>Dan Fabulich wrote:
>
> > > Dan, this ignores my question - if I pay money to give my child an
>education
> > > what financial reward do I get in return?
>
Good question. I would argue that it is the separation of investment -
which is very large in today's society - and financial reward, which is
usually virtually non-existent, that has resulted in the virtual failure of
any progress in the whole area of child rearing in our society. The
exchange of emotional rewards for financial investment, by the way, also
goes under name of "prostitution." Children and housewives have been pretty
much turned into prostitutes by modern societies failure to economically
rationalize the family.
One answer to the whole problem would be to reorganize the family along modern economic lines. Families used to function as economic units, with the children expected to inherit the farm or business and take care of the aged parents, etc. The Samoans have reportedly upgraded their family structure in modern times such that the children are now expected to pay a percentage of all earnings back to the family, for their entire lives. This creates an incentive to have healthy, smart, productive children equivalent to that of pre-industrial times.
This in no way denies the importance of love and emotional exchange in child-rearing, either as motivation or reward. But the idea that a mother, for example, MUST love every child, regardless of how evil and perverted that child has become, is absolutely insane. Love is an emotional response to our highest values. Emotional responses are automatic evaluations, not subject to conscious choice except through proceses such as suppression or repression, which involves sabotaging ones consciousness as such. To sell that idea is to tell mothers that they must live a lie, destroy their own minds and happiness in order to meet some cultural dictate.
But if a mother loves on the basis of reality, then what does the modern child have to offer? He or she is usually disconnected economically from the family. Then the love becomes based on the child doing what the mother wants - a good slave, performer, or prostitute. This is healthy?