Quote:
Originally posted by castille,
But isn't the point of poor people having kids to have a better chance of their kids earning good money, and caring for their parents?
Or do kids in America abandon their parents? |
Castille I know you are from China (I am also from a country that is quite traditional in that respect), so I understand where you are coming from.
But in the US or any other modern, globalized society (everwhere it's getting like this), this logic not only that it doesn't work anymore and it is contradicted by science, but it is starting to look increasingly selfish, even immoral for parents who use it to justify breeding.
Even when finances are not an issue, it is quite distrubing to say that you want to have children in order to make them into old-age insurance policies for yourself.
So much more if you are poor. Yes, the poor can only hope that their children will make more money than they have (and many do) - but this doesn't say anything. Most poor people's children end up poor themselves.
At best, they manage to move into the middle class, perhaps with the help of a job that often takes them so far away from their aging parents that there's really no chance that they will be right next to their parents to take care of them.
And then, there are those extremely rare exceptions to the rule where a kid coming from a poor family strikes it big and becomes rich. But relying on this to happen to your kid does not beat playing the lottery to get to the same place.
Besides, do not forget that if you are poor, the only way your kid can move into a better socio-economic place than you have is by struggling and busting their asses - and usually, that leaves little time, energy or disponibility to also care for an aging (and often highly cranky) parent.
Most struggling children still do it (out of morality and traditional respect for parents) - but that doesn't change the fact that their parents have been cruel to their kids.
Not only you had nothing to start them with, but you also expect and demand that children be grateful to you for the hard life you threw them in and be your insurance policy in old age.
Not a very good logic to me.
Too much time has been spent bashing "ungrateful adult children" and too little time questioning how much time the parents spent planning the future of that "ungrateful child".
And do not forget that it is the parent who created the child, not the child who created the parent.