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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31782 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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So did you intentionally or unintentionally cut the ages out of the article? The Collins' are in their mid 30s, and they're at 3 kids. They are highly unlikely to make it to 8 without serious, expensive, high health risk, and failure prone technological interventions. It is highly likely their fourth kid, let alone their eighth, is going to require thousands spent on procedures that might not work. And in a geriatric pregnancy highly likely to lead to severe autism or other genetic defects that make further generational breeding unlikely to be successful.

The whole scheme strikes me as hilariously inept, the sort of thing that happens when investment bankers try to go farm or Blue tribes go Red; figuring that if those stupid rednecks could do it surely we can do it better. The Collins' think breeding must be easy, they always heard about dumb welfare mothers doing it. Dynastic history is littered with men who needed heirs and couldn't produce them, men who would have loved to have eight kids and wound up with none. Having eight healthy children is physically difficult! That ability is rare!

She has undergone at least 6 rounds of IVF according to the article.

I also noted that the 8 kid goal is unrealistic at this point, but I think they have chances for 2 more without too much trouble. My wife had our kids at 37 and 40, and though we did go through some fertility treatments (which proved to be ultimately mostly unnecessary, both times), it didn't cost thousands. There's no guarantees for it, of course (as you indicated nothing is guaranteed when trying for kids).

I tried looking up statistics it's actually much more complicated than I thought because the raw numbers don't necessarily apply to very fertile women.

I agree one or two more could be possible, but unless you have quadruplets you're not hitting 8 if you start that late.

I was also thinking in terms of quiverfull families I know, out of eight they all get one genetic "dud" at least. So what do you do with that kid? To get 8 x 8 you'll really need 10 kids at least, to sub in for the duds.

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