I am not so fond of cultures that survive by selling their four-year-olds into indentured servitude rather than using birth control after the fourth kid.
I lived in a South Asian country at different times for different lengths of time beginning in 1976 and the poor have as many morons amongst their numbers as any other class in society.
I am not so fond of cultures that survive by selling their four-year-olds into indentured servitude rather than using birth control after the fourth kid.
I lived in a South Asian country at different times for different lengths of time beginning in 1976 and the poor have as many morons amongst their numbers as any other class in society.
Your example is valid. Those who know nothing of history (as opposed to a summary, which is me) might be surprised to learn that, as recently as the 18th and 19th century, most of Europe and the brand-new Americas were very much like that. Even for Whites, indenture was a fact of life. The Workhouse was a variant of debtor’s prison where even the debtor’s family was obligated to labor. This was so onerous that at its founding the US expressly forbade imprisonment for debt (in most cases; good luck arguing that for back child support!). As for birth control, for all practical purposes it didn’t exist unit the mid-20th century. And even now, it’s only used by a fraction of the populations. Huge families were the norm, as was child mortality. Until modern times, only about half of children made it to adulthood. Again, all my examples are from “The West,” not some third-world hellhole where the numbers were no doubt worse.
The above is, to a large extent, an argument for relativism. Leaving aside the issue of whether moral absolutes exist, the fact is that different eras, or even different cultures in any given “present” will have enormously differing perspectives on what is legal, moral, correct, appropriate behavior. We in the west would never allow our children to slave away all day just to make a few dollars. But we have few qualms about buying those goods when they are imported into our “rich” countries.
Yet again I must commend Martyr Made to the assembled. His history of The Peculiar Institution gives a pretty horrifying exploration of the experiences of the white indentured servants in Jamestown before Virginia later began using Africans as slaves. Most cruelties we are familiar with in slavery were practiced first on indentured servants, whose survival rate in the beginning was far worse than that of black slaves.
In every place at every time there are good people and bad people, and smart parents and stupid ones. As just an ordinary person unaffiliated with any organization or program, when I visited a poor Punjabi village in the early '80s, the women asked me about birth control because they figured a Western woman would have had access to more information than they did.
But the friend who brought me there to his family's home district used to joke about wanting a full dozen kids as he worked on the first half of that number. It took our boss's wife (my friend was the office electrician; I'd found my job there locally though it was an international engineering project) to insist on getting my friend's wife sterilized after she delivered the family's seventh kid, who died not long after, since the mom was pretty depleted of strength by then.
And that man was in other things a pretty smart guy, and he persuaded our boss's wife to pay for school fees for his older kids. But he didn't even have a fixed home of his own and still loved making his wife produce babies.
Imprisonment for debt has been returning. I can't remember the cites now - was reading about it 10 years or so ago - how - fines to the State (certain states) can land you in prison, and while you are there, the fines can still accrue.
One generation back - the parents of someone I dated in the 90's - were caretakers at such a workhouse/poorhouse. Well into the 1970's, I would guess. Indiana.
I am not so fond of cultures that survive by selling their four-year-olds into indentured servitude rather than using birth control after the fourth kid.
I lived in a South Asian country at different times for different lengths of time beginning in 1976 and the poor have as many morons amongst their numbers as any other class in society.
Your example is valid. Those who know nothing of history (as opposed to a summary, which is me) might be surprised to learn that, as recently as the 18th and 19th century, most of Europe and the brand-new Americas were very much like that. Even for Whites, indenture was a fact of life. The Workhouse was a variant of debtor’s prison where even the debtor’s family was obligated to labor. This was so onerous that at its founding the US expressly forbade imprisonment for debt (in most cases; good luck arguing that for back child support!). As for birth control, for all practical purposes it didn’t exist unit the mid-20th century. And even now, it’s only used by a fraction of the populations. Huge families were the norm, as was child mortality. Until modern times, only about half of children made it to adulthood. Again, all my examples are from “The West,” not some third-world hellhole where the numbers were no doubt worse.
The above is, to a large extent, an argument for relativism. Leaving aside the issue of whether moral absolutes exist, the fact is that different eras, or even different cultures in any given “present” will have enormously differing perspectives on what is legal, moral, correct, appropriate behavior. We in the west would never allow our children to slave away all day just to make a few dollars. But we have few qualms about buying those goods when they are imported into our “rich” countries.
Yet again I must commend Martyr Made to the assembled. His history of The Peculiar Institution gives a pretty horrifying exploration of the experiences of the white indentured servants in Jamestown before Virginia later began using Africans as slaves. Most cruelties we are familiar with in slavery were practiced first on indentured servants, whose survival rate in the beginning was far worse than that of black slaves.
In every place at every time there are good people and bad people, and smart parents and stupid ones. As just an ordinary person unaffiliated with any organization or program, when I visited a poor Punjabi village in the early '80s, the women asked me about birth control because they figured a Western woman would have had access to more information than they did.
But the friend who brought me there to his family's home district used to joke about wanting a full dozen kids as he worked on the first half of that number. It took our boss's wife (my friend was the office electrician; I'd found my job there locally though it was an international engineering project) to insist on getting my friend's wife sterilized after she delivered the family's seventh kid, who died not long after, since the mom was pretty depleted of strength by then.
And that man was in other things a pretty smart guy, and he persuaded our boss's wife to pay for school fees for his older kids. But he didn't even have a fixed home of his own and still loved making his wife produce babies.
Imprisonment for debt has been returning. I can't remember the cites now - was reading about it 10 years or so ago - how - fines to the State (certain states) can land you in prison, and while you are there, the fines can still accrue.
One generation back - the parents of someone I dated in the 90's - were caretakers at such a workhouse/poorhouse. Well into the 1970's, I would guess. Indiana.
The past is not as distant as some might think.