Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
As to the procreation thing, ... it appears the less dough you have the bigger the family you have...
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From something I read rather recently, this observation is more or less true, but the cause/effect is in doubt. They've known for 20-30 years that the best predictor of future economic hardship for a given household is the number of dependant children, to an extent that blows race, education and current economic status away. But it isn't clear if people already disadvantaged by lower social class, lower economic status or lower educational attainment choose to have more children, or if instead people who have more children suffer economic distress, loose social status and achieve lower educational levels (largely due to the family's time and economic resources being more thinly spread over many). Not that the two are mutually exclusive, of course.
There have also been lots of studies of why children from large families (whether extended or "lots of children" types) have much more trouble succeeding in higher education, which sociologists generally believe stems from their usually being socialized from a young age to accept authoritarian power and social structures (which are common in large families, simply because they are necessary to maintain order). Kids from large families often have difficulty interacting with "superiors" (i.e.: teachers) as fallable (or inferior) equals, are more used to being told what to do than thinking about what they want to do for themselves, and tend to associate self-assertion (and particularly intellectual self-assertion, which is much more threatening to the legitimacy of an entrenched authority than simple ornrieness or aggressiveness) with punishment rather than praise; whereas children from small families have usually learned that a thoughtful argument or negotiation can often convince an authority figure to change its mind. I haven't read anything that correlating Catholicism with the "accepting hierarchical authoritarianism" educational issue, but I suppose you can draw your own conclusions.
