On Nov 16, 5:02 am, "Donna Metler" wrote:
"Sarah Vaughan" wrote in message

...

Chookie wrote:
In article .com,
Beliavsky wrote:

It's not a matter of status, and it would not be mostly for my sake.
Since I think more intelligent people create benefits for society,
based on the research I have cited, I will try to encourage my kids to
marry smart and good people and have lots of kids. I'm not sure how to
accomplish that, but I have plenty of time to think about it.

On average, less intelligent and responsible people have more kids
than their opposites, and that's a bad thing for society. Some people
worry about global warming. I worry about this.

If you want to get into eugenics, I suggest you try a breed less complex
than humans. Budgies, maybe.

snort Love that line... ;-)

It depends how simplistic Beliavsky wants to be about it. "If my daughter
marries a smart man then she'll have smarter children" has holes in the
logic that you could drive a truck through. "Marrying a smart man is one
of many ways in which my granddaughter can maximise her chances of having
smarter children" is a lot more realistic, and I suspect it's a much more
accurate statement of his beliefs.

Whether marrying a smart man in a calculated attempt to get smarter
children is a *desirable* thing to be aiming to get your daughter to do is
a completely different matter, of course.

And then there's the little thing that not all smart women may be
biologically equipped to have children. I'm certainly a child-oriented
person, and have made my profession largely working with children while
being told on every side that I'm too smart to "waste myself" (how is
teaching young children at the time of their lives when they're most primed
for learning wasting yourself?)-but it took four years of trying to get
pregnant the first time, which ended in a pregnancy loss, three more years
to get pregnant again (one of which was recovery), which finally had a
healthy child, and after 3 more years, well, no sign of another baby yet!

Given my reproductive history, it's a darned good thing that I HAD a career
and life goals apart from being a mother and raising children-had I decided
that my role in life was to pass on my IQ and genes, it would have been
pretty frustrating!

Well, I think you and Beliavsky would be a poor father-daughter match
long before the reproductive years. If I recall correctly you have
some issues with cerebral palsy, and I think a lot of the worldview
he's stated in this thread would indicate to me that he'd be someone
who might have particular difficulty adapting to having a child with
disabilities. Granted, I'm sure he'd do better dealing with physical
disabilities rather than cognitive ones, but even so I'd think that
eugenic tendencies and "imperfect" children wouldn't happily coexist
in one family. Over time I'd hope that it would be the eugenic
tendencies that suffered the most, but still.

My DH is about the best husband and father I've ever encountered,
despite his (very heritable) ADHD. I won't be the least bit surprised
if the Bug turns out to have it too. But we'll deal with it if we
have to, and I hope she'll be too busy exploring the world and
eventually trying to contribute to its well-being to worry about her
genetic flaws. Her best friend's mother has cystic fibrosis and
insulin-dependent diabetes and I think that girl's got a pretty darned
good family, despite the probable picture of her mother's future
health.

Getting lead out of gasoline has done more to improve social IQ than
any smart couple's large family. It's egotistically satisfying to
think that making more people like oneself is the way to improve
society, but there's a much deeper satisfaction and more measurable
impact from rolling up ones' sleeves and tackling social problems. It
may not change anyone's genes, but there's plenty of data behind
plenty of social interventions to show that they're quite effective at
making the world a better place.

Kate, ignorant foot soldier of the medical cartel
and the Bug, 4 years old
and something brewing, 4/08