Re: Crazy sf idea of the week

On Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:22:58 -0500, Suzanne Blom
<sueblom@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:13c6v64speqe2d7@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

"Brian M. Scott" <b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:oudr60dr9d0h.1j30t6qwgrs9o$.dlg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

On Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:20:27 -0500, Suzanne Blom
<sueblom@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:13c1iorrf8iq57d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

The more kids you have, the less investment you can give
to each unless they die young or run away or something.

Even if this is true, it's irrelevant as long as you can
give *enough* to each child. I'm the eldest of seven, with
just a 12-year spread from top to bottom, and I don't think
that any of us would complain of having been shortchanged on
parental investment. Not everyone is cut out to be a
parent, and of those who are, probably not all are cut out
to be parents of large families, but the problem isn't as
great as you make out.

Yes, but I am sure your family was, by world standards,
very rich.

World standards are only somewhat relevant to the point that
I was making, because 'enough' depends to some extent on
local standards. Yes, living in a rich society confers some
advantages, even for most of those who aren't very well off
by the standards of that society. On the other hand,
parental investment, be it in time, emotional support, or
financial support, is likely to be judged -- by the children
themselves, as children and later in retrospect -- by the
standards of the surrounding society. Differences in
societal structure can also work against the richer society:
my parents, for instance, had no extended family to pick up
any slack.

By the standards of the society in which we lived, things
were pretty tight when we were kids; part of my parents'
'enough' can be seen in the fact that none of us kids quite
realized just how tight things were. (Except in the car.
Ever see two adults and six kids climb out of a '52 Chevy
two-door? <g> And that was just the regular grocery trip
to Louie's Foods.)

We weren't worrying-about-the-next-meal poor, but we were
not at all well off by the standards of our own place and
time, especially during the first 12 years of my life. When
I was born in 1948, my father was an undergraduate on the GI
Bill; the three of us were living on that $105 a month, plus
the little that my father made working part-time in a meat
market and the odd bits that my mother made typing at home
for some of the Reed College faculty and students. When
number three arrived four years later, he was an instructor
at Berkeley making $3800 a year. When number six came along
five years after that, he was an assistant professor at
Amherst making $6000 a year. (In current dollars those are
about $11,000 a year, $30,000 a year, and $45,000 a year;
for what they're worth, current HHS poverty guidelines for
families of 3, 5, and 8 are $17,170, $24,130, and $34,570,
respectively.)

Brian
.

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