Thursday, May 06, 2004
The cost of having children
To: Mary Kenny, www.mary-kenny.com
Thank you for your recent piece "Children, not trophies" in the Guardian, in which you note that the high cost of children (now over £150,000) may be putting off some people (22% of parents say they wouldn't have had children if they had known the cost), but that these people probably had the wrong reasons for having children in the first place.
Could you please give me the source of the 22% figure?
By the way, although I share your scepticism toward Dawkins' selfish gene theory, it is neverthess true that, despite what you say, the altruism parents feel toward their adopted children can be explained by that theory.
PS not sent to Mary: There is an entire site devoted to adults who choose not to have children: www.childfree.net
Mary Kenny's Reply, and my reply to her
Dear Mary,
Thanks for your quick reply
Thanks for that.
There are two ironies here.
First, the position you espouse is exactly Dawkins' position. He introduced the concept of a meme, or replicating idea, in order to state and explain the view you state. As Daniel Dennett, arch-exponent for the Dawkins position, put it in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995): "What makes us special is that we, alone among species, can rise above the imperative of our genes -- thanks to the lifting crane of our memes."
The second irony is that one does not even need to appeal to memes to explain parents' altruism toward their adopted children. Parents might just be built to love the children in their care, much like the mother bird who feeds the usurping cuckoo as well as her offspring. Since most of the time this results in one's own genes being favoured, it would be a policy that would be selected for, even if in some cases it resulted in the "wrong" genes being nurtured. The fact that our altruism persists in the face of our knowledge that the child is not our own attests to the *strength* of this biological imperative to care for the children dependent on us, rather than requiring some ability to rise above the biological.
From Södra Trängallén, Skövde
To: Mary Kenny, www.mary-kenny.com
Thank you for your recent piece "Children, not trophies" in the Guardian, in which you note that the high cost of children (now over £150,000) may be putting off some people (22% of parents say they wouldn't have had children if they had known the cost), but that these people probably had the wrong reasons for having children in the first place.
Could you please give me the source of the 22% figure?
By the way, although I share your scepticism toward Dawkins' selfish gene theory, it is neverthess true that, despite what you say, the altruism parents feel toward their adopted children can be explained by that theory.
PS not sent to Mary: There is an entire site devoted to adults who choose not to have children: www.childfree.net
Mary Kenny's Reply, and my reply to her
Dear Mary,
Thanks for your quick reply
Thanks Dr Chrisley. The 22 per cent figure came in a survey in the Daily
Mail on Tuesday 4 May.
Thanks for that.
I am not entirely sceptical about the selfish gene, but I like to think that
people can rise above mere biology. (There was a very interesting case last
week in Bournemouth of a boy actually saving his cousin from drowning, which
made me think of Huxley's theorem.) Best wishes, Mary K
There are two ironies here.
First, the position you espouse is exactly Dawkins' position. He introduced the concept of a meme, or replicating idea, in order to state and explain the view you state. As Daniel Dennett, arch-exponent for the Dawkins position, put it in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995): "What makes us special is that we, alone among species, can rise above the imperative of our genes -- thanks to the lifting crane of our memes."
The second irony is that one does not even need to appeal to memes to explain parents' altruism toward their adopted children. Parents might just be built to love the children in their care, much like the mother bird who feeds the usurping cuckoo as well as her offspring. Since most of the time this results in one's own genes being favoured, it would be a policy that would be selected for, even if in some cases it resulted in the "wrong" genes being nurtured. The fact that our altruism persists in the face of our knowledge that the child is not our own attests to the *strength* of this biological imperative to care for the children dependent on us, rather than requiring some ability to rise above the biological.
From Södra Trängallén, Skövde
