Is Breeding a Sin?
Only if you have a litter, and happen to be poor.
Separated by money not birth.
Let me get this straight. One spotlight hogging, serial baby-maker is a paragon of sexiness and virtue, and the other is a crazed lunatic.
They're doppelgangers, save one detail. But that detail seems to be a red herring, as red as a newborn baby's head.
When Angelina Jolie, had twins last summer, increasing the Jolie-Pitt brood to six, People magazine paid a record seven-figure sum for exclusive photos of the wrinkly grubs. Both halves of Brangelina have since said plenty about how six isn't enough: not only are new international adoptions in the works, but this week's stories say Jolie plans to be pregnant with their seventh child by summer. Despite reports that her doctors have encouraged her to wait, at least one article praises Jolie for "always managing to achieve what she wants." And when the famous baby-making duo talks about the magic number 10, the male half gets called the sexiest dad alive, and Jolie is celebrated as a kind of mother superior.
Enter Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to octuplets a few weeks ago, and met with a slightly different reception in the public waiting room. Revulsion, ridicule and death threats were there to welcome her new (almost) soccer team into the world. Time reports that a talk radio host called her a freak, and said his listeners were prepared to boycott any company that offered help to her or her babies. And Jimmy Kimmel joked that even "golden retrievers do not have that many kids."
Spot the difference...
Hmmm, let's review. Both Jolie and Suleman have long dark hair, oversized lips and fair skin, and there's been more than one comment about their striking resemblance. Both were born and raised in L.A. Both are 33 years old, born in 1975.
Both are unmarried in a legal and religious sense, even though Jolie and Pitt are in a relationship. Both Jolie and Suleman are divorced (in the same year, actually). Until recently, both had six children under the age of eight, (Suleman: seven, six, five, three, plus two-year-old twins; Jolie: seven, five, four, two, and infant twins). Both have reportedly relied on IVF for their most recent global population efforts, and are both on a course to raise the world's fertility rate from its overall average of 2.1 to about 10.
The similarities don't end there. Both have dysfunctional parents -- Suleman says as much in her own words and cites it as the main reason she wants to devote her life to parenting. Jolie is estranged from dad, John Voight, who left her mom when Jolie was two years old.
Neither mom parents single-handedly. Suleman's parents help raise the kids. Jolie has a staff of nannies, and of course, Pitt.
Both are media magnets -- Jolie is a movie star and master media manipulator who earns millions based on her image, and Suleman held her own against MSNBC's Ann Curry and has reportedly hired PR help in order to try to make millions out of her image -- like through a reality TV show (e.g. the Duggars of "17 Kids and Counting," or "Jon and Kate Plus Eight").
Both have similar priorities. Of hers, Jolie said last week: "I'd say kids first -- kids, woman to Brad, and then my work internationally, and being a kind of... trying to educate myself and trying to learn about the world and... trying to do some good things while I'm alive." As for acting, she laughed, "So what is that, fourth?"
Of hers, Suleman told MSNBC this week that her top priority is to be a good mother. "I'm providing myself to my children, I'm loving them unconditionally and accepting them unconditionally. I'll stop my life for them, and hold them... and love them." And said her next priority is to go back to school to improve herself through a master's degree in counselling, so she can provide financially for her children.
What about Mother Earth?
Moving on. In the last several days, the British government's environmental adviser declared it "irresponsible" to have more than two children.
And some go further than that. "Every single person has multiple impacts on multiple environmental resources," Alan Weisman was quoted as saying the NYT this week. The author of The World Without Us, a book which advocates a one-child policy to return the world to early 20th century population levels, says, "It's a no-brainer that the more people there are, the more stress there is on an ecosystem that doesn't get any bigger."
So, both Suleman and Jolie have polar bear blood on their hands. But still, if we're talking about footprint, a large family of modest means consumes fewer resources than a large family in which the children are regularly taxied between mansions on different continents aboard private jets.
So, why has Jolie ostensibly created the Garden of Eden and Suleman the Garden of Evil?
Cha-ching: the money card
I hate to show the pesky money card, but there's nothing left in the deck. According to the new bible of parenting, rich equals good and poor equals bad. Yes, Suleman declared bankruptcy last year. But she says she won't go on welfare, and will continue to accept help from her parents until she can return to work and support her kids herself. Her parents have no plans to evict her. Which means her kids will be fed, clothed and sheltered.
I'm not saying having 14 kids isn't crazy. I'm overwhelmed by the prospect of just one. I'm just saying the reasons for the insanity diagnosis seem a little shaky since similar public examinations and interventions aren't being done on the world's most famous over-breeder.
Related Tyee stories:
- Breeding Envy
The new kid and parent ideals in Gossip Girl. - So You Want Me to Breed?
Fertility crisis fretting misses how lots of women really think. - Real Beauty... If You're White
Unilever tells Western women they're beautiful as is. In India, it's a different story.
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27
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PatrickMcEvoyHalston
3 years ago
"I'm not saying having 14
"I'm not saying having 14 kids isn't crazy": No, you're not, but please soon develop the stuff to declare it such: if you have more than a few kids, no matter your best, there's no way you'll be able to well attend to them. They become lonely, lost--they become what we're trying to get the hell away from: neurotic, unconscious--animals.
You're always stepping away. We notice. Please stop; find out what watches overhead and beat it into mulch; and become the more interesting person we all sense in you.
nestingtree
3 years ago
Umm..not exactly
This is just silly.
Sulemon already had SIX children under the age of 7, which include a pair of 2 year old twins and 3 children who receive govt support for their disabilities and THEN decided to be implanted with 6 embryos. 14 children!
Jolie in contrast gave birth to only 3 children. And she adopted 3 children who were already on this planet.
Sulemon has no income or prospective source of income, except for a disability payout, food stamps, and disability checks for her children. She is unable to live independently of her parents.
Jolie has an income and a career and can support both herself and her children.
Jolie has a husband who fully supports parenting their six children.
Sulemon is single and her parents have expressed that they disagree with her having more kids and do not want to take care of them.
Just because you think you came up with some clever angle doesn't mean you did.
G West
3 years ago
Depends on your P.O.V. Vanessa
wrinkly grubs.
If you want to get my attention and hold it, you're going to have to avoid 'that' kind of thing. It denotes a certain je ne sais qua, don’t you think?
Interesting that you didn't include the 60 year old (in vitro) mom from Alberta too.
Why is that it's always the 'women' and never the men who are the objects of reproduction recriminations?
I recall when Anthony Quinn fathered a child at, what was it, 80 and Pierre Trudeau had a daughter after his retirement.
Cause for winks and back-slapping all over the shop.
Still a pretty sexist society in my view.
alive
3 years ago
Who needs more kids?
the world is over-populated!
Is there any excuse for adding to the problem?
Is it like getting a pet or two because you are bored?
We talk about reducing our impact on the world in our daily consumption, so why add more kids?
To me these are selfish people regardless of gender and monies.
G West
3 years ago
alive
Your last statement is undoubtedly accurate...but focusing attention only upon women and babies seems dishonest and counterproductive to me.
Given what selfishness has wrought at the top end of the income scale, I have some difficulty getting too exercised with a few women who love babies a bit too much.
If were going to make 'breeding' a sin, for me at least, it'll be at the bottom of a rather long list.
Much ado about nothing.
PatrickMcEvoyHalston
3 years ago
Probably right to ease off of Britney and Lindsay, but your
impluse to go after Angelina, is sound.
I agree with you that though Angelina could readily be characterized as monster-superior, the press has wanted to imagine her more as Mother-superior. The reason for this, I think, is that the many of us who were born of mothers who used us as little playthings to ward off depression, and who interpreted our emerging desire to attend to our own needs rather than their own as treachery, see in Angelina some version of the mother who must be praised and placated or else!
Did you know that there are cultures which encourage their kids to play with knives and such. Not for their own good--Angelina's purported motivation--but because kids aren't valued all that much once they become focussed on their own independence. Take New Guinea parenting, for instance:
"There are many ways New Guinea parents demonstrate that when the child cannot be used erotically, it is useless. One is that as soon as infants are not being nursed, they are paid no attention, and even when in danger are ignored. Anthropologists regularly notice that little children play with knives or fire and adults ignore them. Edgerton comments on the practice: 'Parents allowed their small children to play with very sharp knives, sometimes cutting themselves, and they permitted them to sleep unattended next to the fire. As a result, a number of children burned themselves seriously...it was not uncommon to see children who had lost a toe to burns, and some were crippled by even more severe burns.' Langness says in the Bena Bena 'it was not at all unusual to see even very small toddlers playing with sharp bush knives with no intervention on the part of caretakers.' But this is good, say the anthropologists, since when 'children as young as two or three are permitted to play with objects that Westerners consider dangerous, such as sharp knives or burning brands from the fire, [it] tends to produce assertive, confident, and competent children.' Children, they explain, are allowed to 'learn by observations...e.g., the pain of cutting oneself when playing carelessly with a knife.' As Whiting says, when he once saw a Kwoma baby 'with the blade of a twelve-inch bush knife in his mouth and the adults present paid no attention to him,' this was good for the infant, since in this way 'the child learns to discriminate between the edible and inedible.' Margaret Mead is particularly ecstatic about the wisdom of mothers making infants learn to swim early by allowing them to fall into the water under the hut when crawling and slipping through gaps in the floor or falling overboard into the sea because they were 'set in the bow of the canoe while the mother punts in the stern some ten feet away.'
(Lloyd DeMause, "Childhood and Cultural Evolution http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/eln07_evolution.html )
alive
3 years ago
nothing eh?
If someone ends up with 14 kids(sin or not the fact is that there will be 14 more souls to pollute!
We scream at people for driving a gas-guzzler, why not scream at those who provide society with future polluters?
There was a time when parents needed kids in order to provide for the future, but that was a long time ago; let us adjust to what is happening this century!
Every day we see starving people in overcrowded places, and it is obvious to me, that if we help them survive they are going to produce even more starving kids for the next generation to support.
G West
3 years ago
alive
I don't disagree. But I think the alternatives are worse. In some sense we're all in this together; demonizing the people we don't agree with will turn out to be a very slippery slope.
There are lots of folks (with families of whatever size) who probably think our hedonistic consumption threatens 'their' futures too. And I don't disagree with THEM either.
Last word from me.
Fii
3 years ago
Nestingtree said it
Nestingtree said it all.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are to be admired for adopting children, as are all people who do so. I feel sorry for people who feel they need to replicate their genes to fill some ego fix or to give them some kind of purpose in life. And before I hear all the "We're biologically driven to do so"- yes, we are/were. And now I'd say we are at that point where all species, when under extreme environmental stress, reproduce less.
Kudos to the British govt's enviro advisor to speak out like s/he did... a site I have bookmarked for if/when I get the urge myself:
http://www.bcadoption.com/
Fii
3 years ago
??
This doesn't even make sense:
"similar public examinations and interventions aren't being done on the world's most famous over-breeder".
How is three kids over-breeding? To date she bred three and adopted three....
alive
3 years ago
just asking
At times I wonder why certain people post here.
On this tread G.W. Indicates that it is not worth his time to elaborate, so why post in the first place?
This particular gent agrees with my post, yet backs down as if it is a hot potato.
I see no point in posting here if at the same time worrying about “rocking the boat;” as I see it that is what this site is all about!
Political correctness can be overdone!
Our planet is facing huge problems, many caused by us humans; if we refuse to try to solve them it can only get worse.
Overpopulation is as real as global climate change, and it is something we can solve very easily.
What is holding us back is the usual “motherhood and applepie” attitude, that has people scared to challenge religion and cultural values.
Perhaps solving problems is not what this is all about?
ME2
3 years ago
alive
What an incredibly stupid and callous statement :
"Every day we see starving people in overcrowded places, and it is obvious to me, that if we help them survive they are going to produce even more starving kids for the next generation to support"
It is well-known that when living standards and incomes are raised, birth-rates go down.
You had better do some research, alive. Your "Lifeboat Ethics" argument has been fully discredited for at last thirty years now, with the possible exception of people like Rush Limbaugh.
PatrickMcEvoyHalston
3 years ago
Yes ME2, but one doesn't cause the other
Living standards and incomes go up when people start believing everyone DESERVES to live in a better world. This isn't born out of a change of philosophy; instead, a new philosophy emerges naturally from people, owing to slowly improving childrearing over time, who are different/better than previous generations (Lawrence Stone and Lloyd DeMauses' thesis). People aren't homo economicus--ruled by staid but rational monetary concerns. Many wish them such, like to see them as such, but people lust, they love, they hate--they ARE more often than not, best understood as irrational--human. If you are the type to want to know just a few people but very well, and very lovingly, you will not feel the need to have bunches of kids--and you cannot be prompted to have them. You'll have a few--depression or no; despite some tumult, you and they will know real love; and they will be ones who'll make the world a better place (and not indulge in a more sordid one).
alive
3 years ago
typical reaction
Well, thank you for the kind words.
How about you do some studies on overpopulation?
When the Titanic sinks it is too late to say we should have done this or that, and if we want to avoid severe overpopulation the time for action is now!
There is no rational reason for any one to have dozens of kids.
The subject of this article now decided to go on welfare, how does that sit with you?
It upsets me greatly to know that anyone is starving, but I am realistic enough to know that nature will cull species when warranted.
Stump
3 years ago
"Both have similar
"Both have similar priorities. Of hers, Jolie said last week: "I'd say kids first -- kids, woman to Brad, and then my work internationally"
If Jolie really wanted to put her kids first, she wouldn't drag them around the world so much that they're jet-lagged most of the time. She's basically shaving years off their lives with the globe-trotting Narcissism masquerading as do-good adventures.
ME2
3 years ago
Patrick & alive
Patrick, if you are starving or close to it, and if you're not "homo ecnomicus", you're soon to be dead.
alive, your response proves my point. If you are unable to see why, no amount of argument can make you see otherwise.
nightbloom
3 years ago
Bang On
This article hits the nail square on the head. Good stuff.
The difference is totally about class (reinforced by unsalvagable mendaciousness and exploitativeness of the mainstream media). There's also a deep undercurrent of female-on-female misogyny in the venom directed at Suleman.
Moreover, environmentalists who rationalize anti-natalist sentiment using bastardized neo-Malthusian ideology are totally looney. They're post-modern Albigensians. Ditto with Nancy Pelosi's bizarre and strangely misanthropic argument that babies hurt the economy. She sure ain't no economist (and no Roman Catholic to boot). The one over-arching threat to economic prosperity is the artifically depressed birth-rate of the last half-century and the generational "hollowing-out" that has resulted. Environmental damage is caused by the systems we create and the consumption patterns we perpetuate, not by the babies we give life to. Claiming otherwise is a monumental red herring.
G West
3 years ago
A little over the top my friend
It's one of MANY factors but I think one could mount a persuasive argument that it's not the most important one.
Standing in the corner shouting 'more babies, or 'more beans' for that matter, isn't going to change much.
Neither is demonizing the multiparous female (however well-heeled) or the geriatric multi gravida either, as I posted earlier.
My view.
alive
3 years ago
ado about nothing, eh?
ME2
"alive, your response proves my point. If you are unable to see why, no amount of argument can make you see otherwise."
Has it occurred to you that I could say exactly the same about you?
So far your only response has been to belittle me, I don't think that is worthy of you.
G.West
you keep talking about females being singled out here, but this article is about females on their own who deliberately gets impregnated.
Where exactly is the "guilt" of any male in this set-up?
Like it or not there are females who decide to make a living by becoming baby factories.
The question is if we should subsidize them in achieving that goal?
HawkEyes
2 years ago
...flawed
Angelina Jolie has been quoted that she did not use in-vitro for her twins.
Kind of flaws this bitch.
Two things to learn on the net.
Never assume volume creates fact.
If you're gonna be a hater, you've got to have your facts right, or you look worse for your hate on.
The doctor who did this to that woman should be shot.
I think the story here is her obsession, possibly with Jolie. Come on, if Madonna can copycat her...
Poor parents, labeled dysfunctional yet they are the babysitters.
G West
2 years ago
alive
I've already posted a few thoughts here - the comment above was in response to nightbloom's assertion that all the world's economic problems are the result of NOT ENOUGH BABIES.
Maybe you didn't catch that.
Just because I don't agree with your presciption doesn't mean I concur with HIS either.
I don't think it's all that subtle but there you go.
I already posted what I had expected was my last word to you on the subject...you owe me one!
nightbloom
2 years ago
"all the world's economic
"all the world's economic problems are the result of NOT ENOUGH BABIES."
That's not exactly what I said.
The over-arching threat to (future) economic prosperity is the demographic trends incurred by the artificially depressed birthrate (combined with longer life spans at the other end of the life cycle). You can't escape the primacy of demographics over the long term. Even the workforces of China and India will peek and begin their decline by mid-century (which isn't far off). The problem is not overpopulation, the problem is what we're doing with the space and resources we have. The irrational enviro-eccentrics who claim that human life itself is the problem, and who think the human race can contracept and abort its way to an ethical and sustainable society are deluded. They're actually pushing another kind of consumerism, one that seems to recognize no limit to what it can commodify.
G West
2 years ago
Close enough
The one over-arching threat to economic prosperity is the artifically depressed birth-rate of the last half-century and the generational "hollowing-out" that has resulted
And, if you've actually read my postings here, you'll see that I don't disagree it is a problem...but it's not, as you put it, ...The one over-arching threat to economic prosperity .
Hyperbole has its uses, but it tends, in the end, to distract and dilute the point you're trying to make.
In my view.
Adjust your aim and you may hit the target - or at least wound it. This is a job for a precision weapon not the M777 lightweight 155 mm towed howitzer.
Fii
2 years ago
"The problem is not
"The problem is not overpopulation, the problem is what we're doing with the space and resources we have."
And the problem is that 9 out of 10 children being raised in the world today are being raised to be nothing more than consumers who will do nothing more than perpetuate the 'problem of what we're doing with space and resources' (or not doing with them). Thus the theory that more people ADD to the problem.
Seen the movie "Idiocracy" yet??
ME2
2 years ago
babies
Maybe I've got it wrong, but it was my impression that there is a consensus on these Tyee threads - at least amongst us Lefties - that the endless pursuit of "growth" is what fuels our wasteful consumption which in turn drives environmental degadation and unsustainabiliy.
On the opposing side, we also see that pro-business commentators on these sites favour both motherhood and immigration as necessary to sustain growth. And almost invariably, these attitudes are supported by their religious beliefs.
Now, I'd have no problem with them if they recognised overconsumption as a problem to be solved, and were prepared to divert more than a miniscule portion of GNP towards raising the standards in Third World countries, but they do not and are not.
As technology keeps rushing forward, step by incremental step humans are being made redundant as producers of goods and services - even as cannon-fodder, as we will inevitably see when the Taliban gets ground-to-air missiles.
Our future then, if the system continues on its present course, is to be consumers and baby-machines, perhaps even then to be replaced by Orwell's vision of factories producing tailor-made clones.
"Whatever's good for business" they'll say - then as now
rd
2 years ago
Apples and Turnip
A tough slog at trying to draw parallels between Jolie and Suleman. Of course any useful comparison requires balance and that's where this article crashes and burns.
Jolie and spouse have added exactly two mouths to all of humanity. The other four were adopted. Both parents appear to be capable and emotionally stable.
Suleman has brought fourteen new mouths to the human table and she can't feed any of them. Her children will not have the benefit of a financially secure upbringing or emotionally stable parenting. She not only brought these kids into the world, she made sure they were launched into life squarely behind the 8-ball.
The woman is vile.
ME2
2 years ago
rd
"The woman is vile."
I find it hard to believe the intolerances this story has evoked.
Judge not, lest ye be judged