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Date: | Mon, 13 Jan 1997 10:00:46 -0000 |
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I live in a place where there is competition among the health ignorant (1/3
the population) to
have lots of babies as fast as possible. People thought I should be
pregnant instead of nursing a two-year-old. (I was pregnant and nursing a
two-year-old. Hah on them!)
And even with the population that
wants to have lots of babies, some of them are ridiculous. When I see Yad
Eliezer adds advertising for us to give them Tzedaka so they can give ABM
to poor families with ten children my blood pressure goes up. The kids
are running around with snotty runny noses and look anemic. I know a woman
who told me she was afraid to have sex with her husband because she didn't
want to get pregnant again. She had 12 kids already.
I also think this habit of bringing unhealthy children into the world is
part of the fight between the secular and religious. It's not just that we
have lots of babies, they also look unhealthy and to a large part many of
them don't get the parental attention most kids need to thrive.
Fine, I perfectly understand making up the population, but there is no
excuse for
bringing 15 unhealthy children into the world when maybe you could have 10
healthy ones. . And all a woman
would have to do is Bf for a year. (They marry around 20) These women who
have 15-20 kids are taking big risks. I don't think that should be
halachically mandated by any standpoint, population increase or not.
I have a friend who has 14 children, but she started at 18 and she Bf each
for at least one year.
I was married at 21. If I have a kid every 3 years by the time I'm 41 I'll
have 7. (My
first two were 1 1/2 years apart, never again. It's not good for mom, dad
or the children themselves.
If I had gone at the rate we started when we got married, I'd have had 12
eventually also. What health problems would I have had along with the
children? What about the children themselves? I don't think that children
who are so closely spaced are very happy.
SInce the majority of my population accepts that 6 kids is a nice healthy
number, there is no reason why the rabbis here can't more readily encourage
Bf, but they don't because they're told by doctors that NFP doesn't work.
They're not told that it depends on how often the baby feeds, just that it
doesn't work. Many are also under the impression that ABM is equal to Bm
(also thanks to doctors), and so therefore don't encourage Bf so much.
Granted ABM is better than it was 100 years ago, but it's not equal to Bm
by any stretch of the imagination.
Breastmilk "The Real Thing"
Nofia
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