Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Blame the childless adults?

A couple recent articles have got my teeth gritting and may do the same for you.

First, apparently, the problems with the economy are partically our fault because we don't have children. Say what? A recent article in the Washington Times titled "Modern Economies 'Rise and Fall' with Nuclear Families" talks about a study by the Social Trends Institute that implies we need more people to marry and have children to keep the economy going. Essentially what this study says is that married men work harder and earn more money and couples with children consume far more goods and services. The fact that so many people are not getting married or having children is hurting the economy. Therefore, governments should encourage marriage and procreation.

Unfortunately, the story has been removed from the Washington Times website. I wonder why. I also wonder whether the numbers are really that different or whether parents and non-parents just spend their money on different things. What do you think?

Another article, published at VDARE.com,is headlined "Childless Adults, Unsurprisingly, Don't Understand Children." The author calls her/himself Anonymous Attorney. She (I'm guessing) raves about how children are being diagnosed with ADHD or bipolar disorder and put on medication unnecessarily by psychologists, social workers and other professionals who don't have children and therefore can't understand them. If they did have children, they would know these kids are behaving normally. She concludes, "We don't actually have an epidemic of mentally ill children. We have an epidemic of childless professionals."

If that doesn't make you grit your teeth, I don't know what will. True, we don't have children of our own, but we don't live in isolation. We once were children, we have been around children, and the folks who work with kids have lots of training.

What do you think?

3 comments:

Rest for the Soul said...

Interesting....now what's the excuse for the parents who are therapist and ordering meds for ADD? I know a mother who is a family therapist. I kept her children 4 hours a night mon-fri and many weekends while she partied. Yet every morning she would go to her job and counsel families and prescribe riddlen for hyper kids. I love these theories that "experts" come up with. At the end of the day, they can be logically concluded to be wrong.

Rest for the Soul said...

Interesting....now what's the excuse for the parents who are therapist and ordering meds for ADD? I know a mother who is a family therapist. I kept her children 4 hours a night mon-fri and many weekends while she partied. Yet every morning she would go to her job and counsel families and prescribe riddlen for hyper kids. I love these theories that "experts" come up with. At the end of the day, they can be logically concluded to be wrong.

Anonymous said...

"We don't actually have an epidemic of mentally ill children. We have an epidemic of childless professionals."

Following that line of reasoning, we have an "epidemic" of ob-gyns who have never had female gentials and oncologists who have never had cancer! *throws hands up in the air*