Posted on 11/19/2005 4:45:35 PM PST by ellery
bttt
Thanks. No wonder their birth rate is holding steady.
God almighty---40% !
Even in the four legged animal section of mammilia, there are animals who reject their offspring and some who actually kill them. Birds too.
Just because someone has the ability to do something, doesn't mean that they'll be any good at at.
I personally think that most people under thiry shouldn't be having kids. I can hardly keep my own life in order; I couldn't imagine what would happen if a helpless child was added to the mix.
As for having eleven children, since we don't live in Little House on the Prarie times, I don't see why anyone would want to have eleven children.
in a way, I like the idea of having the older generations interested in the younger generations......how many elders do we all know that only care about themselves?.....
I grew up in a large extended family and we had only three ourselves....and not very many cousins in the area where we chose to live.....
I feel bad for my kids that they didn't have what I had as a child......knowing all their aunts and uncles and their cousins ..........
Children and the reasonably large family (3 or 4) are definitely worth it. Don't spend too much time worrying about it and go for it. It's an adventure and a journey and the joy from your children will be priceless. My wife and I can attest to that.
And above all, stop listening to the doom and gloom liberals who manage money and say that it is too expensive to raise children. Our parents just had kids and things worked out. Look at it this way. If no one else is having children, but you are, then your kids will be in demand as future workers and colleges will be throwing scholarships at them.
My point here is that past generations raised large families and the children all came out fine. You can too. It's not as hard as people think.
And above all, do not listen to modern psychobabble on how to raise them. If you want some encouragement, read some of John Rosemond's books on how to raise children just like Grandma did.
Good luck.
Spot on assessment. I spent a semester in Rome while I was in college. I had a nice time but was very disturbed to see what modern Italian culture has turned into. The young people were especially frightning. I thought American 20-somethings had problems with nihilism, and then I saw our Italian peers . . . yikes! If these young people are the future of Italy, then it will not survive - it will become like France, and frankly I'm surprised it's not already as bad as France.
I'm not surprised at all that the birthrate is so low there - family is the last thing on the minds of so many of these young people. To top it off the young Italian men tend to be very effeminate. If I were an Italian woman, I would have a very difficult time mustering up an ounce of attraction towards some of these guys. What red-blooded woman gets turned on by a young man wearing red, silky, tight "booty-pants" and a silky pastel shirt that is both low cut (like a woman's) and so tight that you can see his nipples? No grazie! I have heard other Europeans joke that the only difference between a gay Italian man and a straight Italian man is four drinks. After seeing what I saw in Rome, I'm not inclined to disagree.
Meanwhile the younger women in Rome tend to be alarmingly thin. Not the healthy thinness that one gets from not eating fast food and sitting on her butt all day, but more like anorexic thin. One of my professors, an Italian lady in her late 30s said that eating disorders are extremely common among young Italian women. Many girls consume nothing but espresso and cigarettes, and some resort to drugs to keep their rail-thin figures. It is sadly not uncommon to see girls in Rome with knees thicker than their thighs. If these girls someday wanted to have children, they might find they can't due to the abuse they put their bodies through. This isn't going to help the birth rate in Italy much either.
For the sake of Italy's future I hope that these trends are more of a Roman thing. Maybe it's better in the south and in the countryside. Italian-Americans certainly aren't like this either. Nonetheless, it was very disturbing to see.
BIG difference. Young Amish men understand that they are to work while on the family farm. When they marry, the wife moves into his family home, and she works alongside her mother-in-law to take care of the home and keep the family fed.
The Italian men, on the other hand, are coddled by their Mamas, there are no expectations that he should go out and do for himself. He's happy as a clam to go out dating and running around with his friends, and have his Mama prepare his meals and keep his clothes clean.
No comparison
I generally don't see the decline of the church in any country as a good thing. You make a point in that the church was practically the only functional entity in Ireland for a long time and practically ran the place. It's a shame that the youth are abandoning the one thing that gave any support to the Irish people for so long.
Frankly, giving up the faith of the fathers for what? Trendiness?
Bleh. If Ireland goes the way the rest of Europe has and abandons its past, it's going to go the exact same direction Europe is going: towards oblivion.
The disintegration of the family is a social AND an economic issue, whether people want to bury their heads in the sand or not. And the church plays a very integral role in holding that family together. The two live and die together.
That's rather a broad statement you made.
Italy is not quite a sociological uniformity and there is very much difference between say a Sicilian, and a Milanese. Italy is more like a collection of cultures which speak different dialects and in some cases, e.g. Sicliy and Sardina, different languages. I'd hardly call Vito Genovese et al "Momma's Boys" despite their other negatives.
The problems in Italy with marriage, and birth rate are endemic to all of modern Europe and even mirrored to a degree here in America among affluent white Caucasians.
Where ethnic white familes in America like the Scotch-Irish, Catholic Irish, Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Slovak Americans, etc. once produced large numbers of offspring, abortion, affluence and selfishiness has resulted in population decline. This has created an environment conducive to increased illegal immigration from Mexico and other third world countries.
The same thing, I presume has led to the need for Islamic workers in western Europe.
The difference is the underlying culture. America, with the execption of a few wealthy East Coast families, dumped the 'Continental' attitudes along with George III. Young men in American can't WAIT to leave home and be out on their own. They either get minimum wage jobs, or they go off to college and get schooled for their careers. You don't see too very many of them still hanging around Mama's place in their 30's.
You also can't really compare Italian-American young men to their European-Italian counterparts. They've grown up with different expectations, for the most part. You'll still see some coddled by their Mamas as you would see in all ethnic persuasions, some guys are just Mama's boys. But for the most part, Americans just have different attitudes.
Well exponential population growth cannot continue forever. At some point countries have to stabilize their populations. Why not now?
"The same is going on all over Europe from Russia to Spain, The only exception: Ireland"
When is the last time you've been to Ireland?? It is happening in Ireland too..just at a little slower rate.
BTW: How do you know Jesus was Irish?
He was 32 and still living with his mother.
And we all know that achieving the infantile fantasy of effortlessly "being happy" is the highest aspiration of a healthy culture don't we. Ptooey. Hack. Puke.
That's right. There is a big difference between Amish and Italians. My point was that living with your parents is not the cause of low birth rates. If Italians passed a law that prohibited men from living with their parents, it would have no effect on the birth rate.
I think low birth rates are caused by excess culture. When culture is suppressed, as it is with religious fundamentalists, people have little to do but raise children. Folks with modern, active lifestyles can't be bothered.
In America, our population is stable partly because of immigration but also because we have a lot of religious groups to make up for the lack of fertility among the more cosmopolitan of us.
A woman's fertility is directly related to her body weight. Below a certain weight, a woman is sterile.
The rate of population growth is declining without a conscious effort to stop it. The last estimates I saw predicted a stable world population in a few decades.
There is however a serious problem with low fertility in Western Civilization and we need to have a younger population be able to defend ourselves against external threats. And if we resort to importing a third world population, we will be importing third world problems.
Probably the worst possible way to deal with low fertility is to import a fast-breeding population of people who are antithetical to Western Society.
In America, instead of importing labor from Mexico, we should be doing everything we can to nurture the fundamentalist Christians among us. People like Quakers, Hutterites and Amish who have a lot of children could provide a form of "internal immigration" that would eliminate the need for immigration of groups who cause a lot of social disruption.
Where ethnic white familes in America like the Scotch-Irish, Catholic Irish, Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Slovak Americans, etc. once produced large numbers of offspring, abortion, affluence and selfishiness has resulted in population decline
Yeah our unfair divorce and child custody laws have nothing to do with decline of marriage and birth..../sarcasm
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