So Mother’s day just went by, and I have to wonder on the following things:
I believe that a “mother” only exist at the same moment that a “child” is born. Now.
Is motherhood the true essence of a woman, or is it a curse?
With the current trend of abortion, what does it tell us on how we look at motherhood? Is it a good or bad thing?
Can social problems be solved if we have more good mothers rearing responsible children?
When your catholic teacher says jump, what do you do?
It’s Mother’s Day → A mother is only a mother when a child is born → There’s abortions → Therefore, motherhood may be a curse. → Social problems may be solved if mothers are responsible.
Mother’s Day → Abortions → Responsible mothers may solve social problems
Do the connections make sense to you or hey! maybe that wasn’t the point, the point was:
No abortions → Responsible mothers → No social problems!
Motherhood can certainly be a curse if you’re in financial ruin or if you’re 16. Unless of course, a mother’s love is all it takes to really raise a child. There’s such emphasis on the metaphysical in Abrahamic religions, so much so that everything is explained through the invisible hand of god, and yet there’s such tremendous emphasis on the fulfillment of biological roles. God wants to send his limited number of souls down here as soon as possible before Jesus comes and stops him…I mean himself.
I don’t see your point here. If you have anti-Catholic sentiments then create a new thread.
I didn’t say that. The phenomenon of abortion is always dependent on a particular culture or the dominant trend in a given society. For example if a particular society focus on the enjoyment of sex rather than the responsibilities that comes along with it, then of course abortion would be justified. But justification of an act is not the point here.
The question is since we all start at a particular home (I assume you did not sprout from the ground), does being a good mother create ripple in the long run, in our society? Is a dysfunctional family a root for our problems both in a personal and social level?
I thought the invisble hand was from Adam Smith.
I’m a theist/deist, and I’m not anti catholic, but from what I’ve read of your posts, you’re looking to argue that what you’re taught in school is right. In real life, fine, but on this board you’re expected to make an argument. You don’t present a case, you simply ask for opinions, give a few simple arguments, and ultimately leave the discussion with no real change of thought. For example, after making nearly 500 posts on a philosophy forum, you still make value judgments in terms of “good” and “bad” in your arguments. The point was very clear.
The question is since we all start at a particular home (I assume you did not sprout from the ground), does being a good mother create ripple in the long run, in our society? Is a dysfunctional family a root for our problems both in a personal and social level?
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The connections you were making were what I was criticizing. You went from “it’s mother’s day” to “a woman is a mother only when she gives birth” to “some people have abortions” to “motherhood may be a curse to women, but bad mothers may be the source of social problems”. Where do abortions and Mother’s Day fit in with the responsibility of mothers in raising responsible children and mending social issues? You were tying in abortions with maternal responsibility. The fact that a catholic girl fulfilling her biological role is so important tends to discredit the idea of a soul in my mind, since all she really needs to do is “rear children” and raise them to be good citizens. As if she were a cow, rearing offspring. She’s not ‘metaphysical’, just ‘physical’.
Even islam allows the muslim to doubt god, “knowledge” is the second most uttered word in the Quran. But here, there’s no higher knowledge involved, there’s nothing greater than this world about it, simply doing what has been happening for eons but with god attached to it. That’s not a religion, that’s just a cult reproducing.
Another problem here is the definition of prevention. If I don’t have sex with someone, am I escaping from one of the fundamental aspects of my life which includes the responsibilities of raising a child? If I don’t have sex with a girl during certain times of the month, is that better than contraception? Is birth prevention only valid when someone aborts or wears a condom? Wouldn’t god let you have kids even if you were wearing condoms, if he wanted to? If you’re meant to have kids, you’ll have em. How strong’s your faith?
As for the question. I think it’s relevant in the same way that poverty may be the source of robberies. If there was no poverty, or no money, or infinite possessions, would there be no more robberies? Maybe, but I just don’t think it’s a very good question.
Invisible hand is just my interpretation of ‘miracles’ but it’s not a particularly unique or imaginative idea so yeah, could be Adam Smith’s or anyone else’s for that matter.
What the–
I didn’t mention anything of that sort in the OP, Mr. Rouzbeh. So please spare me, my education has little to do with this post.
Ok point well taken. I will expound it on the lower part of this reply.
I don’t recall that I was aking you to judge any values, what so ever. Unless you have noticed this is a psychology forum so the terms I used has nothing to do with religion of any kind. My question is in a psychological and pragmatic level.
And I don’t recall that one must start looking at all things in matters of morality in a grey tone if you have “nearly 500 posts on a philosophy forum”. If you are asking me to stop discerning stuff between black, white or grey then I have to decline Mr. Rouzbeh.
I did not make any connections what so ever. And this is not an abortion thread. This is “motherhood” as a zeitgeist. I will expound just for you the four questions in the OP which will be found later in this reply.
No. That is why I limit motherhood only in the sense of parenthood and I limit parenthood on having children.
Humans have a choice apart from what their genes dictate from them. I never believed that man is on the short leash to his genes.
Should humans reproduce. Yes, unless you regard humans to be disgusting species to stop from reproducing. That is why I uphold sex as an act NOT ONLY for enjoyment but as an avenue which is ALWAYS OPEN to the possibility of another human.
So that’s my answer to the issue of sex for sex’s sake and abortion which result from “too much enjoying” the sexual act.
If you are asking this as a medical and psychological question I have to say yes. It is healthier in a medical and psychological level.
If this is a philosophical question, I have to ask on what point of view are you approaching this?
Are you aproaching it as another contraceptive method because you are saving up or find pills to be unhealthy or are you approaching sex as an act of waiting for your wife (or life partner) natural process of stopping to ovulate and in turn discipline your appetite for sex and see you wife (or life partner) as something worth the wait?
My answer for the former is I have to disagree. For the latter I have to agree ONLY when a child comes along you don’t run to the abortion clinic for a quick fix.
What do you mean by validity here?
If you are talking about the Immaculate Conception, I think yes.
Poverty is always there. We cannot fully eradicate poverty.
But I think you are missing the fact that mothers who had grown their child in a Stoic fashion and in a “fear of Divine justice” don’t do crime in majority of cases. This is noticeable in a rural upbringing. Even in pre-Christian times, mothers always shape their children. So I think it is not poverty but how upbringing affects people to see a certain problem such as poverty. And I still maintain that mothers have a huge chunk on this upbringing process.
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My apologies Mr. Rouzbeh for the confusion, but this is not an abortion post, this is a post to discuss motherhood. So to make up for you let me rephrase my questions.
Given the definition that Mother are women who have children what are your opinions on these questions?
I understand that some would argue that we are not dependent on our natural inclination. Agreed. Now there are those who argue that celibacy is an alternative so is contraceptive sex. Now are these better alternatives to motherhood in an ethical, psychological and social sense?
With the current tolerance to abortion, what does it tell us about motherhood? Is motherhood something to be despised and not chosen? What are the effects of the no-baby zeitgeist on the community at large? Is it a good thing that we have more women who wants to have lesser children given the fact that in 2050 are below replacement level and the survival of Western and some Eastern societies gloomy?
Now we start at the home and most psychological problems are rooted from our childhood experience rather than our genetical predispositions. Are the increase of dysfunctional families, means an increase on our social ills? Is there a connection of mothers (and fathers) having less quality time with their children and having bad role models with children or adults performing poorly on society at large?
Should we start at the home on solving social problems? Is a good mother a good start?
I’d written a fairly long post addressing some of the arguments and counter arguments but it took a while, logged me out and poof. Anyways, I’ll try to cool my somewhat irritable nature and dismiss any impression I may have of you to answer the questions.
Here’s a rewrite:
How is it ridiculous? Contraceptive sex is a choice, now if you consider 3% not a risk I think that is where the difference of you and the opinion of the author. Of course the assumption also play a part on looking if the effects can be dealt with. For example if I think the fetus is not human of course the 3% is not risky as we have abortions to do that. But now we are again deviating from the topic.
2.0 is the ideal replacement value and it means a lot in long-term future. Sickness and natural calamities are not yet considered in the formula also the average cause and age of death is not yet considered.
And by the way people age and die. That’s the natural path. So I don’t see any reason for you to yell “OVERPOPULATION!!!”
By the way no one said that parenthood is easy. Well nothing in this world is really that easy. That’s a commercialism lie.
No this is not true. Lower fertility is a natural occurence in urbanization and change of lifestyle. A shift from agricultural to industrial society.
This is a Malthusian theory that was debunked in the late part of the last century. Unemployment is created when to many people want to do the same things at the same time. But it does not mean we cannot create other jobs when there is high unemployment. Now my suggestion is destroy monopolies of business, economic tyrannies of First world countries and empower business from the ground up.
Progress /= less Human capital.
Progress = Good use of Human capital
Hmmm… this is simply weak. Do kids really need that? Now your priorities are to satisfy the materialistic hunger of people and it does not make sense. My grandfather have 8 children, all of them have good and productive life all because of education and discipline.
Pampering is problematic.
Ok.
Before what?
Resources are not limited, they are just not properly distributed.
Where is that? Can you give me statistics, please look it up for me especially the student population, out of school youth and juvenile crimes.
That’s one manifestation.
Agreed.
Agreed.
This is a psychological post, I’m interested on the psychology of the individual and the society in realtionship with our sense of motherhood. Again this is not a social post.
OK this one made me laugh, No insult, but, that is such a man thing to say. Two words, Dead beat Dads.
It takes two to make a kid. So why lay all the guilt at the women’s feet? As a woman I sort of kind of feel a tug of resentment at that. 
I hate long quote posts. Here it goes
How is it ridiculous that condoms work 97% of the time? You agree there’s a 3% risk in contraceptive sex. Do I need to tell you the risk of STD’s and/or pregnancy in non-contraceptive sex? If you’re advocating celibacy, apart from the fact that my experience tells me it’s an unachievable ideal for society at large, even more so in modern society, condoms and contraception become irrelevant. This may come as a shock, but sex does happen outside of marriage. The church is preventing people from putting up a simple barrier between them and this disease.
The Catholic church has been around for…a long time. It has been teaching similar things all this time. It has taught that being fruitful is good, since the time that half the children would die due to various causes, to now when a child catches a cold and the mother rushes off to the clinic to make sure her child is okay. Maybe it’s just me, but “stagnant” comes to mind.
Now I know the ideal replacement value. The current fertility rate in the west is low, but it’s compensated by high fertility rates in immigrants, such as in Germany. I’ve already mentioned this. Natural calamities and sickness, what’s the average age of death in western countries? How many people die in ‘natural’ causes in comparison to the actual population? 20-25 MILLION Russians died in world war 2, plus wounded. Is Russia depopulated now? What natural disaster or sickness kills 20+million people in less than 5 years? Another 15-20 million Chinese died, plus wounded, is it not the most populated country in the world?
People age and die, and they leave multiple children behind for every 2 parents. You advocate no contraception. Without contraception, marriage at age 25 we’ll say, pregnancy is possible until 40 we’ll assume for safe measure, how many children can the couple have in that period? Should we count the number of times they’ll have the urge and how many times they actually will? While lying in the same bed? What about the children of those children? And the children of those children? And so on? What’s the infant mortality rate today? “OVERPOPULATION!!!”.
You said motherhood is a curse, and you said it after mentioning abortion, implying a connection between the two. Then asking that it may be a curse. It’s a burden, more so than any thing else. “It’s not easy” is a strange statement for parenthood.
Why is it a natural occurrence? Are people turned off by the big machines? Are people more educated as a result of industrialization? Does the industry not need educated people to run? People expect higher standards. Everything becomes specialized, even the love of the parents for the kids. It’s exclusive to 1,2, even 3.
How was it debunked? The fact that a select few in the West have enough jobs to live by? What percentage of the population of the world live by Western standards of “well being”? Even as unemployment rate in the world’s richest country runs at nearly 5%? Even as +10% of Americans live on welfare cheques? How many “other” jobs are there to make in the world? Or are you referring to a specific country? Worst of all, you’re saying all this while we’re facing a food and fuel crisis. What are crises caused by? Lack of balance between supply and demand.
I’ll use Iran as an example. Pre revolution (1979) population of about 30 million to 70 million today. Now what’s the unemployment rate? A median age of 25 and how many of them are actually working at proper jobs? Are there men with PhD’s driving taxis to feed their families? Of course not, that’s Malthusian nonsense. How do you destroy monopolies? What are the economic repercussions in antagonizing the biggest companies to contribute to your economy? Anti trust bills? How do you empower businesses? Is this a new idea?
Do kids really need anything? Love, bread, meat for protein, some vegetables to help them get it out and vitamins, and prayer of course. Materialism, ergh. Who cares about material things? I saw a picture of you where you seemed to be wearing clothes that seemed nice. Give them up, you only need a rag. Go to church, attain non-material things, go to heaven. Oh, and have a lot of kids too, those material kids. Let’s ration things to supply people only what they need. But wait if we don’t make what we don’t “need”, then what about all those “other” jobs you were talking about?
You tell me.
Now is the time to change that! Workers of the world, UNITE! All you have to lose is your chains!
My mistake, 18 years: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/1493203.stm
I’m saying that I’m not interested in idealism or utopianism. How can it not be a social post when social issues are your driving point:
“Are the increase of dysfunctional families, means an increase on our social ills? Is there a connection of mothers (and fathers) having less quality time with their children and having bad role models with children or adults performing poorly on society at large?
Should we start at the home on solving social problems? Is a good mother a good start?”
Good points, good points indeed! =D>
But the Church also teaches against pre-marital sex. So won’t the Church contradict herself if she advocates contraceptive use for pre- or extra-marital instances?
And the Church taught against death penalty, respect for the world, virtues like charity and peace, or the right and well-being of workers. By the way the Church also preserved all of Pagan literatures and philosophies in her monasteries and taught in her universities all philosophy and the sciences. Maybe yes, the Church is stagnant… really stagnant.
And the condom is new, therefore it makes the Church wrong. Really fancy logic we have here.
Yes those are a populated country, so are you saying a large population make them immortal?
But being dense does not mean overpopulation, sir. It just means there are many people crowding in one area of land.
In case you don’t know Russia is only dense in the Western part, before the Ural mountain region, China is only dense in the Eastern part.
Now is the Eastern part of Russia a total wasteland or can be developed? Is the whole Western part of China like the Gobi desert?
Also two years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin used his annual state-of-the-nation address Wednesday, May 11, to warn that Russia’s population of 143 million was falling by an average of 700,000 each year. He has pledged cash bonuses to Russian women who give birth to two or more children. His speech also focused on the problems of the Russian Armed Forces.
edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europ … index.html
Both countries can be developed, but urbanization attracts their rural population to crowd in one place, hence urban congestion, which also means urban poverty and in turn produce rural poverty. Now the cycle of poverty turns, do we really need to throw in a contraceptive plan in the process?
That is a natural process. And we are not ants who can lay a thousand eggs at a given time. Average pregnancy is 9:1, nine months to one baby. Now the real challenge is how we use this human capital, not to diminish it. To do the latter is a mark of a lazy government. We pay taxes to governments so they can plan the poverty problem ahead, duh.
Oh, I did not imply that motherhood is a curse, if you still maintain I made a connection well I’m sorry to burst your baloon but that is not the case. I think motherhood is something holy and should not be vulgarized. It is a grave responsibility.
princeton.edu/~eweyl/Working … uznets.pdf
Unless you have a Nobel laureate for economics or a better theory than Kuznet, I will be listening to your argument.
Haha. Now your blaming population for a certain problem like the food and fuel crisis and not seeing the fact that your SUV eat most of the gasoline, or the fact Americans have obesity as a national problem or the international banking cartel destroyed the agricultural capacity of most countries.
Wait, I forgot, you do think that the West deserve their SUV while third world countries die of starvation and all you can do is give us condoms so we can have sex and forget our hunger. Well it work Rouzbeh, it really does.
You’re not placing Iran in context.
Haha, now you’re failing to distinguish my point. I am a moderate and I advocate contentment, meaning if you have a cellphone that receives calls and messages you really don’t need to replace it for the latest model.
I don’t know what you are proving by painting me as non-material. Or making me look like calling for the other end of the lifestyle spectrum.
Of cource I am material, but at the same time spiritual. AND kids can grow healthy and happy, actually VERY healthy and happy without the luxuries like the latest car or Ipod. But then again you see these as something that is vital and necessary for well-being.
But actually kids get pressured to keep up with the fad. Is this the well-being you are talking abount?
If you are trying to paint that I am a rabid communist well you are gravely mistaken.
I am not calling for a revolution like a rabid Marxist, I am calling for moderation and EQUITY like any good Christian!
Unless you think that you deserve your good life while other people are suffering, well that is a vital point of contention.
Good for your country! I have good hopes for the UK.
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Since you still refuse to discuss motherhood as a personal and social psychology then let us go to this thread to discuss the economic and social impact in the shifting zeitgeist: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=163976
Any more reply that does not discuss psychology I will not entertain, I hope you understand. See you on that thread! 
Haha. Unless you consider artificial insemmination it takes more that two to make a kid! 
But yes, your resentment is understood as your society offers women a non-mother path of life. This I found as something good, not everybody is capable of being a mother.
Point well taken but now if both parents are not present in the growing process would it be beneficial to the individual or the society at large?
If you fail to see the social impact of uncontrolled population growth, or the connection between social problems and human behavior, then yes I have nothing else to say to you, here or elsewhere.
Duh, this is a psychological thread Rouz so do maintain on the theme.
Now I see population have a strong impact on society, though I must say that controlling it is stupid, but I think this growth is beneficial, so do move on you are just commiting a Straw man.
Umm, unless they can make artificial sperm it still takes two. Society encourages the male to not be responsible. And um, what gender is predominate in controlling society trends laws and social ethics? Hmmmmm?
Why should a male be responsible when big brother Gov’t steps in to care for his kids by paying the mother welfare , foodstamps etc. Why should he bother educating, loving and caring for his kids when his kids spend 8 hours a day under the tutelage of a staff of people at school. A man just has to have financial responsibility at the most for his kids. The female is expected to do the rest. So society lays the blame at the female feet while the man is off playing the field… Uh huh. 
Oh and a parent does not have to be blood to be a child’s parent. A parent is good for a kid Two parents are better, and an entire loving family is best. Society is better than nothing, but, at best, a child that has no loving mentor or parental figure will quite possibly grow up to be a society drone. If society only cares for our children, and in a pragmatic healthy way, we would stagnate. We need unknowns in our social bloodstream. With out the unknowns we would have no innovational people. So we take the good with the bad and hope for the best. I would rather have a messed up world then a world filled with drones and colorless obedient people. Remember your history, it always gets worse before it gets better, and unless mankind kills its self off to the stone age, we are in a better technological position and population position now then we ever have been to rebound from the worst.
Well, I agree with you that some pain experienced by humanity had developed the brightest, noblest and/or enlightened of minds.
Though I must say I have to disagree with your drone theory. That thing can only work if they are living in a cult-like society but in a world where choices are offered (i.e. democracy) I think a loving family is indeed a good anchor. No?
A gov’t raising all the children? Ummmmm, My mind just fills with all the horrible possibles of psychology. I guess I read too much. Would you really want to have a minority raising all the kids?
After reading Orwell, uhmmm no, that is a very scary question Kris, haha. I would let wolves take care of children (they might found a new city like Ancient Rome ) than a governement no matter how altruistic.