Anti-childfree charities

[dust_mote]

I'm sure you've encountered them before. March of Dimes, WIC (Women Infants and Children), "Save the Children", "Make a Wish" foundation. WIC in particular I've even seen them put up huge booths in public buildings like libraries, explaining how they'll help you out if you want to make a child. Does anyone know any dirt on these organizations? I

Comments

[dust_mote]

I guess anti-childfree was a bad way to put it. Childfree is already a negative definition, so anti-childfree is like saying "not not having children".

I think there are degrees of suffering, and that wealth is obviously not equitably distributed in this world. So I do get suspicious when I see a charity with a highly successful and clearly well funded propaganda campaign, whether it's saving teh chitlins, or taking care of people with cancer. I only begrudge help for anybody who's suffering when doing so also increases my own suffering.

And though it seems obvious, I don't think helping children is the best way to solve the problems that children face. In many cases the children can't be left well enough alone, and often you can help children, but have little effect on the overall situation. Programs that propose ways to fix the system in order to more enable children to succeed (without damaging other people's success), those I can get behind. But programs that throw money or food at children, pay for their institutionalization, pay for those activity centers they never use. When I was a child, daycare taught you how to play with dolls and blocks and board games and then you were just bored stiff. They didn't offer useful things like how to weld or how to repair a furnace, pretty much they were just a place to toss your kids to give you a moment to breathe without them. And while I support programs that take the burden of child raising off the parents, I have to admit that while they do help children, they don't help the situation. Kids are still ignorant and unskilled and adults are still overworked and driving all over the place.

[themachinestops]

When I was a child, daycare taught you how to play with dolls and blocks and board games and then you were just bored stiff. They didn't offer useful things like how to weld or how to repair a furnace, pretty much they were just a place to toss your kids to give you a moment to breathe without them.

Ah, a humor-joke. Has potential, but sloppy execution. I give it a 2.7.

[dncingmalkavian]

And though it seems obvious, I don't think helping children is the best way to solve the problems that children face.

What, then, do you propose we do? I read this passage once in an excellent historical novel: "Don't give a man a penny; he may only take it to an alehouse, get drunk, and go home to beat his wife. Better to give him the bread; better yet to give the bread to his children." Good advice, that.

In many cases the children can't be left well enough alone, and often you can help children, but have little effect on the overall situation. Programs that propose ways to fix the system in order to more enable children to succeed (without damaging other people's success), those I can get behind.

Everyone has to give a little and lose a little for society as a whole to be successful. I don't regard that as damaging anyone's success. Let us say, for example, that twenty dollars of the taxes I pay out of my check each week goes to ensure that a person can have decent meals for a few days. I'm okay with that. I've been hungry. It sucks.

But programs that throw money or food at children, pay for their institutionalization, pay for those activity centers they never use. When I was a child, daycare taught you how to play with dolls and blocks and board games and then you were just bored stiff. They didn't offer useful things like how to weld or how to repair a furnace, pretty much they were just a place to toss your kids to give you a moment to breathe without them.

Throw money and food at children? Some parents don't feed their kids, or don't give a damn if there's a roof over their head. Providing subsidies so kids can have those things is a necessity. As I mentioned before, these children shouldn't suffer for their parents' misjudgments.

Personally, I learned a lot when I was in preschool and daycare. I learned games, puzzles, I read books - all skills that I use now as an adult, not just the skills themselves, but the modes of thinking required to make use of them (i.e. strategic thinking). And all kids need to have fun - I was off playing games while my mother was off busting her ass to pay our rent, and at the end of the day she got a little time to herself as reward for that hard work.

And while I support programs that take the burden of child raising off the parents, I have to admit that while they do help children, they don't help the situation. Kids are still ignorant and unskilled and adults are still overworked and driving all over the place.

Disagreed. Those support programs helped me as a child, and also helped several other kids I knew who grew up poor and disadvantaged. Kids are ignorant until you educate them; I was lucky to have a mother that was dedicated to teaching me and encouraging me to explore new paths of thinking and knowledge, and was assisted by some of these programs in those efforts. If my life had been completely different - if my mother and I had not been able to receive this kind assistance - how might my life be different? I may never have become a musician, for example, which has been the biggest constant in my life except for my mother; I might not have established a love of strategy and puzzles; I might not have learned all I did in primary because of programs like Enrichment and after-school daycare and study; and while my mother's efforts were no less important, and indeed shaped a huge part of me, might I not be less of a credit to society had these things not been present in my life? Some food for thought.

[dust_mote]

So you don't agree that the quality of such a program has a big effect on whether it helps the situation or not? Even if it hurts children, if it helps things overall then eventually the burden on the kids will be lifted too. (i.e. closing the bathroom in order to repair the broken light fixtures). Not that I particularly care whether it's helping children, or helping someone else instead.

I got a little out of daycare, but mostly it was something to take pressure off my parents, which in turn took pressure off their employers to offer them a sane amount of working hours. Good intentions don't always lead to Heaven after all. You have to watch such programs, to see if they're making a lasting difference, or if they're just releasing pressure temporarily while the problem elsewhere continues to build larger and larger. I do think it's important that parents don't raise their kids alone, both for the parents and the kids, but I don't think those programs have as much of a positive effect as they are a stop-gap.

[curseangel]

Even if it hurts children, if it helps things overall then eventually the burden on the kids will be lifted too.

Systemic change takes time. If you disregard the needs of children to eat and have a roof over their heads and receive medical treatment now, by the time the system changes as you advocate, the children will be dead. You need charities that give food and shelter to children and their parents. Can't have systemic change if there's nobody left to benefit from it. :\

[dncingmalkavian]

Seconded!

[playwithmatches]

to play devil's advocate, I could get behind a charity that provided basic medical care (like Doctors without Borders) or resources for the greater good of a country (like UNICEF) in disadvantaged countries more quickly then I could get behind, say, charities like Sally Struthers and/or the Christian Childrens' Fund, which are good for slapping a band aid on the problem.

I think that's where the OP was trying to go with that.

OT.

[dnl_upside_down]

Your icon owes me an Arizona Sweet Tea. :D

[dncingmalkavian]

I think that maybe you're just ill-informed, and creating an issue where there ought to be none. JMHO.