Bad for Kids

Outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins, a biologist and proponent of evolutionary theory, not so long ago embarked on a new venture; a series of videos where he openly attacked religion. Called The Root of All Evil, Dawkins claims in these films that religion is inherently evil because it is not rational and, further, claims religion is responsible for many, if not most, ills of society. He calls teaching children religion a form of child abuse and obviously wants to ban it in ‘the best interests of children’. Let us look beyond the fact that Dawkins admits he knows virtually nothing of theology. Let us ignore the fact that the BBC would blanche at the mere idea of allowing a fiction story portray Catholics or Baptists as being correct and condemning those with differing beliefs as being in a ‘permanent state of infancy’, but have no problem producing and airing an atheist’s blatant attack on all religious believers, everywhere. Let us even overlook how Dawkins’, a self-proclaimed rationalist with advanced degrees in biology and zoology, can be so concerned with overpopulation in face of the evidence that it is not, and never has been, a true concern (see the rest of this blog).

Instead of looking at his hypocrisy (he mocks people whom criticize biology without understanding it, but refuses to study the theology he, in turn, criticizes), his prejudice (his assumption that believers are inherently inferior is quite obvious, and often admitted), or his use of mass media to denigrate a majority of the world. No, let us instead focus on… children. Dawkins claims that it is ‘bad’ to raise children in a religious atmosphere. Let’s do what he would like and – look at the scientific evidence.

There have been a lot of studies into religious people vs. non-religious people. Since it can be really hard to figure out who really has faith and who doesn’t, statisticians (and other researchers) usually use the shorthand of measuring how often a person or family attends church, synagogue, or temple and calling people who go at least once a week ‘religious’. Sure, this may not be perfect, but statistically it seems accurate. What do these studies show? Are religious people, as Dawkins claims, infantilized by their beliefs?

Overwhelmingly, being religious is good for you. Regular church attendance leads to lower blood pressure, less anxiety and depression, a stronger immune system, and are less likely to commit suicide, all contributing to religious people having a mortality rate about 25% lower than people who do not attend worship regularly with the end result that religious people outlive the non-religious by, on average, seven years. Not only do religious people live longer, they are healthier and happier, leading to a higher quality of life! Indeed, the correlation of church attendance and happiness is pretty strong, and diverse. People who regularly attend church are more likely to have strong, lasting marriages where both members are happy.

Scientific research seems to point toward a result that surprises religious people not at all; they are healthier, happier, and live longer than non-religious people. Heck, religious people make more money and the sex is better, too! It should be obvious, then, that a rational person, looking only at the scientific literature, should advocate for more religion in peoples’ lives. Not only is it good for them as individuals and families, it is good for society as a whole – after all, healthier, happier, wealthier people need less of the services governments provide these days.

But I was speaking pretty specifically about kids, wasn’t I? And while we hope each and every child grows up to be an adult (and also, we hope, benefit from the advantages of being religious), they are kids first. Does religion affect kids, too? Yes, it does.

Research shows that even low levels of religious life make adolescents less likely to use alcohol, drugs, tobacco, engage in criminal activity, become suspended from school, run away from home, engage in sexual activity, or require emotional counseling. Religious children (again, even at low levels of church attendance) are less likely to drive drunk or engage in casual vandalism. Church attendance improves school attendance, work activity, and homework completion. It even improves their chances of escaping childhood poverty. As religious faith and participation increases, the positive effect on children also increases. At the other end, just having a mother that attends church regularly also improves the odds of adolescents not engaging in self-destructive behavior. Religious children grow up to have more education.

To sum up; scientific research shows that religious people are healthier, happier, wealthier, and live longer. Religious children are happier, less prone to depression, more likely to get an education and escape poverty, and better at avoiding self-destructive behavior. These things are all positives for children. For Dawkins to oppose religion as ‘child abuse’ is to place his prejudices above the actual welfare of children.

Those Who Cannot Look in the Mirror

If you haven’t noticed, I tend to write about population and demographics from time to time. I am not alone, of course; there are a number of Conservative and Moderate people discussing birth rates and such out there. There is also a strain of commentary on Liberal blogs - especially Feminist blogs, mainly mocking Conservatives that want kids.

I have noted again and again that these Feminists seem to think that Conservatives are racists. I have covered many of the ways that the facts of racial violence show that these stereotypes are wrong, but this lumping of “Conservatives are racist” and “wanting large families is about racial supremacy” stuff is getting so ludicrous that I figured I’d take a look.

First, we find that our erstwhile source of all things Feminist - as long as they are radical things - Amanda at Pandagon points out that not only are people who want large families racist… they are genocidal (actually, see ascribes a genocidal motive to all those who oppose abortion, but we‘ll help her out by focusing on just proponents of large families). Reading the comments on Amanda’s post will reveal an echo-chamber of people more than willing to proclaim that all who want large families are racist, genocidal, and (by strong implication) fascist. They also refer to a commenter who posted that he was interested in ‘preserving his own culture’ as a ‘racist misogynist’ whom the moderator called on the others to ignore. Now, far be it from me to claim that Liberals/Feminists must act a certain way, but - isn’t this commenter right to value his own culture?

I visited a number of quiver full sites online. You can see many of them for yourself and a search can find you more. I searched pretty carefully and I found that these sites have quite a bit in common; they tend to advocate large families (no surprise), they love kids (no surprise), and they don’t talk about race. At all. The only reference I found at all related to race was one mention of a speech by Teddy Roosevelt when Teddy, not the author, spoke of declining fertility in White women in the early 1900’s. That’s it. I do admit, if you google ‘+quiver full +supremacy’ and look at the religious/quiver full sites that result, there is a discussion of supremacy. But it is the Supremacy of Christ, not a race.

Some of the “Progressive” sites you find, though, do speak of race. An article in The Nation(not the most Right-leaning of papers, of course) speaks of the quiver full movement and, as it does so, mentions race twice; first by claiming that “race suicide” is a subtext to the quiver full movement (with no citation, naturally); and, once again, a reference to a quote by Teddy Roosevelt about White birth rates over a century ago. From this article you get the Pandagon bit, mentioned above, and a few related posts from the Left side of the blogs, all claiming having many children for religious reasons is racist, almost all pointing to the Nation article or to Amanda’s post. Some even claim being pro-large families at all is evil. There is also a Newsweek article on the quiver full movement, but it makes no leaps as far as racial motivations.

The quiver full movement almost completely dismisses the Leftist claims that they are racist, only pausing occasionally to point out that Christianity has a lot of non-White members and that the quiver full movement calls on all Christians to have children as a blessing of God.

While we have some fairly prominent Feminist bloggers making the charge that wanting a large family is racist, even genocidal, the movement they point to this time is pretty obviously race-blind. Pandagon and the other Feminist blogs like to paint the Catholic Church as racist, but of course, the Church is very multi-ethnic and always has been. So where is this hateful accusation coming from? Well, I have a theory.

It is, in short, projection. The Left, always quick to dodge reality when it suits them, is projecting their own biases onto their ideological opponents. I’ve already gone into detail about how people in the North and West deride Southerners as racist bigots when, in fact, the North and West have much higher rates of race-motivated crime. I have also discussed how Liberals denounce Conservatives as racist and discriminatory despite the fact that studies show Conservatives to be race-blind while Liberals favor Whites over minorities. In both cases, Liberals accuse others of the actions that Liberals, themselves, exhibit. They cling to these notions of how ‘the other’ acts despite the evidence to the contrary. So why is Amanda of Pandagon and her comrades so eager to point to the Right and claim that people who refuse to use contraception are genocidal? That’s a rather simple one, really.

Its because the origins of modern contraception use, especially the founding of Planned Parenthood and the development of the birth control pill, were covertly and overtly racist and genocidal, with a strong underpinning of elitism thrown in. The founder of Planned Parenthood and primary source of funds for the research that culminated in the birth control pill was Margaret Sanger. Ms. Sanger’s support of eugenics is widely known, as are the many statements she made disparaging the mentally ill, the retarded, and the ‘unfit’, Of course, she also said the same things about Blacks and the poor, too. While some try to distance Ms. Sanger from the horrors of Nazi Germany, they have great trouble doing so since her support of Fascists was fairly evident. Her defenders are in the rather uncomfortable position of admitting that she worked closely with, supported, and was supported by racists and fascists, she made a lot of comments that might seem racist or fascist, but you can’t pin her down to a definitively racist or fascist quote. That’s pretty shaky. She hoped that incentives would work to reduce the population of ‘undesirables’, but advocated coercion and force if incentives failed. Showing that she certainly believed that she and other experts knew what was best for everyone and was willing to use force to impose it.

“OK,” you say, “Sanger was a eugenicists and, possibly, a racist and, maybe, a support of fascism. So what? That was years ago!”

Really? Who is the primary focus of Planned Parenthood today? The same groups Sanger targeted - minorities and the poor. Analysts noted in the 1980’s that Planned Parenthood focused its efforts on poor urban minority areas, resulting in 33% of abortions being performed on minority women who made up less than 20% of the total population. Contemporary advocates of contraception and abortion continue to see these two things as means of eliminating the poor, the ignorant and the unhealthy - and these same advocates are intimately involved in groups that advocate policies of government-promoted and funded contraception and abortion. A list of proponents of eugenics reveals a broad group, to be sure, but a group with a bias toward the Left with some rather prominent names as large boosters of contraception and family planning

The end result is that we see that the birth of the ‘family planning’ movement was in the midst of Liberal eugenicists. Planned Parenthood and related groups flourished under the umbrella of eugenics and ‘racial improvement’. Abortion was as much a part of the eugenicists’ arsenal as forced sterilization (and, often, more prominent). To this day groups that advocate ‘family planning’ specifically target the poor and minorities, resulting in a much higher incidence of abortions in those same groups. Call it what you will, but the end result of contemporary family planning is virtually identical to the planned results of the eugenics movements of the pre-WWII era.

Access to abortion and contraception combined with the attitude that children are a financial burden has resulted in plummeting birthrates in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and North Africa with indicators that the rest of Africa will rapidly join in. In a number of countries abortion is being used to eliminate women before they are even born. All these facts reveal why Feminists must denigrate women who want large families. For if they were to admit the possibility of merit in large families, they must examine the consequences of their own attitudes and actions. Such an examination would reveal that, regardless of their stated motives, the end results of Feminists’ advocacy for ‘family planning’ are indistinguishable from the hopes and dreams of the ‘racial hygienists’ of the late 1800’s.

The Lowest of the Low

I have been talking about demographics for a long time, and see that it seems to be a topic of growing interest in the world. Why? Since at least 1970 all projections from the UN on future population growth have been too high, including projections of peak population. When I first wrote about demographics in 2004 the average global TFR was 2.78, in 2005 it was about 2.65, now it is no higher than 2.59. If the current rate of descent slows to half of what we have seen over the last 3 years (which, I might add, is unlikely – it will probably stay the same or even increase) then global TFR will hit 2.3 in 2010. This is an important number because the replacement birthrate for the developing world is 2.4, sort of a symbolic number. And, of course, at that rate the world’s average TFR will hit 2.0 – sub-replacement for everyone – by 2016.

I see comments online everywhere from Amazon book reviews to other blogs to my email account arguing “So what? With increases in food productions, efficiency, and automation if the population drops the world will be better off! Less pollution, everyone left will be well-off. Sounds great!” And I must admit, in the long run this might be the case. But that will be a very long-run scenario. In the meantime, there will be a severe shortage of everything from highly-skilled workers (the engineers and programmers needed to invent, design, create, deploy, and maintain all that automation the rosy scenario counts on) to unskilled labor (who keep things going until the automation is in place and, I hate to point out, have been, are, and always will be needed). A particular crisis will occur in the earliest years. This is because of ‘population momentum’ – the much larger previous generations that decided to have very few kids are getting old, now. They need doctors, nurses, pharmacists, gardeners, aides, etc. just to care for them. Just as importantly, in most developed nations they expect to enjoy pensions and social security benefits. Yet these programs are paid for by taxes on people working right now. Since the current generation is smaller than the retiree’s generation, they have to pay for their own livelihood and the benefits of retirees. This will become a serious issue in Japan and Europe in about, oh, now. Japan has had problems finding enough workers since the late 1980’s due to population decline, and the problem of not enough people for existing jobs is spreading. The EU and Japan are already in serious discussions about what they can do to reduce the social and economic impact of rapid population decline – and it is almost certainly too late. The only solutions they can see are to increase retirement age, increase public spending on geriatric research (who is going to pay the taxes for that?), use more elderly workers, and use more immigrants.

Which brings us to immigration. Not only various on-line commenters look to immigration as the magic bullet, but so do most think-tanks and UN groups. Unfortunately, the developing world doesn’t look like a magic bullet for the problem of decreasing population. Beyond the issues of political instability which I have covered before, there may not be enough immigrants! The largest population with sub-replacement fertility is not in Europe, it is in Asia, with a TFR of about 1.7 for China and 1.3 for South Korea, with the rest of the Asian Tigers also below replacement, giving East Asia an overall TFR of 1.5. China is aware of the potential impact of declining population and they recently discussed a plan to shift their economy from manufacturing to a service-based economy. Even India, which still has above-replacement fertility, has a rapidly-dropping TFR (from 5.4 in 1975 to 2.7 now to an estimated 2.1 overall by 2011, and continuing to drop after that).

In short, Asia will have a greater total need for manpower than Europe. Japan and Europe cannot look to Asia to solve their looming problem. Australia and Oceania have an aggregate TFR of 2.1, just barely replacement – and dropping. The TFR of South America as a whole is 2.4, which is just barely above replacement level for the developing world and, you guessed it – its dropping. So South America is out, too.

The only place in the world with large numbers of nations with above-replacement fertility is sub-Saharan Africa. Ignoring concerns about education and skills, forgetting any questions of cultural assimilation, politics, or racial strife, there still remains the same bugbear – the TFRs of sub-Saharan Africa are dropping, and dropping faster than anyone believed possible just 5 years ago. While the UN estimated that Kenya’s TFR was 6.2 in 1990, more accurate research shows that it was actually “only” 5.4. Much more of a shock to demographers, however, was the amazing TFR drop from about 5.2 in 1995 to less than 3.7 today; in other words, the nation once seen as ‘a population nightmare’ has experienced a drop in TFR of 60% in 15 years. This is an unforeseen drop in population growth that is spread throughout the region (although not quite so dramatic as Kenya in most cases). Overall, sub-Saharan Africa’s TFR has been dropping by 20% per decade and, researchers predict, will continue to do so for at least 20 more years.

The truly stunning thing about the 60% drop in fertility in Kenya, or the 60% drop in TFR in Tunisia, is that these two nations are poor. The majority of women in them are poor, and many are illiterate. These were seen as barriers to reducing TFRs; the campaigns against overpopulation that began in the 1960’s focused on education and wealth as the tools that ‘allowed’ women to have fewer children. The last 25 years, however, have shown that all of our theories on what keeps TFR high (high mortality rates, low life expectancy, illiteracy, poverty) are wrong, or at least no longer valid.

Because of the declines in births much of the attempts to generate new demographic theories are focused on what is called “Lowest-low Fertility”, which means ‘any TFR of 1.3 or lower’. Currently there are no less than 16 nations with lowest-low fertility (including Russia, Spain, Italy, Poland, South Korea, and Ukraine) and at least another dozen between 1.4 and 1.31 with TFR’s trending down (including Japan, Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, Greece, and Hungary). Since there are so many industrialized nations already in this range and so many more nations set to enter it – with the trend repeating itself throughout the world – researchers are focusing on understanding it. This is seen in urgent terms for very practical reasons; nations want the trends to stop. A nation with a TFR of 1.3 faces the prospect that each new generation will be only half the size of the one before, and its population as a whole will be halved every 45 years. A nation with a TFR of 1.0 will face a 50% reduction in population every 30 years.

Lowest-low fertility was seen as an aberration, the result of major wars, famines, and plagues, until about 1993 when lowest-low fertility became the norm in some European nations. Since then, it has spread and continues to do so. Unfortunately, so far all the theories boil down to “women are waiting longer to have kids, it is not a big deal”. Unfortunately, this does not explain how lowest-low fertility is not just persisting, but going lower and spreading. If it truly were a matter of tempo only, then at some point the TFRs would go back up and stay up. Instead, any positive gains are not just temporary, but offset by larger losses soon after. Another theory is that the absence of day care in causing women to delay having children. This ludicrous claim may have much to do with the concerns of Social Democrats in Germany, but little to do with the TFR of 0.8 seen in Hong Kong – with virtually no day care, or the rapid decline of birthrates in nations with universal day care; the existence of either would cast a shadow over the theory, the existence of both dooms it. More importantly, research in the last 5 years shows that delaying having a first child doesn’t ‘push back’ TFR to another year – it reduces it. Put simply, the very logical idea that waiting longer to have any children means that you will have fewer children has been proven true in the field.

The best that some researchers hope for is; if there is massive social spending on programs like high-quality day care, if parents are given generous amounts of (paid) paternity and maternity leave, if there are tax breaks and cash incentives provided to parents, and if single mothers are paid full-time wages for part-time work, TFRs may recover to be as high as those in Sweden - a blistering TFR of 1.66. In short, if we adhere to the existing demographic concepts and Liberal social paradigms we can drag out the halving of population from 45 years to 55 years, and only at the cost of our economies.

So, to sum up; in a world where human population has been increasing since before the invention of written language, a decreasing population will almost certainly be a fact within our own lifetimes. The nations that are on the ‘leading edge’ of population reduction cannot depend upon immigration to soften the hammer-blows of decreased numbers of workers and increased numbers of elderly. Average Muslim birthrates are starting to slowly match secular birth rates. There seems to be no way to purposefully increase TFRs through governmental action. There is no theory to explain what is happening nor to predict what will happen next.

Clarifications

I seem to have failed in my attempt to be clear in my last post, so please let me clarify.

I will now try to be painfully obvious; my post was primarily a critique of the political conclusions drawn by Lakoff . I do have reservations about framing as it is described by Lakoff, and some of these reservations were addressed in my post. My primary goal, though, was to show that the Strict Father/Nurturant Parent paradigm espoused by Lakoff (and taken up by many Liberals) is no more than a litany of stereotypes and misconceptions propped up as scientific theory, resulting on more confusions and misunderstanding, not less.
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For a few more examples of the issues I have with the Strict Father/Nurturant Parent paradigm, a quick search around the internet will find that it is used to claim that Conservatives are oppressors of women, incapable of rational thought, racists, want to own slaves, believe that poverty is caused by moral failure while success is a barometer of moral strength, etc. Yet the Nurturant Parent model paints Liberals as empathetic, fair, honest, open, and trustworthy. In short, the Strict/Nurturant dichotomy paints Conservatives as evil and Liberals as good – inherently.

Even the largely cursory critique I made of this in my last post shows that Lakoff’s Strict Father/Nurturant Parent model is totally inadequate; in addition to completely ignoring the depth and complexity of thought and ideology on the Right, it does the same for the Left. Even many progressives are disappointed at the errors this now-popular model seems to introduce. I hesitate to draw the comparison, but I will admit that I find the parallels between the progressive rhetoric justified by Lakoff’s model and the progressive rhetoric justified by eugenics chilling.

I believe this stereotypical framework was developed primarily because of the Liberal conceit common in some progressive circles that if everyone has all the facts, they must be a Liberal. This unbelievably egotistical idea is more common than you might think, and Lakoff’s analogy is used widely by many in this crowd to explain why people who obviously do have access to the facts dare to disagree with them.

There are some very interesting locations out there with fascinating discussions of ‘framing’ in general and especially with references to Lakoff’s particular work. I recommend this as a decent place to start, and the author has a great deal of related writing. The author of this blog (BTW, it is Chris of Mixing Memory) has criticized me for my last post. Since he seems to agree with me that Lakoff does a lousy job of explaining framing and that the Strict/Nurturant model is inadequate, I believe that he is upset because I called Lakoff ‘postmodern’; Bora at Science and Politics has voiced the same complaint.

While a consistent definition of ‘Postmodern’ is a bit hard to nail down, when speaking of philosophy I mean it as ‘the belief or position that reality is not objective, but is rather a subjective human construct, typically an outgrowth of language and social systems’. So, as the term ‘postmodern’ is generally applied in philosophy, and as I apply it, Lakoff and his Embodied Mind Theory is indeed postmodern. I do not seem to be alone in this. You are free to disagree, of course.

Lastly, I suggest that anyone interested in the numbers of scientists that are interested in Lonergan’s General Empirical Method and its use by and among scientists contact the closest Lonergan Institute or their closest Jesuit university; either will gladly introduce you to scientists willing to talk to you or direct you to academic papers and other resources.