries we studied, the U.S. has the largest happiness shortfall among parents compared to nonparents, significantly larger than the gap found in Great Britain and Australia.
What we found was astonishing. The negative effects of parenthood on happiness were entirely explained by the presence or absence of social policies allowing parents to better combine paid work with family obligations. And this was true for both mothers and fathers. Countries with better family policy “packages” had no happiness gap between parents and non-parents.
JM
And I think the central reason why people want abortions is isn't that 'people are selfish' or 'young people are selfish' or 'liberals are selfish'. I think the central reason why people want abortions is because the US (as a whole) is just so anti-child and parent unfriendly. We need pre/post-natal care. We need free childbirths. We need parental leave (for both mothers and fathers). Raising children is a huge cost and, when done right, a huge benefit for society, but we force the burdens all on parents and we structure society to do this.
Here is a report (I didn't read this one, but I think I read an article that is about the same study) showing that children cause unhappiness in the US and that this is primarily because of how we structure society to put all the burden on parents (this isn't seen in other countries as much).
https://sites.utexas.edu/contemporar...ing-happiness/
The bad news is that of the 22 countries we studied, the U.S. has the largest happiness shortfall among parents compared to nonparents, significantly larger than the gap found in Great Britain and Australia.
What we found was astonishing. The negative effects of parenthood on happiness were entirely explained by the presence or absence of social policies allowing parents to better combine paid work with family obligations. And this was true for both mothers and fathers. Countries with better family policy “packages” had no happiness gap between parents and non-parents.
JM
Comment