Steve lamented:

Unfortunately there are a lot of grown adults that don't display this kind of maturity.

This was what I was thinking when I posted the poll.  Such chronological adults (including so-called "Objectivists") continue to disappoint with their psychological childishness.  Thanks for posting.

I answered "Yes" because I like to keep things simple.  The main problem I have seen, though, is that even well-intentioned people who marry with mutual plans either to become parents eventually or to remain childfree permanently can still have one party change his or her mind over a number of years.  This is problematic.  I have no easy answers.

The first three replies were excellent individual expressions.  I voted "Other" because it is an individual choice, not a matter of "should."

 

"...should serve as a fundamental "make or break" requirement ..."

 

Before you can prescribe for all people in all contexts, you need to really define your assumptions and show how they are tested for correctness.  In other words, why would having children be more important ("fundamental") than your choice to be business partners?

Laurel and I began not wanting children. Then one came along. It happens.  We have been married 38 years. We knew each other eight weeks when we got married.  (First date was Star Wars on Halloween. We got married on the 30th of December because we were both working New Year's Eve. She was a waitress. I was a cab driver.)

About February, on a white matchbook cover, I drew out our first logo: "T-Square & Flowchart."  We have had several names over the years. Right now, it is "Intentional Privacy" (and I am michael.marotta@intentionalprivacy.com) Last night, Laurel ended five days of bitch-slapping the customer support people at SANS Digital Forensics (http://digital-forensics.sans.org/).  Meanwhile, the Texas State Guard assigned me to the Joint Force Plans section of the Texas National Guard. Sometimes it is like Mr. & Mrs. Smith here: "Rough day?" "Can't talk about it."  Last year, Laurel and I produced a video as a proposal to South by Southwest Interactive.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYwg4HVjU_U

... and our daughter is 36 and long gone to Miami Beach half a lifetime ago.  The kids leave the nest. You always have each other.  Kids are unimportant to the marriage.  I never believed that while raising our daughter, but I do now.

And I want to keep the context clear: "... unimportant to the marriage..."

Long before I met Laurel, I already books sold by NBI on how to raise children. I was pretty clear on the fact that developing the childl's intellect, moral compass, and market skills are the important tasks in parenting.  How you raise a child is important, but not primary to the marriage relationship.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 8/25, 4:01am)

Luke,

Is the pleasure of intercourse with someone you would definitely not want as a co-parent worth the risk of making this person, by accident, into a co-parent of your child, e.g. a one-night stand with a "hot" but otherwise incompatible partner?

In today's world, an intelligent person can have intercourse with almost no risk of pregnancy. Birth control, condoms, alternative positions and abortion make involuntary parenthood unlikely even for the male partner. The key is not to find someone you would have a child with but someone who hates children as much as you do (sarcasm).

It takes a long time before most men meet someone worth having children with, if they ever do. And abstinence is as much an answer as pacifism is to war.

"...the current crop of flighty, flaky, self-entitled, third-wave feminist, postmodern flibbertigibbets dominating First World Western culture."

"I know all about your standards

and if you don't mind my sayin' so

there's not a man alive

who could hope to measure up

to that blend o' Paul Bunyan,

Saint Pat and Noah Webster

you've concocted for yourself

out o' your Irish imagination,

your Iowa stubbornness

and your liberry full o' books!"

-- Mrs Paroo to Marian (the Librarian) Paroo in

The Music Man by Meredith Wilson

Myself, it was only many, many years later, watching A Beautiful Mind that I learned about the value in my own choice, the Nash Optimal Choice.  A thousand years earlier, when I was about 13 or 14, my mother counseled me to start with the smartest girl in the class and work my way down... "Just remember, Michael, you got the girl who was dumb enough to date you."  It worked out well enough (though not mythically perfect) for me.

There's maybe 3 billion women on Earth -- and you cannot find the perfect one. I suggest that the fault lies not in the stars that the women are not desirable. 

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Fortuna fortibus favet was the personal motto of Pliny the Elder who was fascinated by the eruption of Vesusvius which he rushed to study first hand. While at Pompeii, he ordered his ship to rescue fleeing people, but died himself.

Luke, you have a Franklin Planner approach to life.  It works for you. It is not a universal truth.  "By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you will be happy. Otherwise, you will become a philosopher." -- Socrates.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/03, 8:18pm)

Thanks, Luke, and BTW, we see things from our perspective as men, of course, but in truth, my wife chose me and in particular, it was she, not I, who completed five semesters of calculus through differential equations.  Just sayin'... you never know who the dumber partner may be.  You think it is she, but have you ever asked her?

I also await LJT's response.

On the subject of ancient taboos, monogamy, etc., I point out that the Jews are not alone in being matrilineal: the father might be in doubt, but the mother is always known.  I have in the past taken a hard line on the woman's responsibility for her own outcomes.  Yes, if men got pregnant this or that would be different, but we do not. Bottom line. 

This discussion has given me a lot to think about.  I appreciate your starting it and contributing.  We Objectivists know that you have no right to pollute your neighbor's property.  Your property rights cannot violate theirs.  So, how about having children?  Does not the procreation of inferior humans pollute the environment?  If we license cars -- and yes, private roads and all that -- then why not license parenting?  

Yes, some political conservatives will claim that they have a God-given right to increase and multiply, but an objective legal theory may suggest a different answer.

Also, just in closing, I appreciate the questions raised and answered (or not) by various court cases, but lacking an objective standard of law, courts here and there will find all kinds of things.  The Supreme Court is the highest court in the USA, but I am pretty sure that we agree that they erred in Dredd Scott and Plessy vs. Ferguson.  So, too, in the two cases you cited about the adult woman and underage male and the other with the used condom.  You should never buy a television set lest some court hold you responsible for giving your neighbor cancer.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/04, 7:44pm)

There are many people who are willing to set aside liberty in some area, if only because they cannot tolerate some behavior that liberty permits.  In their minds, the right kinds of regulations, license requirements, laws, etc., will sort out that intolerable behavior.

As Objectivists we maintain a sharp line where liberty is protected by property rights and invocations against the initiation of force.  But no matter how tightly we adhere to our line, it won't give us the emotional serenty of accepting behavior we don't approve of.  People will do things that we disapprove of, that we don't want to see, and that we could often show to be self-defeating.... whether it is the abuse of some intoxicating substance, or having kids out of wedlock (out of any stable relationship), or covering themselves in tatoos, or just behaving in rude way or dressing to offend. 

Well... Too bad. 

A real free market place will, over time, provide a way for people to separate such that they don't have to confront with those whose lifestyles they are repelled by... for a price.  Until then, the best thing they can do is learn the art of being more self-accepting, which, strangely enough, has the side effect of being more accepting of others, which in turn leads to more enjoyable life.

Ayn Rand claimed that a factory owner has no right to maintain unsafe working conditions.

I'd have to see how she worded that and the context.  There are a great many unsafe working conditions right now.  Fishing in the Bering Straits, mining, operating many kinds of heavy equipment, working high steel, fire fighting, etc.  I'd say that the only requirment a factory, or business owner, owes a potential employee is an honest description of the working conditions ahead of time, and to not change the level of safety without advance notice.

-------------------

...unsafe working conditions. These are not just things we disapprove of like tattoos.  

But the question is about where do we draw the line when choosing what government should forbid, and what it shouldn't.  And the issue I was addressing is that there are some things that should NOT be addressed by government, even though we have a negative emotional reaction to it.  In otherwords, to be a whole-hearted supporter of liberty asks that we also be more accepting or at least toleratant of things we don't like.

-------------------------

Even if I could prove that I am expert marksman, I would have no right to stand in the middle of a residential neighborhood shooting squirrels out of trees.  

Moral right or legal right?  Who owns the squirrels?  Whose land are you one?  What are the current laws regarding the discharge of a fire arm?  Sorry, but I can't make heads or tails out of this squirrely argument.  What's the point?

-------------------------

People who have children but who are not qualified to be parents threaten your life and property, ... perhaps...

Not qualified?  By what standard are these parents not qualified?   How does this unspecified lack of qualifications threaten my life and property?

Makes no sense.

--------------------------------

Thank you, LJT, for answering my questions satisfactorily.

I think we are in much closer agreement now about your main point in light of the profound psychological need for emotional intimacy we both acknowledge.