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Notes -
Briefly on procreation, the population crisis, homelessness, and foster care:
I'd like to have children for pro-social reasons. I believe that failing to give back to the world when it has given so much to you is somewhat of a metaphysical thievery. My position isn't that everyone needs to have children, but I have contempt for old men who fail to plant trees whose shade they won't enjoy, especially when they have plenty of land and seeds. It's a narcissistic and hedonistic rot.
I'll focus on the word have, though, because my partner and I are not particularly well-positioned to have biological children. I feel that the base urges we have to literally procreate are just that - base urges. I am not Genghis Khan. There are 7 billion people on Earth, and cosmically my specific genetics are not even a footnote within a footnote in the story of humans. My siblings and cousins have me covered anyway when it comes to the genetic progeny of our bloodline, anyway. While the concept of creating something so awesome from almost nothing is romantic, it strikes me a bit as a novelty when put into a modern global context.
The factoid that I always try to bring up concerning homelessness in the US is that, depending on the source you cite, between ~30% and 50% of every homeless adult spent time in the foster care system. Like many social programs, the issues lie with the "cliff": when foster children turn 18 they age out of the system overnight. In 2025, it's a near impossibility to support oneself at age 18 entirely independently, especially if you're struggling to graduate high school or obtain a GED. To be a bit cliche, 22 is the new 18 (and 26 is the new 22, according to health insurers). It seems like, if you were to try to provide better than the "median" fostering experience, you would go a long way by simply supporting the foster child to age 22 instead of age 18.
To connect the dots, adoption and / or fostering seems to be a great way for this old man to plant trees, especially if biological children are completely ruled out. There is undeniably a population crisis and replacement rate is an issue, but from a (gross?) utilitarian perspective the population crisis is about productive members of society. Adopting and / or fostering well kills two birds with one stone: it reduces the population that is at-risk for homelessness, and creates more productive members of society.
One of my friends from grade school and his wife looked into adopting when infertility issues prevented them from having biological children. They are rather well-off and well-connected — a major street in this city is named after my friend's grandfather, and more than one local politician would occasionally attend his family's Christmas party.
And yet, they were denied. No kids. (Now he mostly just channels it into being uncle to his sister's kids, and his wife into her hobbies.)
(I've brought up this example to more than one therapist, when they recommended that I try adopting a kid. Because they'll just hand off a kid into the care of a single, jobless, literal crazy man like me while denying a wealthy, stable couple like my friends?)
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It's easier than it's ever been in history.
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Some people I know have been trying to foster and/or adopt, because they're unable to have biological kids, and it is super difficult and uncertain. The system will often find a relative after several years, then spend a long time placing the child with that relative, sometimes a sibling when they come of age, and sometimes the teen just absconds because they don't like being parented all that much.
Maybe you should do it, good foster parents are great, but don't go into it assuming that you'll get a kid who will choose to stay with you until they're 22, or will listen to your good advice, and follow your sensible rules.
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8 billion, still far below carrying capacity.
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I love the earnestness on display here! I think you should have kids, but agree with the thrust of your post that productive members of society is a bigger problem than quantity itself.
A huge issue is that we have lost community, which is a bit of a meme at this point but it's true. We don't have extended family, extended friend networks, etc. I think the most important thing to focus on is improving that social fabric as you can. Joining a religion helps with that too.
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If you are infertile that may be one thing, but I urge you not to adopt out of some sense of moral duty or ethics. Genetics are real and you will be scraping the bottom of the barrel genetically, you will destroy your own life.
Eh, it's entirely possible to adopt some 85 IQ child and raise them to be a perfectly productive truck driver or whatever, and it doesn't destroy your life. At a certain point society needs bricklayers- rather more than it needs more sysadmins.
In that case, people who would have been sysadmins are either paid to become brick layers or are forced to do it because that's the only job left.
There's a reason you rarely see Asian-Americans working low end jobs in the US, while those positions are filled back in their native countries. A society of Einsteins will have a need for janitors, until they automate the solution away. It is still better to be such a society with such a population.
Einstein said that with hindsight being a plumber would have been a better day job than being a patent clerk because it makes you tired in different ways, so you are more able to do physics in the evenings.
Not sure if he was true, and of course it relies on plumbers making enough to put food on the table in 40 hrs a week (then, as now, not a problem for plumbers specifically, but an issue for a lot of blue-collar jobs that would otherwise make good day jobs for struggling intellectuals).
Even if you make enough money, working in a blue collar job all day means you hurt all evening, which is going to interfere with physics. Einstein may have overly romanticized plumbing.
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It's not just intelligence. It's things like propensity to violence, conscientiousness, time preference, etc.
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Adoption has changed a lot over time, as multiple people here can testify. In times of war and scarcity, there will usually be more well-adjusted orphans than families wanting to take them in, so if you adopt you're likely to have a good experience.
However currently families wanting to adopt far, far outnumber well-adjusted orphans. It's not rare that you have to wait years, and even then you'll more likely than not end up with problematic kids. We know a couple who waited and eventually gave up because the only cases they got offered were so horrible that they didn't think they'd be able to handle that.
One of my colleagues helps out those foster families willing to take in the hard cases that are the majority and it's just sad. Teens with the mental development of a three year old are among the easiest. One girl just doesn't sleep at night, screaming for most of it. Others are so heavily physically disabled that they need help with everything.
Maybe you get lucky and the kid you adopted with fetal alcohol syndrome will turn out mostly fine except for minor develpomental deficits. Maybe you get super-lucky and an actually healthy kid somehow finds its way into the foster system. But generally it's hard and thankless and more likely than not, you will get kids that are dependent on support for life. You probably will not make a big difference, either.
Adoptions from the third world work a bit differently, especially from asia, but this can be very expensive.
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Regardless of whether or not it's unkind to say the truth, it isn't up for debate that there are massive differences on average between the kind of child OP could have (if not infertile) and the kind up for adoption.
If we're only concerned with the most positive possible outcome, I guess you're saving for retirement by buying lottery tickets.
See the original comment, since we're talking about adopting out of foster care here:
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Is it untrue in many cases? Sure. Like it would also be untrue in many cases to say that playing Russian roulette "will destroy your own life". It was shorthand for: will dramatically increase your chances of destroying your own life. The population that ends up in the foster/adoption system is not a random sample of the population. But I suppose if you and your partner are of that same genetic quality then adoption vs biological is six of one, half a dozen of the other.
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We had fertility problems and went the foster to adoption route. The foster training gives you a pretty good idea beforehand of what you're likely getting into, so I felt pretty mentally prepared. Our first foster (that we later adopted) was pulled out of their home at around 3 years old, went to their grandparents who didn't really want to raise a child, then went to one foster parent who was stretched too thin. This kid was eventually brought to us at 4 years old and we've had them for 5 years now. There are some clear personality and learning struggles the kid has but overall they're pretty happy.
Our second foster to adoption was picked up straight from the hospital as a premature infant and is a different race. Interestingly enough, I actually told the foster service that I preferred not to have someone of a different race. This hacked off one of the supervising social workers, but considering the need for foster families, she let it be known how she felt then allowed us to open up our home again. As fate would have it, the next available child was a baby that was not white. Our social worker informed us of the situation, my wife and I discussed it, and we decided to take the baby. The baby, despite having drugs in their system and being born premature, seems to have developed pretty well into a young normal kid. Extremely cute and happy. The race thing may came into play at some point, but they're not black, so I don't expect it to be as big of an issue as it seems to be with black kids adopted by white families.
All I can provide is a stable home and love and security. They have both had that, and will continue to have that. I enjoy watching them grow, and even though they're not angels they seem very social. I do have what I consider to be minimal expectations of structure and responsibility. The older one struggles pretty badly with having any responsibility, and while I think some of that is just engrained in their DNA some of it is also just their youth. Overall, my philosophy toward it has always been one where I accept that I cannot control the inherited traits they bring with them. It just is what it is. I also can't predict the future, but my plan is to let them find themselves without pushing too hard. If they grow up and become menaces to society some part of me will be devastated, but I'll be pretty confident in thinking it wasn't because of their upbringing.
I'd love it if you posted more about your experiences with adoption/fostering.
What would you like to know?
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This is utilitarian logic. You are potentially improving the QOL of some unfortunate kids, but you can say the same thing about buying malaria nets for africans or donating a kidney.
Don't adopt kids out of some misguided idea that you're saving them or saving the world. Do it if deep down you really will be happier taking care of someone else's kids vs being childless forever. Neither is an ideal option but you should choose the one that is best for you personally.
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So, I know a couple that tried to do a good thing. They adopted a young ghetto boy as an infant, removed him from all the bad influences that afflicted his community, and raised him in a middle-upper class environment with the best private schools, institutions and cultural guidance western civilization could provide.
The boy has terrorized that poor family for over a decade now with no signs of relenting. If this were a nature versus nurture debate, nurture is in a fetal position, ribs kicked in, begging for death as nature relentless curb stomps her.
It's all well and good to want to plant seeds, and failing to plant your own, nurture what you can find. Just make sure you aren't nurturing some virulent invasive species that will leave the land barren.
The substance of your post is fine, as a counterpoint to the OP, though it is a bit low on effort.
I am generally pretty skeptical about "dog whistle" verbiage but presumably by "young ghetto boy" you don't mean to suggest that the infant was a Polish Jew. Yet even to this point you could at least plausibly insist that you are engaging in pure description, that the child's parents were indeed from a "ghetto," etc.
But, uh...
This tips the balance toward heat rather than light, with a side of failing to write like everyone is reading and you want to include them in the conversation. You might regard it as impossible to include such people in "the conversation," and even then you should write as though you want to include them in the conversation, because presumably you think the world would be a better place if it were possible.
This is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. That means shady thinking is allowed! But you need to keep the heat to a level proportionate with your effort, evidence, and empathy.
You know, I've been debating about this post of mine. Because everyone has reacted like I wrote the blacks should be exterminated. And I'm sitting here going "Adoption came up, I told a story about the sheer pants shitting horror I've seen a family go through, that was the metaphor in play". Because I really do know a family that adopted a young ghetto infant out of Washington DC. That's just the story I have on hand. And obviously everyone had a reaction to it.
At best, the disconnect as near as I can tell is that "the garden" in my metaphor is that guys family. Not the entirety of humanity. And the family in question, were it a garden, is absolutely being terrorized by a virulent invasive species that they've invited into their home. The husband is utterly checked out and retreated into his work, the wife is medicated (both rx and self) just to get through each day and each fresh hell their adoptive son puts them through. Their younger biological children are clearly neglected and struggling. For a year every day I pulled up beside their van, waiting to pick up my daughter who was in the same school as their biological daughter, I'd overhear the mom on the phone on the verge of a panic attack coping with the nightmare of their existence, or talking her husband down from the same.
I don't know strong enough words to translate that experience to this "garden" metaphor that was in play. A cuckoo bird leaving it's eggs in another birds nest, for them to starve that poor bird's actual children and push them out of the nest may have been a more direct metaphor for what I see happening, but a garden had already been brought up.
So I'm sitting here baffled that the post I felt was fairly neutral, and made no sweeping statements about any groups, but was a cautionary tale about who you choose to add to your family when it is a choice, caught so much flak.
But it goes back to... I mean... people know. I have made sweeping statements. At one point I might have fought the accusation that I'm racist, because I honestly didn't think I was. But those days are long over. Too much has happened.
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This sounds like a just-so story. Sorry it just rings false and fanciful without details, though you may be relating something true enough as you perceive it. What's a "ghetto boy?" What's the "best western civilization (whatever that is) can provide"? What's the definition of "terrorized" here?
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If he best schools and institutions can provide is something like this - which is the default setting in many elite institutions nowadays - then one shouldn't be surprised about the results of it. If you spent so much effort convincing people Western values are evil and Westen civilization needs to be torn down for its past sins - it wouldn't be too strange for people to internalize it and reject those values?
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From Slate Star Scratchpad:
One of the many things that young people should have screamed at them and be shamed for ignoring.
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I mean, yep to all that. It reminds me of the case I mentioned recently, where the girlfriend of the "head-to-toe tattooed drug addict samurai sword murderer with crazy eyes and a smirk on his face" guy gave a character reference to the court of how he was a loving and affectionate partner and father.
Yeah, despite all the evidence of reality, some people steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the truth.
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Small note on persuasion. You’ve presented a single anecdote in support of your point - actually fine, to be honest, concrete examples illustrate broader trends powerfully. But you didn’t deliver the goods! What was his life in that family like, at what ages? Ditto the schools? (I’m not sure what it’s like where you are, but where I am the private schools often are for the children of the wealthy who are FAILING in public schools, rather than being too good for them.) Did he have any connections back to the hood?
Then following up: how has he tormented his family? How did they react? How has this relationship developed over what I understand to be the decade of his childhood, and where is it going now?
The lack of detail means that other people paint their own stories on your blank canvas. People who agree with you will of course say: the parents did all they could, he was just a little hellion… but those who don’t will see a tribe of racist middle Americans trying to shoulder the White Man’s Burden and reacting with hostility when a traumatized and isolated little boy does not show proper servility in front of Massa. If you want to convince them (and this forum is about that, no?) you need to bring the goods, without prejudice (i.e. you should not bring your holistic judgment of the individual into your analysis of all isolated events, ESPECIALLY early ones), building up your case slowly and inexorably. Otherwise, the best you’re getting is scaring people off with your obvious if vague malice.
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Whelp that's enough of TheMotte for me today.
Anyway, my bigger concern in the US is actually having a healthcare crisis with my child and becoming destitute, especially since I've worked diligently to create a life of relative comfort compared to my very blue collar ancestors.
How do you envision that happening?
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Would you feel better to know that I know an affluent white couple having the exact same terrible experience with a white child adopted from methbilly parents? No racial angle at all (the adoptive father is even from a similar borderer-descended background as the child). Yet nurture is still failing horribly and it's a coin toss whether the kid ends up in prison by his late teens.
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Did you know that if you get a giant hospital bill you can just negotiate it down by refusing to pay? I have relatives that have successfully done this- while also being people who pay sticker price with contractors and car dealers, it’s that easy.
Don’t worry so much about it.
Should've framed it more as "chronic, debilitating and high maintenance medical condition" than a single "medical event". Complaints about medical bankruptcy in America aren't because of MRIs for broken arms.
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One can even negotiate down to $0 by the One Weird Trick of just not paying. Just like jiu-jistsu isn’t real, because you can just stand-up: hospital bills aren’t real, just don’t pay.
Although it’s likely one of those things that varies across states in the States, my recollection is that credit score treatment of delinquent medical bills tend to be more lenient, if medical bills make it in there in the first place (God forbid if you close a credit card, though).
It works even better if you’re a member of the underclass or an illegal immigrant, where your (or “your” for illegal immigrants) credit score likely doesn’t matter to you anyway. The costs of your hospital tabs will be passed on to those who pay their bills. Anarcho-tyranny, hospital bill edition.
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Does it hit your credit score, or can you usually negotiate it down before it goes to creditors?
From the little I've seen of stories like this, it seems to go: "hospital hits you with incredibly huge bill, you go "nope", the insurance company goes "nope" and you get on to the special department the hospital has to negotiate "okay let's pay something reasonable", and only the honest and bewildered try to pay the incredibly huge bill" as hospitals will try and charge you for everything with the expectation that "nobody will really pay this, it's haggling time".
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It does not hit your credit score.
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Do you have an actual argument against his position? Or did it just make you feel icky?
I disagree with a great many of @WhiningCoil’s takes, and with the often bilious way he expresses them, but in this case his metaphor strikes me as a fairly reasonable (and certainly within the bounds of discussion) extension of the metaphor you yourself supplied.
It's the emphasis on "invasive species" that's the icky bit; I had a similar gut reaction. Yes, yes, 13/52 and all, but that particular phrasing hits different.
I think you meant to respond to @Hoffmeister25 above.
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