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Saturday, September 18, 2004
UGLY: I had no idea Jimmy Swaggart was still around. Everyone knows he's a sinner. But nowadays he brags he'll murder and lie to God : "I'm trying to find the correct name for it ... this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. ... I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died."I guess being gay is a greater sin than murder and lying to God (though Swaggart needn't worry, as I doubt any gay men would find him attractive). It's worth watching the video to see the hate in his eyes (skip ahead to minute 36:00). The congregation claps and laughs--it's depraved. What is it with men who respond violently, or proclaim they would, when a man checks them out? Such a reaction screams insecurity with one's masculinity. P.S. Swaggart really is a hater: "You know what we ought to do? We ought to take every single Muslim student in every college in this nation and ship them back to where they came from. And we ought to tell every other Muslim living in this nation, if you say one word, you're gone. You're gone." P.P.S. I watched the rest of the service/tv show. Swaggart sings a lot. It's fascinating. UNREAL: The article Tom mentions below is: "Uncle Sam Wants You to Get Married: Republican marriage promotion programs encourage women to stay in abusive relationships" The publication, the Gadflyer, is put out by the New Progressive Institute, which says it's the voice of young progressives. UNREAL. Here is the subheadline to an article on the marriage initiative: Republican marriage promotion programs encourage women to stay in abusive relationshipsReading the article is almost a surreal experience, given how disconnected it is from the reality of the initiative. I'll try to put up a longer response later, but I don't have the energy for it right now. I printed out the piece and highlighted lines I thought were either false or incredibly misleading. Half of the page is yellow. Friday, September 17, 2004
The current issue of Books and Culture, a Christian periodical on, well, books and culture, has a special section about marriage which includes a really delightful piece by Eric Metaxas, "Screwtape Proposes a Divorce." A snippet:
EMOTIONAL MINI-SCAMS: Thinking more about that Child magazine article I posted on yesterday, I began wondering: In the "good divorce" family, what emotions, if any, are considered genuine and allowed free expression? The mom in the article tells us that when her five year old starts to cry about "the divorce" she has to be on guard for an "emotional mini-scam." She tells us, somewhat wearily, that she's still trying to convince her seven year old daughter that she "doesn't have to protect her parents," that it's OK for her to express love for one parent in front of the other without instantly reassuring that parent that she loves him/her too. She writes that when she hasn't seen her children for a week (when they've been with Dad) she has to restrain herself from telling them how much she missed them. Near the end of the article she writes of consulting a therapist about this nagging "guilt" she feels about the effects of divorce on her kids. The therapist reassures her that guilt just comes with the territory of being a parent. In other words, try to ignore it. Let's see, a five year old sad because he's always missing one of his parents. A mom missing her children when she doesn't see them for a week. A mom wondering if the choices she's making might be negatively affecting her children. Sounds like pretty important emotional territory to me. But the "good divorce" message is -- try to ignore it. Suspect emotional mini-scams. Don't express something like missing your kids, it only lays a burden on them. The part that really makes me nuts, though, is the story about the seven year old daughter. Mom acts as though the daughter is bordering on delusional for persisting in trying to protect each of her parents from her feelings for the other, even though mom has verbally told her she doesn't have to do that. Oh, these recalcitrant children. Here's my question for the "good divorce" believers: If you insist that children are exquisitely attuned to and pained by even the tiniest parental unhappiness in a marriage -- nay, that it borders on child abuse for two parents to stay married if they are not completely happy -- why do you think that children suddenly become blind to parental feelings after a divorce? Does a divorced parent feel at least some, and maybe a lot, of jealousy, anger, or threat when their kid says they love the other parent? You betcha, especially if post-divorce emotions are already running high. Do you think the kid doesn't know that? Do you think that the most obvious fact about divorce -- that people divorce because they don't like each other anymore -- isn't obvious to your kid? The whole thing becomes a psychological head game for children. You feel this, but don't say it. I feel this, but I try to ignore it. You sense your parents are feeling something, but no, you've got it all wrong, the truth is just the opposite. You hear your kid expressing a genuine emotion but wait, no, it might be an emotional mini-scam. Is there any wonder why children of divorce have trouble with intimacy when they grow up? OVERPOPULATION: Great post by Tom, below, on definite social arrangements. Just a note on the overpopulation "problem" that he mentions. For a master's thesis I wrote I did research on the construction of the "population explosion" idea in the late 60s. From reading an awful lot of newspapers and other documents from the time, it became clear to me that the West's concern about overpopulation had a lot to do with the post-colonial era of the time. All around the world, especially in Africa and Asia, nations were throwing off imperial control and declaring independence. Some of the graphics illustrating the "population problem" depicted hordes of dark colored people streaming out of a bulging African continent. Meanwhile, the civil rights movement at home was also freaking out the powers that be. The term "population control" was adopted by the UN in their efforts to assist governments in imposing often coercive birth control policies, but the term wasn't just synonymous with contraception or abortion. There was also a distinct desire to "control" not only the numbers of people being born in these societies, but to get a reign on the people themselves. There was often a rhetoric that scarce world resources would get depleted by this new "population explosion," but that rhetoric, still often used today, looks pretty empty when you consider how many more resources an American family with say, two children, uses compared to an average family in Africa with six children. And it's no coincidence that just when African and Asian nations starting declaring independence the West suddenly got scared about the availablity of resources that, only a few decades before, had seemed infinite and open to plunder. Which is not to say that women around the world don't generally want some help in spacing or preventing pregnancies. But international efforts, beginning in the 1960s, on behalf of "population control" were not begun out of some magnanimous desire to help women, or to save the trees. It was fear of the world getting filled up with too many people of the wrong color making too many demands. "DEFINITE SOCIAL ARRANGEMENTS": I'm doing my late-night reading for Property and just finished Garret Hardin's famous 1968 article, "The Tragedy of the Commons." Hardin, concerned with overpopulation, argues against the UN Declaration of Human Rights statement that describes the family as "the natural and fundamental unit of society," because that would mean governments couldn't regulate family sizes. He calls for "relinquishing the freedom to breed" through coercive laws (mutually agreed upon, of course). However, the problem for most societies these days is not overpopulation, but declining populations. For example, Singapore used to discourage big families but now, due to low birthrates, they are installing pro-natalist policies. So Hardin's particular argument is no longer so relevant, but his general analysis of the "tragedy of the commons" phenomenon remains solid. But the reason I got out of bed to blog was that Hardin includes this quote from the philosopher Charles Frankel: "Responsibility is the product of definite social arrangements."What a great way to think about marriage. First, marriage is a definite social arrangement. The bride and groom make a vow to each other in front of others, and their vow is recognized by their community and the law. Other romantic relationships fall across a spectrum, from casual dating to cohabitating. Guys all across that spectrum often dread the DTR talk (when one wants to "define the relationship"; a lesser-known acronym is the "wuwu," as in "what's up with us?"). When you're married, you don't need to have a DTR from time to time--your relationship is clearly defined. Second, social norms about marriage encourage responsible behavior, particularly to one's spouse and children. Certainly, one doesn't need to be married to act responsibly towards one's significant other and/or children. But absent that definite social arrangement, fathers are less likely to be involved with their children. Absent that definite social arrangement, couples that live together are less likely to be faithful to each other. The preponderance of the evidence on cohabitation and marriage supports Frankel's view that "responsibility is the product of definite social arrangements." Of course selection effects are at play, in a big way, but the notion that definite social arrangements have no impact on how people act is highly dubious. Eugene Volokh has an interesting exchanage with an emailer about his earlier post on sadomasochists and marriage. Thursday, September 16, 2004
My favorite women's magazine, Elle, has two interesting articles about marriage in this month's issue. The first, which is not online, is about marriage education; I think it's a pretty fair article and gets much deeper into some of the issues than you might expect from this kind of magazine (although it's not surprising for a long-time reader like myself; this is why I read Elle rather than Glamour, Cosmo or Vogue). The second article, "The New Shotgun Wedding," is quite interesting, if only for the way it exposes just how confused the author is about marriage. The author, Zoey Nelson, tells a man she was involved in who wasn't committing quite as much as she'd like. She flirts with the idea of having a child with him in order to make them both serious about the relationship. Kooky, huh? Here's the part of the article where my jaw really hit the floor: One of them, a 31-year-old writer named Julie, got pregnant as a way to commit herself to her boyfriend without having to get married. Made wary by bleak divorce stats and her own parents' rocky union, she thought staying together for a child was a promise she could keep. Similarly for me, a baby gave me the chance to settle the question of whether Tom and I had a future in our future.Goodness gracious, is this attitude towards marriage getting it completely backwards or what? Having a child with a man is a better way of getting him to commit than marriage is? Fortunately, Ms. Nelson thinks better of her plan before it's too late: My friends' advice all boiled down to this: I might score a baby with the arrangement Tom and I'd discussed, but I couldn't count on getting the guy. And I wasn't (yet?) desperate enough for a child to settle for that. Without the pledge that we'd stay together for the long haul - inside or outside marriage - I was afraid that our reltionship would feel like living in a house where a door is always left open, letting our warmth leak out and potential intruders slip in. That wouldn't be a happy place for me, never mind for a kid.Despite making my head hurt, I think this raises a really interesting question: if marriage as a social institution came about historically as a way of binding men and women together and ensuring that they take care of whatever children they produce, as marriage has been weakened in our society, particularly through divorce, what kind of arrangements, if any, will spring up to do the binding-together that marriage used to be able to do? I wouldn't count on this baby-having one, as Julie does; that's just asking the very phenomenon marriage was supposed to regulate regulate itself. If a couple can't keep a marriage together for the sake of the children, why on earth does this woman think they'd be able to keep a cohabiting relationship together for the sake of the children? Still, it's just fascinating to see how completely disconnected marriage and commitment appear to be for these women. It makes this article probably the most depressing thing I've read all week. The Alternatives to Marriage Project has signed a joint statement that argues Mass. employers should not stop offering domestic partner benefits now that same-sex marriage is legal in that state. Among their reasons is this little nugget: 4) Employers should provide equal pay for equal work. ALSO FROM AUSTRALIA: "Entsch breaks ranks to back gay marriage" FRONTBENCH Liberal MP Warren Entsch has broken ranks to publicly condemn John Howard's stand against homosexual marriage, saying federal legislation this year outlawing such unions was "offensive" and unnecessary. There are good reasons for supporting same-sex marriage, though I believe there are even more good reasons for opposing it. But I think having one set of friends who've been together for 25 years and feeling "extremely uncomfortable" about opposition to same-sex marriage is not a good enough reason to support SSM as policy for an entire nation. FROM AUSTRALIA: It's the danger zone for a married woman. She's between 30 and 34, and in her career and child-bearing prime. But she's also at the greatest risk of divorce. The article doesn't address what proportion of these divorces is initiated by the wife or husband. WHEN SOCIETY ASKS CHILDREN WHAT WE SHOULD DO: Still reading "Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is," by Abigail Garner. At the beginning of Chap 1 she quotes a 30 year old man, Jesse Gilbert, who was raised by lesbian moms. He says: It's very hard to grow up under a microscope. As kids, we were expected to talk about very adult issues -- sex, civil rights, legal and political issues. What other situations are there where people talk to kids and then legislate from there?" That strikes me as an excellent question -- What other situations are there where people talk to kids and then legislate from there? Thoughts, anyone? THE GOOD DIVORCE? In Child Magazine (Oct '04), a parenting magazine, a story titled "Trying to Heal a Broken Home," by a mother who writes with a pseudonym about her 5 and 7 year old children's experience after her recent divorce from their father. It's not available online, so here's some of the story: Mom says that "unhappy and confused, I broke up the family." Dad is "a good, attentive father" and they lived very near one another in New York City, so 50/50 shared custody seemed like a good idea. But it's hard to see that anything is good in a story as sad as this one. Mom's trying to put an upbeat spin on things, sharing some parenting tips such as when her five year old son starts crying in the bathtub and says he's sad about "the divorce," she tells him his friend was sad today too, and his parents aren't divorced, and hey, look at all this black gunky stuff in the rubber ducky, why don't we cut it open with my nail scissors and have a look? Mom claims this response is how she "sifts the genuine concerns from the emotional mini-scams." Meanwhile, she wonders how to convince her "wise-beyond-her-years 7 year old daughter" that she "doesn't have to protect her parents, that she's allowed to proclaim her love for one to the other without rapidly assuring the parent she's talking to that she loves him or her just as much...." Mom writes of her abject loneliness on the off-weeks when the kids are with Dad, and the schizophrenia of going from intense child raising to nothing, back and forth, week after week. But she also notes that the time off allows her to do things a mom can't usually do, like take a 5 mile run on a whim or stay up all night meeting a work deadline or "pursu[ing] more hedonistic pursuits." (She mentions later in the article that her ex told her kids about her new boyfriend earlier than she would have liked.) Oddly, I recall reading a single mom's account in another parenting magazine a couple of years ago in which she shared the almost-forbidden revelation that it can be quite a lot of fun when your kids are at dad's and you get to party hard and sleep late. She shares their complex custody agreement -- that includes specifics on where the children will spend their holidays in all future years, whew! -- and notes, "Despite all the foresight and planning, there are difficulties I never anticipated. Scheduling a playdate or a vacation involves consulting calendars to see who's got the children when. I e-mail detailed schedules to the parents of their playmates so they'll know whom to contact...Forms sent home from school...on my ex's week have to be scanned and emailed..." etc. I have to wonder if any mom reading this who's still married to the "good, attentive" father of her children will think it's worth it. Yeah, you might find a new boyfriend, which could be fun for a while. Yeah, you get some days off of parenting, though no one ever cites that as the reason they wanted a divorce. But is all this hassle and pain for you, much less for your children, worth it? At the end of the article she writes, "My most fervent hope is that, years down the line, the children...will be happy, unencumbered, and at peace." She writes that like someone who grew up with a long, protected childhood. Here's a question for her: Your kids are now 5 and 7. By, say, age 14 they're already starting to leave home emotionally. Exactly how many years of their childhood is worth "encumbering" with a divorce? CLAMOR MAGAZINE quotes "a bunch of whiny leftists screaming about their personal tastes." It's the typical stuff from radicals who are deeply ambivalent about same-sex marriage. One says, "If marriage becomes entrenched as a way for queer people to prove they're not anti-social extremists and do want to belong to larger communities, families that don't choose to marry and in other ways don't follow straight models will be separated from families that fit; and we'll still have marginalized queer families, they'll just be even more invisible and without resources."It also includes a dishonest shot at the Healthy Marriage Initiative: Targeted at poor women of color, the campaign would reinforce gendered, patriarchal marriage as the proper way to live, while at the same time furthering the neoliberal attack on the welfare state provisions and the "social safety net."I'd love to see any of these people explain how the initiative promotes "patriarchal" marriage, or how the policy is akin to "marriage coercion" as they describe it. Maybe it's because it's 2am, but after reading the radical stuff over and over again, at this point it just sounds juvenile. Yet it also makes me less tentative about same-sex marriage, given how the radicals seem so wary of it. The most interesting debate at this point is within the homosexual community. I think we should fear the anything-goes radical agenda, but embrace Jon Rauch's. Wednesday, September 15, 2004
THE OTHER SIDE OF FATHERS-4-JUSTICE: Law frustrates mothers' desire to tell the other side of story They are portrayed as scorned women who take out their bitterness over a failed relationship on the innocent fathers of their children. FROM CHINA: Panda learning motherhood from videos A Chinese giant panda is being shown videos to teach her how to look after her two young cubs. I know there is a really funny joke to make here, but I can't quite come up with it... NEW PROOF: ...a new survey by the Department of Labor shows that the average working woman spends about twice as much time as the average working man on household chores and the care of children. The survey also shows that the average American has five hours of leisure time a day, half of it spent watching television. Yes, when people who watch two and a half hours of television a day complain about being overworked and sleep-deprived, I have to wonder... "EMERGING ADULTS?" In the NYT: Weaning Parents from Children as They Head Off to College The article notes that among campus administrators leading "letting go" seminars for parents, college students are now known as "emerging adults." I wonder when an adult comes into full flower -- Grad school? First paycheck? First breakup of longterm relationship? I also think that if I was a parent handing over a big, fat tuition check, I'd be more than a little irritated that the school was spending part of that check on three-day seminars telling me how to "let go" from my own child. Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Midwest Alternative Polyamory Conference (seen first at Marriage Debate): ...With the fight over gay marriage and civil unions at full tilt in Wisconsin and across the country, the 60 polyamorists who gathered this weekend at an Easter Seals campsite near Wisconsin Dells discussed how to strengthen their relationships while establishing a place in mainstream America. As I've said before, I'm quite sympathetic to the civil rights argument for same sex marriage -- my concern lies with the unintended consequences for children, primarily of heterosexual couples, in changing marriage law. But I have no sympathy whatsoever for the "equal protection" polyamorists claimm they are "entitled" to. If I was an SSM advocate I would be doing everything I could to distance myself from polyamorists trying to piggyback on my movement. It's one thing to try to argue that children do fine without a mom and a dad, so long as they have a mom and a mom (or a dad and a dad), an argument that I for one don't buy. It's still another to argue, as polyamorists do on their websites, which I've linked to in the past, that children do fine with mom and dad sleeping with whomever, with different adults passing in and out of the house and the child's life in a supercharged sexual environment, and to claim, moreover, that these couplings "deserve" legal protection and recognition from legal and religious bodies (as the UU's for Polyamorous Awareness claim). Regarding the quality time issue, Leslie Loftis writes in: In case you didn't know, there is a recently published book on just this topic of hyperparenting, Confessions of a Slacker Mom by Muffy Mead-Ferro. It's quite insightful and funny. The author grew up on a cattle ranch and upon having her children scoffed at the idea of intensive parenting. In slacker mom fashion, I gobbled it up in two afternoons, while my 9 month old son played with the dog and most likely an empty paper towel roll, the Tupperware drawer, and probably some wooden spoons. When I went to amazon.com I found that I can buy Confessions of a Slacker Mom bundled with The Three Martini Playdate, of which Publisher's Weekly writes: Mellor, mother of "two darling little angels," tells parents it's time to take back their lives -- and their right to have a few cocktails at a child's midday birthday party..." Sounds great, just watch out for the sloshed mom driving an SUV full of kids and helium balloons... ROLE MODELS? Kim Basinger used a punching bag to get through her nasty divorce with Alec Baldwin. "There's nothing like it. I put on a vest, shorts and a pair of gloves and just go crazy..." FROM MASS: "After approval of gay marriage, benefits change" Since gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, some companies that had offered health benefits for domestic partners are now offering them only to married couples.... FROM NPR (audio): "Massachusetts Schools Weigh Gay Topics" As school begins in Massachusetts, teachers and parents are debating what to teach about homosexuality now that gay marriage is legal. Some say teachers must talk more openly about gay relationships, while others say they'd rather quit than assign books such as "Heather Has Two Mommies." A recent widow reflects on 57 years of marriage: ...Marriage is a close relationship meant to last until death parts you and, believe me, your heart comes close to breaking when that finally comes to pass. You hold his hand as he slips gently into eternity and for the first time in your life you feel truly alone. Monday, September 13, 2004
REGULATING LOVE, SEX, AND MARRIAGE: I'm sitting in the seminar right now (internet has revolutionized going to class), and the professor informed us that the reading list he gave us only covers the first five weeks of class. He then wants students to help develop the rest of the syllabus, which sounds great. I certainly can think of a few readings I'd want to add to the list. UPDATE: The eight other topics the professor suggested are prostitution, pornography, same-sex harassment, adult incest, transgender issues, polygamy, miscegenation, and, "the growth of the idea that some unions are legitimate and some are not" (e.g., why the church and the state got involved in marriage). So nothing on kids, but I'm sure he'll be open to it. ON MOM VS. NANNY: THE TIME TRIALS, a NYT oped last week that Sara and I posted on, one of the letters to the NYT in response said: ...Children need to know that you are there; I don't think we do them a favor by spending every free moment hovering over them. The writer was responding to the oped author who noted: ...Of those 3 1/2 hours that my husband and I spend with Phoebe and Abby, at least two of them are spent on the floor playing peek-a-boo, tending to a sick doll, acting out "The Three Billy Goats Gruff."... I thought the letter writer had a good point. When I read the original oped the note about how mom and dad spend "quality time" with their kids bugged me, too, but I didn't stop to think it out. But I do think that devoting virtually all of the (minimal) time you have with your kids to spending time down on the floor with them sends them a strange message. They don't see you interacting with your spouse. Relaxing. Reading the newspaper. Loading the dishwaher. For all they know, in this circle of nanny and mommy and daddy who fill their days, the world revolves around... them. I am probably somewhat guilty of this too, although I do read the newspaper in front of my children every morning and expect them to get used to it, and they have. Good training, I think, for them to read the newspaper themselves some day. Since becoming a parent I've often thought of a minor scene in an essay by Annie Dillard I read some years ago. I don't remember the name of the book it was in, but Dillard was recalling being a kid, sitting with her mom on the sofa, and examining (in a very Dillard-esqe way) the lines on her mom's knuckles while her mom read a Time magazine. Dillard was relating some childhood attention to detail, but what struck me was that her mom read a magazine while her child sat by. What (to use a Caitlain Flanagan term) "professonal class" mom today would do that? Oh, she'd be thinking, I should be a) showing my child pictures in the magazine, or b) reading her one of her books, or c) enrolling her in a music class so she's not stuck hanging around the house doing nothing with me or, d) all of the above. Good for Dillard's mom. Reading a magazine didn't seem to hurt her daughter's prospects for becoming a successful "something" someday. In fact, it seemed to have helped... KIDS? Regarding my query on how common it is for college students to refer to themselves and their peers as "kids," reader Eileen writes in: I get called "kid" all the time. I'm 24, and run a bizarrely successful IN THE ATLANTIC (Oct 04) reviewer Sandra Tsing Loh has a terrific essay on The Bastard on the Couch, the new companion volume to last year's The Bitch in the House. The online version is subscribers only, here's some of the best parts, starting with her reflections on how the male authors of The Bastard on the Couch, who in many cases are the husbands of women who wrote in The Bitch in the House, think about their wives: ...Which is not to say that the men don't admire (sort of) the ridiculously high standards the women cleave to...Indeed, to hear them tell it, the Bastards don't just stop to smell the lip gloss; they play guitar, drink gin, chop wood, listen to the blues, and wax poetic about lovable dogs they have known (lovable, underachieving dogs). Compared with their frantic, trying-to-have-it-all wives... the Bastards swing more yin than yang... Driving obediently to the supermarket, to-do lists in hand, the Bastards meditate -- hard -- on the difficult but necessary art of surrendering power (Fred Leebron's "I Am Man, Hear Me Bleat,"...) ...From a metaphorical -- or sometimes not so metaphorical -- cabin in the woods they contemplate, with some awe and no little affection, the brilliant urban women they've known, both wives and exes. Never mind that these women come across largely as type-A control freaks who, given a minute, would rather read a book than have sex (as in Sean Elder's "The Lock Box"). ... REGULATING WHAT?: This semester I'm taking a seminar entitled, "Regulating Love, Sex, and Marriage." I was really looking forward to it. There aren't many family law classes offered at Yale, so I jumped at this one. According to the course description, "The seminar will explore and evaluate the justifications that have been advanced, both in past times and today, for such state regulations." Now, here are the articles and books we'll read--it's the entire list, I'm not cherry-picking to exaggerate: Patricia Cooper, "Cherished Classifications: Bathrooms and the Construction of Race/Gender"So, based on the list of readings, one can reasonably infer that marriage mostly seems to be about oppressing, beating, and raping women. Now, it's certainly proper for a course such as this one to include articles on marital rape and domestic violence--I don't want to imply otherwise--but the lack of balance is stunning. There is not one article on the syllabus about children. I am still looking forward to taking the class. In fact, I'm looking forward to asking tomorrow, during our first meeting, why there are no articles that focus on children. And I'd like to read all those pieces on the syllabus. The majority are probably solid works of scholarship (though the one I've read so far, "Bathrooms and the Construction of Race/Gender," would be a parody of bad women's studies scholarship if it weren't so darn boring). At least I probably won't be coming up short for things to say in class. But, again, in a course on why the state is concerned with regulating sex and marriage, there is not one article about children. Not to overgeneralize, but I fear it's reflective of the sorry state of family law within the academy. I'll let y'all know how it goes.... P.S. Next semester there are courses titled "Sexuality and the Law" and "Sexuality, Gender, and the Law" (yes, they're different classes), but not one course on family law overall. Once again, not to overgeneralize, it's a legitimate subject, but.... UPDATE: I'm in class right now, and the syllabus I received covers only the first 5 weeks. He then wants us students to be involved in setting the agenda. So that's great news! I thought what I saw was too ridiculous to believe. Sunday, September 12, 2004
FROM SINGAPORE: The government is responding to low birthrates with generous pro-parent policies. Singapore's birthrate has sunk to an all-time low of 1.25 babies per woman. Raising it has become a national cause, as significant as the fight against terrorism. If the birthrate continues to wane, officials warn, the workforce will shrink. There will be fewer people to support a growing elderly population and to sustain the military that protects this 400-square-mile island sandwiched between Indonesia and Malaysia. Singapore's vaunted tiger economy will whimper. |
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