I chose cluster 3 of chapter 10 to write about.
Who decides what a woman can do with her body with regards to
reproductivity? As with the case of China, you get one child and that's it. Well, now you can pay to have another one. Who says the government had the right to make that decision? Was there a vote on it and ALL women agreed to it?
In America we have the
inherent right to decide if, when and how many children we can have. I think this is very important. However, I do think that women who have children just to collect or extend their welfare benefits should not be allowed to continue to have children. I think that a person should have as many children as they can reasonably support.
Parents have more money and guilt, now that both parents work outside of the home, to direct towards their children. Here we can create the perfect child. I can go to the infertility clinic and chose the profile of the sperm and/or egg
donor I like the best, go through the procedures and hopefully have the child of my
engineering. I think parents feel guilty that they don't spend much time with their children so they buy them off with activities, beautiful clothes and electronics...etc. This is supposed to make up for good old fashioned being with family. In fact, I believe the text book states that we have turned our children into little adults.
In the past children weren't given rights to much in the household. They were told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. There were expectations that they were going to contribute to the family household financially or with labor. If they didn't they got beat. Today children feel entitled to make demands and don't feel like they have to contribute to the family.
Today we can create the perfect child. We can literally physically create the child of our dreams,. We can mold them however we want, we give them rights that perhaps they don't deserve, nor do they know what to do with. We have higher expectations now, we direct our children to do "great" things that we didn't do, or to become just like us if we are successful and happy with our lives.
It is not acceptable for the government to have rights over a
woman's body, to tell her what she can do with it and when. Nor is it responsible of the government to give her money to take care of all of these children she insists on having.
Fathers have become much more involved in the rearing of children than they had been in the past. In fact, many fathers are the primary care giver for the children. I encourage that. Men can contribute somethings to the
children's lives that a mother can't. The book says "fathers, in effect, give children practice in regulating their own emotions and recognizing others' emotional cues." For girls they show how to have a great relationship with their spouse. They show their girls that they should want to be valued as a woman, wife. "Dads give teenage girls confidence that they can expect men to be interested in them for reasons beyond sex.
In conclusion, it is a
woman's right to have as many children as she wants. It is a man's right to create as many children as he wants. We have the ability to create the perfect child for us, but is that morally right? It is proven that children with both parents in their life grow up to be a more
competent member of society with realistic expectations.
