Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Good Questions
So many topics, so little time. The recent posts and comments at Crooked Timber and the Invisible Adjunct have brought up a pile of interesting questions:
- Do parents have a right to work and raise kids?
- What role do/should dads play in child rearing?
- Is it reasonable to expect a career and a family?
- What is more fulfilling: work or raising kids?
- Would a 50/50 split of child rearing between parents be the best way to go?
- What reforms can be instituted to bring about greater changes?
- Can we assume that home care is better than child care?
- What sacrifices have to be assumed by the childless so that parents can work part time?
- What policies should universities and the private sector employ to keep parents working?
- Does being a parent make you a better professor?
And the today's post by myself and Harry at Crooked Timber on the need to have children opened up a whole new can of sticky questions:
- Are parents driven to have children by an innate need rather than making a conscious choice?
- Does this biological imperative justify sacrifices by the childless?
- Do arguments for a larger social good for having children justify sacrifices by the childless?
- Are parents owed anything?
- What are political implications for arguing that people need to have kids?
Clearly, I can't answer all these questions. But I might nibble away at a few of them over time in this blog and elsewhere.
So many topics, so little time. The recent posts and comments at Crooked Timber and the Invisible Adjunct have brought up a pile of interesting questions:
- Do parents have a right to work and raise kids?
- What role do/should dads play in child rearing?
- Is it reasonable to expect a career and a family?
- What is more fulfilling: work or raising kids?
- Would a 50/50 split of child rearing between parents be the best way to go?
- What reforms can be instituted to bring about greater changes?
- Can we assume that home care is better than child care?
- What sacrifices have to be assumed by the childless so that parents can work part time?
- What policies should universities and the private sector employ to keep parents working?
- Does being a parent make you a better professor?
And the today's post by myself and Harry at Crooked Timber on the need to have children opened up a whole new can of sticky questions:
- Are parents driven to have children by an innate need rather than making a conscious choice?
- Does this biological imperative justify sacrifices by the childless?
- Do arguments for a larger social good for having children justify sacrifices by the childless?
- Are parents owed anything?
- What are political implications for arguing that people need to have kids?
Clearly, I can't answer all these questions. But I might nibble away at a few of them over time in this blog and elsewhere.
