The Duggars have a television show; I wonder if there's some sort of tie-in between the companies that do their television show and the Today show.

I'm ambivalent about the Duggars. I fully support their right to live as they want to live, if they are fully self-supporting and able to give their children a loving home. They're not on welfare so are not expecting others to foot the bill for all those children. I've seen a few of the Discovery Channel documentaries about them, and, whilst I don't hold with their Christian beliefs, they seem to be a close and happy family.

I found the show about how they built their own house particularly interesting. Only the parents have their own room. All the other children live in two dormitories, one for the boys, one for the girls. One of the smaller boys was delighted to have found a little hidey-hole in the roof space where he could have his own little private space (yeah right, I bet that didn't last two minutes after it was shown on TV. Unless they don't have a TV ...)

But I do wonder what will happen if (when) the older children start to kick back and experience a little more of the outside world.

Dad needs a Playstation or something. Sheesh.

I think the fact that all the children's names start with J, and that the MSNBC article referred to them as "natural children" (are adopted or IVF kids "unnatural children"? WTF?), probably creep me out more.

But there's something a little pathological about how the story's presented here (I don't know if this framing reflects reality): They have a miscarriage, blame birth control, and then basically go on a holy crusade against it.

The whole Quiverfull movement seems creepy, I guess. Partly because of the name -- it turns my stomach every time I see it -- and partly because it very explicitly is a feminist backlash movement. Woman = womb, that's it, and stop trying to get all uppity. Bah.

This letter is rather fascinating. I suppose if you're against all forms of birth control except withdrawal, you might end up frustrated enough to figure that "birth control doesn't work" and having dozens of children is preferable to having bad sex that gets you pregnant anyway.

I had one kid. It was all I could do, and, I think, all my wife could do (although we'd have had another, if I had agreed).

I can't even imagine.

On preview. . .for years we basically used withdrawal, after we got tired of the diaphram, and we only had a kid when we wanted one. . .It was OK for both of us.

The Yates' were part of Quiverful. I have absolutely no fucking sympathy for that man. I remember reading at the time that when Rusty Yates came back to the house, the police wouldn't let him come in but asked him if he'd like a glass of water; he told them most likely there weren't any clean glasses, which I inferred to mean he wasn't helping with the housework (of course that's the WOMAN'S job--even when she's gone through most of the top ten stresses during the past year-- *snarl*) .

Gah. Yuck. I've seen two of the docos, and there's so much about their lifestyle that grates - all that land but crappy food (tater tot casserole? seriously?), the parents have delegated much of the responsibility for actual parenting to the elder kids, the lack of inidviduality and privacy, plus the general creepiness of the Quiverful Dominionists. Blergh.

Big families can be happy and loving, but this is just breeding ignorance and, as occhiblu notes, perpetuating woman as womb.

Put me down for fully 'creeped out' by the Duggars and the whole 'Quiverfull' business. (Also, could they have picked a more creep-inducing term? Qui

Sperm exists in pre-come, so withdrawal isn't really that effective.

Put me down for fully 'creeped out' by the Duggars and the whole 'Quiverfull' business. (Also, could they have picked a more creep-inducing term? Quiverfull? Ugh. Every time I hear it, I can't help thinking of some sort of quivering ... nevermind.)

The ability to consciously regulate our own child-bearing, and *not* reproduce like crazed weasels at every possible opportunity until our bodies wear out and we drop dead, seems like an essential human characteristic. There's something inherently creepy about deciding to throw that away intentionally, and just breed, breed, breed. It's up there with someone sitting down and deciding, quite intentionally, that they're just going to eat until they can no longer move and until they die. Just because you *can* do it, doesn't mean it's a good idea. And that's without even getting into the whole issue of treating women as nothing but a baby factory on legs.

On one hand, my quasi-libertarianism says that they ought to be able to do whatever they want, including popping 'em out like Tribbles, but on the other hand I don't buy for a second that they're not externalizing at least some of the costs of their behavior on the public, or will eventually. And frankly I'm not big on the idea that I'm bankrolling their little venture, even if it's through something as indirect as child tax credits.

As long as it's only fringe groups here and there doing it, I suppose it's not worth navigating the minefield of trying to regulate; but that doesn't mean I think they shouldn't be subject to criticism for it.

I think I'll go write a check to Planned Parenthood now.

I have to say I find this man and his family far more offensive than the Duggars, probably because I'm helping to pay for them out of the vast amount of money I pay in tax every year.

Is this viral?

I remember when the initiation was far more lucrative painful.

I have to say I find this man and his family far more offensive than the Duggars

Anarchy Polygamy in the UK!

“I wasn’t expecting that,” the 20-year-old said. “But it’s been nine months [since the birth of the last baby], so yeah.”

YOUR PARENTS LIFESTYLE IS VILE AND HARMFUL TO SOCIETY AND THE PLANET STOP ACTING LIKE IT IS NORMAL

Also

The older girls, Jana, Jill, Jessa and Jinger, picked out an outfit for their mom designed for “in-between” stages of pregnancy.

Talk about taking a bad idea too far.

Well, I have to say they don't bother me a bit. My favorite book growing up was The Family Nobody Wanted, about the Carl and Helen Doss, who adopted 12 children, most of them of mixed race, which was pretty difficult to do in the 1930s (the Dosses were white).

The quiverfull thing doesn't bother me either, although I admit I didn't look carefully at the site. I guess I'm just thinking of quiver as the thing you keep arrows in, not the verb.

Of course, I also don't have any children. :)

Anarchy Polygamy in the UK!

I'm pretty sure my hall neighbours are polygamists - two flats with a woman and young children in each, next to each other, and I see the same man coming out of both with pretty equal regularity.

I knew two of the 63 children of this guy. They were really needy, attention-seeking girls at 16.

The Duggars kind of creep me out in some ways, but live and let live - my taxes don't seem to be paying for their lifestyle, so it's not really any of my business.

In fact, here are the Dosses, on Groucho Marx. They look pretty nervous.

I'm with gaspode- the Duggars don't bother me much, everybody seems relatively happy and healthy.

JanetLand: The Dosses provided loving homes to children who had no where else to turn.

The Duggars believe that the key to their salvation is producing humans, lots and lots of humans, as many as they can physically produce, and who cares about quality of life? When money gets tight, they'll go on TV so that they can afford more disposable diapers and Costco-sized bags of processed potatoes.

I respect their right to live their life in any way they chose, and I respect her right to make reproductive choices based on her own beliefs, but I condemn the fact that we have turned the family into a circus act.

Furthermore, it gives me a sick sort of pleasure to think that every boy she bears has a greater likelihood of being gay.

I have a huge prejudice against breeding but I realize it's just a sort of bigotry and generally try to keep it to myself. So yeah- these guys really bother me.

It's not about tax dollars. It's about planet resources. 18 first world level resource consumers? Brrr...

Arrows for the War

But while home-schoolers may be more receptive to the idea of unplanned families, most prospectives actually learn about the Quiverfull conviction through the movement's literature: Pride's and the Hesses' books, Nancy Campbell's Be Fruitful and Multiply, Rachel Scott's Birthing God's Mighty Warriors or Sam and Bethany Torode's Open Embrace. And most people find these books after hearing the theory that birth-control pills are an abortifacient (that hormonal contraception such as the pill can cause the "chemical abortion" of accidentally fertilized eggs). This belief is something the Quiverfull conviction has in common with the larger Christian right, which has recently embraced a radically expanded "prolife" agenda that encompasses not just abortion but birth control and sexual abstinence. Taking a page from the antiabortion movement, anticontraception activists have gradually broadened their aims, moving from defending individual "conscientiously objecting" pharmacists who refuse to dispense contraceptives on moral grounds to extending the same "right of refusal" to corporate entities such as insurers, to an out-and-out offensive against birth control as the murder-through-prevention of 3,000 lives a day and also as the future undoing of Western civilization.

And an interesting take on the movement from an ex-communicated member:

The full quiver people never talk about the victims of the movement, other than to distance themselves, to explain how it is that the victims are aberrations. They don’t talk about women like Andrea Yates and her children. Yates stoned her kids in her back yard, then drowned them, believing she was a terrible mother and that her children would be better off with God than with her. They don’t talk about women like Kimberly Forder, who with her patriarch husband adopted seven children of color after bearing three biological children. Following the admonitions of some “quiver full” leaders to be sure to properly chastise and discipline her kids, she and her husband abused one of their adopted children so badly that he died. It was only this year, four years after the child’s death, when an adult biological daughter charged her adult brother with rape that the story was told. The family was in Liberia at the time, in the mission field. The full quiver folks don’t talk about full quiver moms who follow the advice of people like Mike and Debi Pearl and what happens to their children. They don’t talk about the deep depression into which the wife of the head of Full Quiver Mission has fallen, or why. They don’t publicize the stories of the women I know– women who have lived in, birthed in, delapidated trailers or shacks without power or running water because their husbands wanted to live “debt-free,” women who have survived on $100 per month for food for seven or eight kids and $25 per month for clothes for those kids, for years, because that’s all their patriarch husbands would allow them. They don’t publicize the many women who have suffered rapes, beatings, and been told by their “elders” they should pray about it, be a better wife.

Those of us who left that world — we know what happened to us there. We know what happened to our children there. Our grown children know what happened there. We see these articles and know all that they don’t tell, about us, and our children. I am horrified by the news in these links I posted that the Southern Baptist Convention in cahoots with the Roman Catholic church (and only those in my old world know how ironic is that cahoots-dom) is moving in the direction of teaching the joys of the full quiver, all the time, for all women.

The shiny, apparently happy faces of the patriarchs and their full quiver wives and children in articles, on television (and even in the supposed “exposes”, there is, too often, a sort of subtextual admiration, a thinly-veiled reverence for this lifestyle) are an offense to all of us, women and children, who have been harmed by the patriarchs responsible for these teachings. I am going to be telling the truth about that, for as long as I have a voice.

While they do seem happy, I keep wondering how much if it is a publicity thing now. Did they time this just for the Today show? To get another Discovery show out of it?

1. Freezing in the office today.
2. Stomach hurts real bad.
3. Don't want to do nothing this weekend.

This belief is something the Quiverfull conviction has in common with the larger Christian right, which has recently embraced a radically expanded "prolife" agenda that encompasses not just abortion but birth control and sexual abstinence.

Like I said, I respect their right to choose the reproductive options concurrent with their beliefs, although they will not extend the same respect to me.

While they do seem happy,

"seem" is a big word for me, there. We grew up pretty isolated, but not as isolated as that bunch. You're
"happy" because you don't know what else to feel. Bad feelings are out - how can you not love your parents or siblings or God? It's the extreme form of doublespeak - it's doublelife. If there's no vocabulary for loyal dissent then there won't be any - every cult ever has thought that way. The only comfort I have that is that it backfires and dies eventually, because something that cold that gets that big will fall apart, because that stuff just doesn't scale well. But that's long term. In the meantime, real people are harmed, real lives get destroyed.

I keep wondering how much if it is a publicity thing now. Did they time this just for the Today show? To get another Discovery show out of it?

Hey, if we didn't have the Discovery Freak Show (er, um, Health Channel), who would we laugh at? It's a strange dymanic, we're using them as negative examples, and they're doing the same to us. It is a completely symbiotic relationship.

Ha, OK, I posted in the wrong thread.

Like I said, I respect their right to choose the reproductive options concurrent with their beliefs, although they will not extend the same respect to me.

Except that during his term in the Arkansas House of Reps, Duggar actively worked to outlaw abortion, introducing a bill that would have made it illegal. So there's an intersection of private/public here; it's not just that they have a lot of children (which I would totally agree is basically a "live and let live" sort of thing), but that their having of all those children is a political statement that they're backing up with public actions that attempt to limit women's rights, and part of a movement that they're publicizing that's also a specific push for women to give up bodily autonomy.

The thing that bugs me about the Duggars is that they don't encourage their children to go to college.

Speaking as somebody who lives in Arkansas, Jim Bob's involvement in politics kinda creeps me out, yeah.

I bet dollars to donuts that not one child in the Duggar family is getting the full attention they need.

Some interesting comments on the Catholic Answers forum:

These past 12 or 13 years, our practice at Christmas has been to give each of our children one special gift-- ie rollerblades or something of that size and two smaller gifts-- totalling three gifts-- the same number gifts scripture records Baby Jesus received at his birth.

it wasn't always this way. years ago, i'd begin Christmas shopping in august and continue purchasing "cute stuff" or things "he'll love" almost up till Christmas Eve.

those Christmas mornings were disgusting. the kids would tear open one of the dozen boxes designated for them, look briefly at the new toy and grab for the next wrapped package, while tossing the latest gift into the heap along side them on the floor. until the last box was opened, they were grabbing for "what's next."

the Duggers just gave birth to their seventeenth child. i've read quotes and seen them on TV since the birth of their fourteenth child. the single most disturbing thing about the Duggers is this: at the very moment they are first holding in their arms an astonishing, unique, unrepeatable, eternal gift from God, they are already looking for the next one.

I have given birth to ten live children and lost two. when i am holding my newborn baby in my arms, i have absolutely no thought to who might come next. i want only one thing-- to spend the rest of my life learning who this person is, feeling completely humbled that God has given us this gift of this child.

when people learn we are parents of ten, have homescooled for seventeen years, are actively involved with our church (the general family bio that follows us like a billboard) they often ask, "didja see that family with 16 kids on TV? are you like them?"

no. we are not like them. my children have never been required to dress alike because they are unique people, not part of a set. when they approach their first birthday, we are not actively trying to refill their baby slot. we like them to be the baby for a long time.

they are not expected to all learn violin. my pantry does not look like the new, bright, clean A+P superstore. our home looks like real people live here. even for a TV interview, this place would appear to be as loved as it is.

i don't think the problem is some perceived overpopulation or that the Duggers have too many children.

instead i am sad that as the Dugger children emerge into the world, perfectly brand new from God, their parents can't seem to sit still long enough to deeply relish that particular gift of that particular unique child. instead they seem like my spoiled kids on Christmases of old, insisting, "what's next?"

and

from another thread. Amaris wrote (I hope you don't mind my repeating this.)

Mrs. Duggar keeps the newest baby as her "buddy" until he or she is 6 months old. Then the baby is weaned and handed off to an older child, and the child becomes the baby's "buddy", ie parent. They are responsible for feeding, clothing, cleaning, entertaining, comforting, and teaching the younger one.

The breakdown of chores also makes me uncomfortable - the lists have things like an older boy's chore being to walk the dog, which his younger sister gets to cook dinner for the entire family, and another daughter does all the laundry.

i didn't know this but i'm not surprised, really. i just don't get a strong sense that this family primarilly values the human dignity of each child. i wrote PRIMARILLY. it seems to be a secondary or even tertiary concern. it shouldn't be.

i had also forgotten to mention the seventeen J names. i think there is a lot wrong with this picture.

someone had written they are living debt free. they should be. he's a state senator and they're on TV a lot.
With out going into a lot of detail about why I think this, I am just going to say, that I agree with you....
One thing I will say, & this is no secret: The Duggars deliberately wean each baby as soon as possible, in order to make it more likely that they can get pregnant again sooner....despite the fact that it is far healthier for the babies to have breastmilk for a longer time.....
I guess I just feel sorry for those little babies. Brought into this world, so innocent, & handed off to siblings.....They need their mama, not another child, taking care of them....

These comments are interesting to me because they are from a group who, despite other possible differences, would seem most likely to be the most uncritical of large families, many of whom have quite large families (by modern standards) themselves. Personally, I wouldn't have 18 dogs, or cats, or hamsters, or pairs of shoes.

bet dollars to donuts that not one child in the Duggar family is getting the full attention they need.

How much attention does a child need? I feel there's an unspoken rule about child care that if you're not actively and directly interacting with your child every moment of the day, you're a bad parent, but I don't believe that's true. Criticism on that level seems weak- either the Duggars have so many and nobody ever gets any alone time, which is OMG BAD, or they have so many children and nobody gets any attention, with is OMG BAD. Who could win.

So, how many is too many? Where should the Duggars have stopped?

I think those are different arguments though, TPS. Losing the main attention of your parents at under one year old, and then, later, not having any privacy or alone time as a kid aren't colliding problems. One can still argue that the infant needs direct attention from the parent for a longer period, and also that as an older child he or she needs the option of some personal space.

So what is their fascination with "J" names? (I haven't read most of the material linked here, I'm just curious about that.)

So, how many is too many? Where should the Duggars have stopped?

I don't think it's a matter of a number, Janet (at least for me), it's more the way they seem to go about it. Using their ability to pop out babies as a political and financial tool is just sorta skeevy.

I think those are different arguments though, TPS.

Exactly- they're different arguments, but all thrown out under the same umbrella. I think it's just peoples way of judging others whose life choices are different- oh, well, they're raising kids differently than the way I was raised and the way everyone like me was rasised, surely they're wrong and bad, surely the kids are (fill in the blank with all sort of contradictory "negative" things).

They're not really all that contardictory, though, TPS - surely you're not arguing that the needs of an infant are exactly the same as the needs of a fifteen-year-old.

I have this same caution, TPS... do I want to be judged for having no children? Of course not. I don't. ...and it gets way goofy when you start trying to decide where to draw the line (One, maybe two is fine. Or three. Okay, five is still good, but six is bad? etc.)

That's why I was curious about the opinions of other groups who don't have any problem with big families at all, and what their reactions are. Arguments like this coming from a woman who is the mother of 10 holds more weight than anything I might conjecture.

I would agree with you, TPS, except that the family is 100% willing to put their whole life out in public on television, and I don't think they're doing it for the money. They are proclaiming, "Look at us, look at our family; look at how we live practical, easy lives filled with love for our children. Look how we suffer none of the problems those other, more modern families suffer." In other words, they're marketing themselves, their lifestyle. In this case, I don't think it's unfair to them or to other families to say, "It might not be safe; it might not be loving; it might not be perfect."

Unless you want to argue that we shouldn't judge, say, tobacco companies for marketing cigarettes as safe, effective anti-depressants.

I'm with BoPo, mostly. They seem to be making a point. I don't have any trouble with large families - many religious families have all the children they are granted, if you will, and developing world farming families are large. Against those families, which might number, what - 5 - 8 kids for say, your Mennonite neighbors, or even more in the developing world scenario, what - 12? Eighteen seems like That's what they DO. It's beyond a religous rejection of birth control - the imaginary present day 7 kid religious of whatever stripe family has some spacing - I can imagine Mom getting a reasonable break and having some say about when she is ready to have relations again. Or if she is instructed to submit, the father having some consideration of her physical and mental health. The Dugges don't sit well with me well, but I would never protest them or accuse them of child abuse or anything else. And mudgirl has a good point. They have definate negative views about how other people use their bodies.

They creep me way the fuck out and no, I don't think it's okay on any level to just go on having child after child after child in a world of declining resources. I don't give a damn that they're living debt free and my money's not paying for it - at some point, personal choices become political. Live simply that others may simply live: replace yourself and stop. Yeah, I have two kids - one of the fathers of those two kids has no other child and the other father has one, so my son is my replacement. Now, a lot of my friends have three kids and that's fine, yeah, I know people with four kids and so on and I still like them and I'm not generally in favor of draconian inflexible rules, but 17 children in today's world is ridiculous at best and horrifically wasteful at worst. Yes, I'm judging. And I'm judging them fucked up.

And I won't even go into what I think about it from a feminist point of view and/or from a child advocate and a political point of view - hint: I'm not in favor. But I kind of feel about it the way I do about teen pregnancy - it's one of those flash points where my live and let live ethos collides with my desire to be the evil overlady of the universe and enforce some rules: there is no reason, in the 21st century, for any child to bear a child or for any family to keep on having child after child after child. Enough is enough.

This family and its advocacy activities creep me out a bit, too. I believe in 'live and let live,' and certainly am doing so, but at the same time they are in the public square, advancing an agenda, and it's okay to discuss that agenda in both positive and negative terms.

bet dollars to donuts that not one child in the Duggar family is getting the full attention they need.

I know a lot of people from big families, and this is one thing I wouldn't worry about. The dynamics of big families are quite different, but no less loving or attentive. In fact, in some cases they are more loving and attentive than small families. This too has good and bad repercussions. My friend Rich who is the 8th of 9 talks about the constant activity, the closeness with his brothers with whom he shared a room, the passels of friends and the way there was always someone to talk to or play a game with. On the other hand, he felt like he had way more than two parents, had a hard time getting listened to, and certainly wasn't the center of attention in the way an only child can be. Their family is very tight today and at least as healthy as any other family I know. Rich himself is among the friendliest, most social people I've ever known - his interpersonal skills are insanely good. HE's the type who can find something in common with anyone.

I grew up in a part of New Jersey that was full of big families - Irish Catholic families. A family with 5 or 6 kids was not unheard of; there were several in my school. Apart from the sort of 'tribe brand' the families had ("He's a Connolly!"), they were like any other kids.

Bigger families were the norm until recent decades, and they're not inherently bad for children, I don't think. Remember that the older ones help raise and care for and teach the younger ones. Yes, that can make olders resent youngers sometimes, but also creates a lifelong bond and helps the olders mature. They work together as families in ways more complicated than simple families. But I don't worry that they're not getting enough attention. If anything, when the adolescent years come around, it's probably too much.

I'm sure it's 100% family dependent. I deleted a big long story about my mother's childhood, growing up as the 4th of 7 children, but it got a little tl;dr. Suffice to say that I believe some parents bear more children than they can emotionally care for. Sometimes that number is 7, and sometimes it's 2, and sometimes it's 1.

At the same time, it's really not my place to make that judgement.

Miko, I knew the "Connollys"! And the "Helds", and in St. James, the "Devines". The Helds were my best friends' family - seven kids in all. My best friend was the eldest - she left home at 18 to get married just to get out of the house. No privacy, too many rules, etc. I loved her family. I only had my brother, and I wanted the noise of a big family. Now I have four kids (two my own, two bonus kids) and I know I never could have had so many kids. I just don't have the patience.

Taz's links said what I feel. The Duggars just don't seem to value each child for it's individuality and uniqueness. It just seems to me like a contest to them "Let's see how many kids we can have before Mom loses her fertility!!" And I have no objection to older kids helping out, but I draw the line at making an older sibling totally responsible for a younger one. Parents should be doing the parenting, not passing it off on their kids.

I've still been thinking about this. Miko, you are right, about some people thriving in big families.

One of my oldest sibling's friend is a very successful woman in my city, and her liscence plate reads "9 of 11". She is very social, she has had many wonderful careers, including political event-throwing for our former governor and current mayor.

But, she's what, close to 65? And came from a farm family. So she's a generation older than me, and a late born for such a large family. So while I can find her family natural, in some way, it's not the case now. Now, you have 11 kids, you are making some kind of statement, a statement that jars me in some way that I admit, I can't fully articulate.

And we don't know how much is nature vs. nurture, personality wise. As an introvert, I would feel for a kid who wanted space and couldn't find any. I'm actually a five of five, but was the only one in the house due to massive age gap. Would I be less introverted if I had been closer in age to my siblings? No idea. Interesting question, because extroversion is generally rewarded. (And I don't have a problem with that.)

Also, a big family in our generation (Miko) was what, about five to seven. The same could be said now, but more so due to blended families. redvixen's family, for example, or my very competent co-woker, who has two from her first and two with her second. (She's officially, surgically, done now. Her family brings her joy, and I would NEVER think to question her decisions.)

There is a huuge difference between those numbers and eighteen.

How many cesarians has that woman had? How many CAN one have? I don't know, I have no idea, but it seems intuitively dangerous. I could be wrong.

And mgl, there is a down side to declining populations, too. Social Security, yah? So these people may be making up for me, IF they manage, as a group, to become productive members of society. Although I feel that's more a policy issue than a "let's all breed" issue - but look at some other countries' fertility promotion plans.

I was going to do a Quiverfull post on MetaFilter but I decided against it because I thought it would degenerate into a Christian-bashing LOL-fest, which I find quite distasteful.

I'm glad that people were able to talk about it more rationally and respectfully here.

Miko, I knew the "Connollys"! And the "Helds", and in St. James, the "Devines".

OMG I totally know who you're talking about.

And the Woods brothers...bet you knew them too!

Anyway. I agree there's a complexity to it. Like everything with families, this will all vary. 20 is definitely extreme - I can't even think of an era in history when 20 children would have been seen as totally normal. It does seem as though this family welcomes the stunt aspect and the media attention. I dunno. I'll be lucky to get 1. I don't think too many will be rushing to follow this family's example.

Heh, this is what I think.

I think they are a creepy and distasteful family. I feel bad for those kids.

Uh disclaimer, "uterus" would be more accurate. ;-)

I was one of five kids. None of us got the attention we needed. Attention from an older sibling may help but it's not the same as parental attention.

> And mgl, there is a down side to declining populations, too. Social Security, yah?

I'm not really sure that justification holds much water. I've heard it fairly often from religious/social conservatives and I'm not buying it.

If Social Security requires a constant or increasing population in order to not collapse, then Social Security is dangerously flawed. Full stop.

Eventually, we're going to hit some sort of hard limit on the human population. Chemical fertilizers and petrochemicals bought us a lot of time, and maybe if we're really clever we can make room for another few generations of unconstrained growth, but eventually, good old Thomas Malthus is going to have the last laugh when our bag of tricks turns up empty. It's pretty irresponsible to base long-term policies on unsustainable assumptions like endless population growth; doing so will just put us in an even more tenuous position when we discover the inevitable limiting condition.