Sunday, August 28, 2011

Women ingesting placenta after birth

I had heard of this before, but I recently saw a story on CTV about it, where the midwife offering the service of encapsulating women's placentas after they give birth says that other mammals eat their placentas after giving birth, so "it seems like something humans should be doing as well."

The reason that other mammals eat the placenta after giving birth is so that predators that could eat the newborn babies aren't attracted by the smell, not because of any health benefits. Humans don't have to worry about predators trying to eat their babies.

Other things that mammals do include eating the newborns' defecation and drinking their urine and eating any offspring with physical deformities. So of course humans should be doing that too, right?

A woman interviewed in the piece aired on CTV claimed that when she takes her placenta pills, she feels like she has more energy, and produces more breast milk. It's entirely possible that any perceived benefits could be attributed to the placebo effect or a confirmation bias.

In my search to find some scientific data on this subject, all I could find was a study from the 1950s on 210 women. I couldn't find any information more recent than that.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

The "brat" ban

Or as I think it would be more accurately called - the "bad parents" ban.
Society has been putting up with badly behaved kids for far too long. Kids who run around in restaurants, bumping into the servers and making them drop (and sometimes break) things. Kids who run around in stores and bump into people or knock things off the shelves. Kids who just scream while their parents sit there ignoring them, while their screaming brat annoys everyone around them. Why do they do these things? Because their parents don't make them stop doing those things. Because there are no consequences for the kids for doing those things.
Most of the parents of these kids would try to justify it by saying "they're just kids", but it is possible to have well behaved kids. If your kids run around like wild animals, it's because you haven't taught them any different.
(On a related note, my dogs are better behaved than most kids these days).

Interestingly enough, it seems to be the parents who let their kids run around wild who make the most fuss about this ban.

This is not a childfree vs. parents issue. There are a lot of parents who agree with the "brat" ban as well. When they pay for a babysitter so they can go out for a night with the grown-ups, the last thing they want is to hear someone else's kid screaming, crying, or running around and causing trouble, ruining it for everyone else.

Some parents are whining "have some compassion for the children."
How about you have some compassion for the people who are suffering hearing damage due to your kid relentlessly screaming? (A child's screaming can be up to 110 decibels. Anything over 85 decibels can cause hearing damage).

Some parents say things like "how would you have felt as a child if you were excluded from everything?"
Well, as a child, I was excluded from most things my parents did. When my parents went out, my siblings and I stayed home with a babysitter. We rarely went out with my parents. That's the way it was, then (and not all that long ago). We didn't go everywhere with my parents, and we survived. It's not going to kill your kids to not take them everywhere with you. Some places just aren't appropriate for young children.

And before you panic, thinking that pretty soon you won't be able to take your kid out in public anywhere, there are currently only a handful of businesses doing this. Even if it spreads like wildfire and businesses around the world adopt the "brat ban", there will still be places for you to take your kids.

This is a backlash against all of the badly behaved kids whose parents don't discipline them.
If you want someone to blame for this, look in the mirror. Don't blame childfree people and label us as "child haters".

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Are we heading for an idiocracy?

I watched the movie Idiocracy the other day, and it got me thinking. Everywhere you look, it seems like stupid people are breeding like rabbits, while more intelligent people have few or no children.
Even though it's a comedy, I think the first 10 minutes of Idiocracy illustrates this concept well.

A certain amount of intelligence is genetic (genotypic IQ). Some scientists estimate that to be as much as 70%. And more intelligent people have fewer children than less intelligent people. In the US, average SAT scores by state were compared with fertility rates (number of children a person has) by state, and found that the more intelligent a person is, the fewer children they have. (Another study showing the correlation between education and fertility can be found here).

Additionally, a study conducted at the University of Ulster found that the world's IQ is declining. They found that from 1950 - 2000, the world's IQ declined by 0.86 IQ points. They project that between 2000 and 2050, the world's IQ will further decline by 1.28 IQ points.

So it seems that society really is getting dumber.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Childless couples have a higher rate of divorce?

This really surprised me. I heard once that couples with twins, triplets, quadruplets etc. had a higher rate of divorce than couples with fewer children (which isn't actually true, but then again, I heard it from Kate Gosselin), I thought that if that was true, then couples without children must have a much lower rate of divorce than the average. When I began researching it, I found out how wrong I was.
According to Divorcerate.org, "Sociologists believe that childlessness is also a common cause of divorce. The absence of children leads to loneliness and weariness and even in the United States, at least 66 per cent of all divorced couples are childless."

That might be true, but I think that a big part of it is the fact that since there are no children involved, couples don't feel the need to stay together, as many couples with children do for the sake of the children.
This quote also seems to suggest that these couples want children and can't have them, which causes problems in the marriage. This obviously isn't the case for childfree couples.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Considering getting a tubal ligation

I've been considering getting a tubal ligation for about 12 years, but when I think about actually starting the process and making an appointment, I hesitate. I know I never want to have kids, but the permanence of having my tubes tied makes me hesitate. It doesn't make any sense.
I've been thinking about it today, and even if I had a kid now, (I'd be 35 when the baby was born) I would be 58 when they graduated from high school. I would probably be at least 60 before they moved out of the house. That means that the best years of my life would be gone - devoted to changing diapers, potty training, dealing with temper tantrums, piles and piles of laundry, after school activities, homework, etc. etc. etc. Not to mention all of my disposable income would be gone. I'd never be able to go anywhere unless I either take the kid with me, find a babysitter, or don't go.
I don't want to be tied down like that.

A couple of years ago, I told myself that if I still haven't changed my mind by the time I'm 35, I'll get my tubes tied. Maybe in 3 months when I turn 35 (lol), I won't be so hesitant.