Case study of democracy: the Australian electoral system

I am absolutely amazed by what I have read on the net regarding the administration of the US Presidential Election. I cannot believe that a country which (rightly) prides itself on being one of the world's first democracies is willing to tolerate a electoral system with such gaping flaws (IMO) within it.

A quick summary of areas where I think the Australian system works better than the US system (as far as I understand it):
1. an independent national electoral body who is in charge of voter registrations, running the polling (including absentee voting and pre-polling), and setting the boundaries of the electorates/boundaries - ie. no govt (esp state govts) get to decide how the voting is done
2. Compulsory voting - and I know this is a controversial point to many. As an adjunct to this, I think that holding the election on a Saturday is better than holding it on Tuesday.
3. consistent voting/balloting systems across elections at all three levels of government
4. ease of voting (largely thanks to point 1) including short waits to vote (less than half an hour), sufficient ballot papers for all (no electronic system), and ability to vote anywhere in Australia, rather than being required to vote at one particular booth
5. the role of political party participants as scrutineers during the counting process, and reconciliation of ballot papers outgoing to ballot papers which are counted

Below is explanation of how the Australian electoral system works, as a way of illustrating the administrative requirements of running such a system [if I have made any mistakes, please let me know and I will edit accordingly]:

There are a number of fundamental differences between the Australian and US system. First is that voting is compulsory - if you are over 18, then you must register to vote, and you must vote. There are fines for failure to vote, though AEC will accept excuses (eg. if you are overseas or sick).

Second is that we don't have a President, so we do not have a Presidential election. We have a Prime Minister, who is elected by the House of Representatives - so the party in power in the Parliament is always the same as the Prime Minister (leaving aside the possibility of minor parties controlling the balance of power in the House, which hasn't happened for more than sixty years). The system of voting for the House of Representatives is quite similar to the US House system, I believe - there is a preferential voting system, which means that you must number all the boxes on your ballot paper. If your first preferred candidate is eliminated from the race (ie. they get least votes in the first round of voting), they will count your vote towards your second preferred candidate; if your second preferred candidate is eliminated, they count your third preferred, etc. The Senate is also similar to US Senate - that's because we copied the US system.

Third, There are independent electoral bodies - the federal one is (not surprisingly) known as the Australian Electoral Commission aka AEC - the AEC oversees the federal election as well as some local council elections (there are three tiers of government in Australia - arguably too many for a nation of approx 20mill, but that's another issue altogether). There are similar bodies running the state elections - for example, in Victoria we have the Victorian Electoral Commission or the VEC which runs our state elections.

These bodies are publicly funded, and have responsibility for a number of functions. For one, they handle all the voter registrations, they employ people who hand out ballot papers (as opposed to 'how to vote' cards) at each polling station, and they also employ people to count the ballots. I believe that the people who work as election officials have to sign a declaration that they are not a member of a political party - the AEC site says "not politically active", though that's somewhat ambiguous IMO.

One of the most important things that the AEC do is that they draw up the boundaries of the electorates (or districts, as they are called in US parlance) - there are rules about how often redistribution (as it is termed) has to be done (at least once every 7 years) and the redistribution is intended to create a relatively even number of voters in each electorate - at the moment, I believe the average figure is around 80,000 or so voters for federal electorates? The AEC do try and draw up electorates which make common sense - for example, they often use creeks or other natural geographical features to delineate borders.

I mention this because up until the AEC was given this role, the governments in each jurisdiction had control, and there was an deplorable practice known as gerrymandering. Gerrymandering basically involved drawing up boundaries in a way which favoured the incumbent political party. Conservatives in particular relied on the fact that the population is much denser in the city than in the country - and they created the same (geographically) sized electorates in the city and the country, with the result that a country Member of Parliament (MP - more likely to be conservative) might be elected with 10,000 votes, whereas a city MP (who was more likely to be liberal) might need 30,000 votes to be elected. Many governments stayed in power for decades on the basis of such policies - Sir Henry Bolte in Victoria stayed in for 17 years and left on retirement, whilst Joh Bjelke Peterson was in power for 11 years and essentially allowed endemic police corruption to flourish in Queensland.

Voting in Australia is done on paper ballots - unlike US, we do not have state propositions at the same time (in fact, I'm unclear what propositions are - referendums at a state level?). Generally there is one ballot paper for the House of Representatives, which may have around 3-8 candidates - there's no specific number, but I find there tends to be five or six candidates. There is also a Senate ballot paper, which is horrendously complicated. The Senate ballot paper may have sixty or more candidates on it and there are two ways of filling it in. First is to number every box below 'the line' - if you get this wrong, your vote is informal and not counted. Otherwise you can put a '1' in one box 'above the line' - there is a box for each political party, and if you put a 1 above the line then the preference order is done as registered to that political party.

Voting can be done in a number of ways. First, you can get a postal vote, which is equivalent to the US absentee ballot - this is usually used by the elderly or people who are travelling on the day of the election. Second, for several weeks before the election there are 'pre-polling' stations open in each electorate, usually during business hours - J uses this method because he is Jewish, and can't actually vote on Saturday. For institutions such as hospitals and nursing homes, they may also have a polling official go along one day before the election and have people vote there. For people overseas, they can vote in the Australian consulate or embassy.

On the day of the election, you can go to any polling place and vote. For most people, there will be a polling place within walking distance. Officials prefer you to go to a booth in your own area, but even if you are in another electorate (or interstate) you will still be able to vote. When you rock up to vote, you show some photo id, they cross you off and give you the ballot papers. There is very rarely any waiting to vote - perhaps ten minutes if you are voting at the end of the day? I was listening to coverage of the US election, and an Australian girl said that the longest she had to wait was twenty-five minutes. The polls are open 8am to 6pm - there is no extension of this time, though I don't know what would happen if ever they had a situation where there were dozens of people waiting to vote outside. I've never seen it, in any case.

In most cases, counting for the House of Representative seats is finished on the night - the biggest polling booth will only have a few thousand votes, which isn't that much. Candidates are allowed to nominate 'scrutineers' to go in and watch the polling officials do the counting - they are not allowed to touch the ballot papers, just watch while the sorting and counting is done. They can pipe up if they think a vote has been put in the wrong pile, or if they think that a vote ought (or ought not) be counted as informal. It used to be considered a big deal to have scrutineers around, but I'm not so sure. If the election is so close that a dozen votes would matter, then usually there's a recount, in which case the best scrutineers will be there. I have scrutineered in a number of elections and never seen anything that I thought was suspicious - sometimes people put ballots in the wrong pile, but that's just a mistake it's easy to make at the end of a long day. A small booth may take an hour to count; a large booth may take three or four hours.

Making Volunteer Work Tax-Deductible

This is the product of reading an article about a woman who, whilst not currently 'working' in the sense of being paid to do so, is doing a lot of different types of volunteer work. It is also a product of an journal entry I wrote around two years ago about the work-life balance, in which I suggested that we should be reviewing our ideas about what should constitute a full-time job... my suggestion was that we should have a four day working week, and then the remaining three days could be used either for rest, for doing all those things we now outsource (such as cooking, cleaning and gardening), or for doing volunteer work, such as parents helping out in their children's school canteens or whatever.

Here is one possible viable method of making it work.

I know that a number of European countries - such as France - have mandated a shorter working week. Sweden has just started a trial of shorter working weeks to see if it will improve workers' health. But I don't know whether people are really ready for that in countries such as Australia, US and UK, which has a very different culture surrounding work. Perhaps it's the whole Protestant work ethic thing, or the distrust of government interference, but unless our society changes dramatically in the next few decades, I cannot imagine the Australian Govt legislating for a shorter working week.

So here's an alternative - provide an incentive for people to do volunteer work, in the form of tax deductions. My model would be based on a set hourly rate of deduction - eg each hour of volunteer work done is calculated to be worth $9-$10 of deduction. For example: Alex works 21 hours a week (or approx three days per week) at a paid job for $20 per hour, and earns $420 before tax. Alex then spends 15 hours (two days a week) providing administrative assistance to the RSPCA, calculated at $10 per hour. That means that at the end of the week, Alex's assessable income (not taking into account all the other possible deductions etc) will be $420 - $150 volunteer deduction = $270 assessable income.

I'm not pretending to come up with a water-tight model - I'm neither an economist nor an accountant, so balancing the exact figures is not my aim. Obviously, the hourly rate may not be as high as $10 per hour (or there may be a variable rate depending on the type of work being done). Where the value of volunteer work done exceeds the value of paid work, the rest of the value will be null. There would also need to be monitoring of volunteer work, in terms of records kept by volunteer organisations - a sort of volunteer payroll system set up. Furthermore, there would be a limit in terms of what kind of volunteer work is deductible. But this last point is relatively easy to achieve - look towards the current deductibility of charitable gifts, which includes a list of charities which are registered and deductible.

Why set up such a system?

Tax, whilst being a source of revenue, is also a way to implement public policy. That's why there are such high duties on tobacco and alcohol. That's why there are rebates available for families. That's why basic food products are exempt from GST. The tax system as it stands provides a system of incentives and disincentives. This suggestion is an attempt to add an incentive to work as a volunteer into the system.

My tax lecturer would probably scoff at the idea, arguing that manipulation of the tax system is not the way to encourage people to volunteer (if indeed we agree that this is a social good that we are encouraging - which I am not taking for granted). His view is that the tax system is complicated enough as it is, without adding more burdens, exceptions, administrative difficulties. However, this is possibly the most gentle way of providing an incentive to volunteer. For one, it gives people a wide choice. They can choose to do paid work 80 hours a week and be taxed accordingly. They can choose to do paid work for 20 hours a week and be taxed accordingly. They can choose to combine paid and volunteer work.

The rate of deductibility has to be set low enough that people will not volunteer merely for the sake of tax alone. I am not saying that we should be driving people towards volunteer work, but merely avoiding the punishment of those who choose to help the community via unpaid work. My guess is that most people will continue to work a 40 or 50 hour week, or whatever it is they work. But there will be some people out there who will welcome this as a way for them to combine a sense of civic obligation with their personal interests.

Bricks or bouquets? I am especially interested in hearing from anyone who has experience in developing tax policy. I would also like to know whether, if such a program was available, whether you would take advantage of it by doing volunteer work.

Pornography through the eyes of a 21st century feminist

Warning! This entry is very graphic and disturbing. I will be discussing stuff that you don't want to read whilst drinking your coffee or having your morning tea; nor is it likely that you will want to read this in an office or computer lab environment. Whilst I won't be treating the material in a salacious way, the fact is that an article about porn is not for the soft-hearted. On the other hand, if you have somehow found this via Google or some other search engine whilst looking for porn, and somehow think you will get a kick out reading this... you won't.

You have been warned.

Pornography is an vexed subject. This is especially true for people, like me, who regard themselves as feminist as well as a social liberal. By this I mean that as a feminist, I feel strongly that women are equal to men (and vice versa) and that anything which attacks that ideal is wrong. By social liberal, I mean that pretty much my sole rule in terms of morality and sex is that as long as there is real consent, then it's okay. So beastiality, necrophilia and paedophilia are all obviously out, because there can be no real consent in such situations. But if people get their kicks out of foot fetishes, auto-erotic asphyxiation, having sex in a tree, or bondage, then it's their business and their business alone.

Is pornography inherently immoral? Should it be legal? Is it okay for women to enjoy it? Is it okay for men to enjoy it?

I was led into considering pornography through a range of recent experiences. One was reading an article by Catharine MacKinnon which argues that international human rights law privileges the type of abuse which men habitually go through (eg. in a prison) as opposed to the type of abuse which women habitually go through (ie. in the home, by their partners). The traditional feminist argument about pornography is encapsulated graphically and passionately in this excerpt:

"Almost universally, women are battered, raped, sexually abused as children, prostituted , and increasingly live pornographic lives in contexts saturated more or less with pornography ... If a woman exists to be sexually used, to what sexual use is the proper man not entitled? Sweden, the United States and Japan are all saturated with pornography" ("On Torture: A Feminist Perspective on Human Rights" in Mahony and Mahoney (eds), Human Rights in the Twenty-first Century pp 25-26)

There is an instinctive reaction to recoil from the violence and strength of her words - but ultimately, the argument is that pornography degrades women; that pornography portrays women as sexual objects, chattels which can be used by men; that pornography is dangerous because it leads men to think of women in such ways. Is that true?

Within the same article, MacKinnon also describes the abuse and torture inflicted on Linda Marchiano to force her to perform in porn movies - many would recognise her screen name, Linda Lovelace. Perhaps the best way to describe her treatment is to quote again from the article, this time from Linda Marchiano's perspective:

"I felt like garbage. I engaged in sex acts for pornography against my will to avoid being killed ... I was brutally beaten whenever I showed any signs of resistance or lack of enthusiasm for the freaky sex he required me to act like I enjoyed ... Each day I was raped, beaten, kicked, punched, smacked, choked, degraded or yelled at"

Not easy to confront.

The second experience was having a discussion with friends who had recently seen Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, in which a female porn star undergoes a "gang bang" (even writing the words makes me queasy) for a porn movie, and is despised, exploited and cheated by those within the porn industry whom she works with.

The third was that I was referred to two websites: one known as Something Awful which has sections on "Horrors of Porn" and "Reviews: Hentai". The Hentai game reviews are by far the most disturbing, with X-rated games which pretty much all seem to be focused on the joys of violent rape and incest. I know that these games are the worst of the worst - that's why they're reviewed on a site known as "Something Awful".

However, it is worrying when, in defence of a game for which the reviewer gives -50 and warns that "To give you an idea of just how debauched and vile Possession is, the opening sequence of the game features Yosuke fantasizing about raping his sister in graphic detail. Only minutes later he was raping his step-mother." someone from the company releasing this game justifies it on the grounds that "A large part of playing these games, which are known as bishoujo games ("pretty girl games") in Japan, is doing through a virtual computer game what you'd get in trouble for doing in real life. Thus they provide a safety valve for society. If you want to touch a girl's ass on a train, you can do it through a game like this. And just for the record, he's not related to any of the women by blood." My mind boggles at how many men there are out there who have such desires for violently raping their step-mothers and sisters that they need a game for this?!!

The other website is of the art of a man called Dolcett - to summarise, he is a visual artist who, amongst other things, draws adult X-rated comics including gynophagia (the eating of women), and asphyxiation as forms of eroticism. [I would warn you not to visit the site unless you are willing to see some disturbing pictures - and I would also warn you not to visit the site at your workplace or school.]

This brings me, via some very graphic and disturbing ideas, to the central issues of this article. The first is: is pornography inherently degrading for women? The second is: does the porn industry, in practice, degrade women, and can this be changed?

Is pornography inherently degrading?

I shall start off with a blindingly obvious statement, which is that there are many different types of pornography. There is pornography which portrays "vanilla" sex - ie. missionary, male on female. There is gay porn, lesbian porn, bondage porn. Porn gets increasingly 'hard-core' (for want of a better term), leading up to stuff like gang bangs, bukkake, etc. There are also X-rated computer games (which I would include with the porn) which generally involve trying to turn on a computer game character with various items (eg. feathers, fingers, dildoes etc) - again, in some of these games the characters are willing and eager; in some they have to be persuaded (either while tied down or not). In some, as in the hentai game mentioned above, consent is null and void. So let's start off talking about the porn that's easier to justify - where the people involved at least seem to enjoy the experience, where there is consent, where there are no uneven power situations as occurs when there are twenty guys and one woman.

The first argument is that if pornography is inherently degrading to women, it must be inherently degrading to men as well. Apart from (pseudo-)lesbian porn (mostly watched by men), porn generally involves men as well as women. So as a starting point, if porn is inherently degrading apart from the actual content, then it should be equally degrading.

[As an aside, I have always found it strange that male porn stars are always so impressively hung. If it were me, I'd rather watch porn involving women who at least looked something like me, in terms of physical attributes. Why do men get off watching guys with massive penises? Do they secretly think that their penises are that big? Is it a matter of admiring the 'alpha male', 'pulling the chicks'?]

MacKinnon argues that men and women are inherently different, and that treating them as the same in fact is a way of keeping women down, because it means that women have to live with men's standards, rather than the reverse. I think that it is an argument she has to make to be consistent with her 'pornography is a form of abuse to women' thesis, and it is a very interesting idea. However, I don't think it necessarily applies to porn. Men are not the only ones who enjoy porn; there are women who like watching porn as well. Granted, more men watch porn than women; however, there are probably more women who read erotica than men. These are different means of receiving sexually arousing material - why is one okay and the other not? Perhaps it is because porn uses real people; but hentai and anime are drawn - and it is arguably more degrading to see women drawn with tentacles going into every orifice, than to see a real man and a real woman having sex.

Perhaps porn is degrading to women because things are always being done to women. But that's not true either - look at gay porn, for example. Further, I don't have that much experience of the wide range of porn available, but I'm sure there is porn which caters to heterosexual men who enjoy being the 'bottom' in terms of S&M, and B&D sex. Again, why is it so degrading to women but not to the men involved? What about women-on-women porn, which is watched by men? Why is that so degrading? Is it somehow not degrading if it was made by lesbians for lesbians?

I think that there is porn out there which is degrading to women. My personal dislikes/aversions include bukkake and gang bangs, as well as the sort of rape and incest games that I referred to before. To some extent, it is a power question. The fact is that the world is still organised along patriarchal lines; that men have more power than women financially, politically and socially; and that men, on average, can outpower women. For me, gang bangs (by which I'm not talking two guys, but ten or twenty - or even 251, in Annabel Chong's case) reduce women to a mere thing - and same goes for bukkake. As for rape and incest, I'm not really sure that I want games which perpetuate those sorts of fantasies; nor do I think that these games discourage men who enjoy them from acting out those fantasies in real life. I think that if anything, seeing or acting out these role-play fantasies can deepen their hold on a person's psyche, and normalise the fantasy for them.

Where do we draw the line? Even accepting the lines where I've drawn them, there is a lot of gray in the middle. What men to women ration before it becomes unacceptable? What about games where women are tied down and aroused against their will? Keep in mind that it is not only men who find some of these scenarios exciting - there are also women who find the fantasy of violence against them arousing. See, for example, this review (by a woman) of Dolcett's art.

I have no answer on this, I'm afraid.

Does the porn industry degrade women?

From the accounts given by Linda Marchiano in MacKinnon's article; from Annabel Chong's story, it would seem to definitely be a yes. On a sidenote, check out this article about porn actors testing positive for HIV - certainly raises issues of occupational health and safety standarsd for porn actions, doesn't it?. I am, again, not an expert on the porn industry, and from what I have heard, top female porn stars get paid a lot more than top male porn stars (though men who are willing to be 'bottom' in gay porn can aparently receive quite large amounts as well). But it would certainly seem that there is a dark side to the porn industry. At the extreme, this means rape and abuse like that suffered by Marchiano; still disturbing, though not as horrifying, is the exploitation of porn actors like Annabel Chong.

For me, this is an argument towards increased regulation of the porn industry, rather than criminalisation. This is just like every other decriminalisation argument - that it will be better than driving porn underground where there can be more abuse and that it is better to give porn actors rights and unions so that they can fight for minimum standards (like condoms on-set, HIV and other STD tests before commencing films). Further, there should be government regulation - for example, monitoring to ensure that actors are over 18 (or whatever the legal age is) and that they are not being coerced into the industry.

In many ways, porn has become a matter-of-fact industry populated by professionals. I would find it inconsistent to be opposed to pornography, but not prostitution - both are in fact very similar industries, and attract the same sort of dangers, arguments for and against. There is a danger of paternalism in the argument that porn actors or prostitutes don't really want to do what they're doing. There are those who are forced into it (there is a furore at the moment in Australia about women brought into the country and being forced into prostitution to pay off their 'debts' to the people smugglers); there are also those who are happy with their choice and feel empowered by their choice of profession. There are those who are exploited and those who earn a good living out of their work. In that sense, porn and prostitution are not that different from many other industries such as textiles - it's just that the subject-matter is so controversial.

Finally, I would add a disclaimer. I am aware that in some ways this has been a fairly simplistic set of arguments - but the fact is that in order to include all the arguments, I would need more time, inclination and knowledge than I have now. I have neither the language nor the research to really make a strong academic case on this. This is an exploration of my views on the matter, and I would be interested in hearing what other people think as well - especially if you disagree.

Postscript: please go read this article about the degrading effects of porn on the viewer. Very thought-provoking indeed...

The real issues with HECS

I've been hearing a lot of discussion about HECs over the past two weeks, but especially yesterday at a conference I was attending. There's no point rehashing most of the discussion, which is pretty repetitive - but here's a few points that don't seem to be considered very often:

1. With all this talk about HECs rising, why doesn't anyone focus on the threshold repayment level? At the moment, this stands at $24,365. I think that when you start repaying has a lot more real impact than how much you repay. For example, if people had to repay the amount of their uni degree (which I imagine would be over $100,000 in most cases), but didn't have to start repaying it until they earnt more than $100,000 in any given year, I imagine that there wouldn't be as much fuss.

Surely the biggest issue is to push up the repayment threshold? I would be happy to be charged more HECs if the repayments didn't kick in until... say, $60,000. I think it's absurd that people who are earning less than $25,000 a year are expected to begin repaying their HECs - I mean, it's not exactly a massive amount to be living on as it is. One of the rationales for the user-pays university system is that students are meant to gain a higher income by getting a degree - so surely the Government should wait until they have that higher income before asking for the money back?

2. What is university there for? There is all this talk about how education is a human right, and I've heard people suggest that all education - up to a tertiary level - should be free. But why? There are two elements. First, there are professions or careers in which a university degree is useless - if you want to become a plumber or an electrician, you're better off leaving school at 16yo and getting an apprenticeship. Even many white-collar jobs don't really require a university degree - I don't see how a university degree is going to help you if you're employed as a personal assistant, for example. There is a danger that with all this focus on universities, people are over-valuing a university degree as opposed to other forms of experience or learning. For example, TAFE courses are affected as well as university courses - but where's all the media and protest focused on? Universities. What's so special about universities?

Second, part of the value of a university degree lies in its exclusivity. The more people get a university degree, the less valuable it becomes. It's important to ask, as a society, what university is there for? It seems absurd to me that people now need degrees to get most jobs... I mean, why bother? There are clashing philosophies, one of which sees university as a universal right, and one of which sees university as another step which most people do not need to take - like PhDs. I think there is a danger that people just assume that university is there and therefore everyone should attend it. The current paradigm that university should be as broad-based as possible, but the fact is that university is not suitable for everyone, and it's not really necessary for everyone either. People who put forward this argument are called elitists - but that's only true if you believe that a university degree is better that other forms of experience. Personally, I don't.

3. I have also heard people arguing that higher HECs rates disadvantages those who are really poor. It doesn't. Think about it. If you're talking about the most impoverished people in Australia (eg. Aborigines), their main concerns will be more to finish primary and high school, let alone university. And the biggest obstacle in their way has more to do with day-to-day survival - adequate food, shelter, healthcare. And even at university, their main concerns centre around the amount that Youth Allowance/Austudy/Abstudy provides; the cost of amenities fees and textbooks; and other associated day to day costs, not how much HECs they'll eventually have to pay off.

There was also another argument I heard that poor people can't attend university because they have to find a job and support their family. Again, irrelevant to HECs. HECs is meant to be a delayed payment scheme... if you want to talk about social equity and equal access to education, talk about the amount of Youth Allowance that's payable. Talk about how much text books cost (it's pretty monstrous). Talk about upfront fees charged by the university such as amenities fees. Talk about universities limiting access to resources such as the internet. But don't talk about HECs.

I was having a discussion of this with my brother and cousin last night, and my brother suggested a radical alternative - that students not only pay back what they owe, but pay double the amount they owe - and that the extra money be directed as research grants by the Government. I believe that it was a model to provide strong incentives for universities to do good research, and use market forces thus... Now, I've probably explained the model wrong and I'm not a fan in any case. The point I'm making is that there is this assumption that the current situation, or free education, are the only equitable alternatives. They're not. People need to start thinking outside the square - start consider why the government funds education, how it does so, and what the most equitable model is.

To have or not to have

I think not wanting children is like being gay in the sense that society assumes that everyone is heterosexual until they say otherwise, and society assumes that everyone (well, at least all women) want to have children unless they say otherwise.

The difference being that even perfectly liberal, accepting and open-minded people will still say things like "oh, you'll change your mind" when it comes to having children.

I've just been reading a Salon series about whether or not to have children... there were a number of points that struck me, but one was that scientists (the generic 'scientist') have found a gene present in female mice who are nurturing mothers, and absent in female mice that aren't nurturing mothers. Now, of course, a piece of research is only as good as its methodology, and I don't have a clue whether that was a valid finding or not - but it is interesting, is it not? Maybe that explains why when I see little kids, I don't find them particularly cute, and babies don't appeal. I've worked with kids, and I find that I tend to treat them in the same way I treat any other person.

I know about all the hormones and stuff that are released when the child is born, that lets its mother/father bond with him or her... I've heard about how everything else shrinks in importance once you have a child and how people who always thought they didn't want children change their mind once they have one (generally men in these stories, but also women). But I've also heard about post-natal depression, and all sorts of other horrors involved with having children. I know lots of stories about bad parents. There are also stories about parents who in hindsight might have chosen the alternative [usually anonymous - it would be a pretty big slap in the face to your own children, to say you wished you hadn't had them]. I would not want to risk having a child that I don't feel the urge for, based on this nebulous "oh, but you won't regret it".

I don't hate kids, and it does annoy me that there is this assumption that anyone who doesn't want kids must dislike them. I love the idea of being this fantastic auntie who buys cool presents and doesn't get in the way (really the best you can hope for as a oldie, really)... but I just don't want one, or two or whatever. I could reel off a number of reasons why I don't want to have kids (eg the environmental-population issue), but the fact is simply that I'm not interested. I don't feel any differently looking at kids than at any other human being. I don't long to have one, and that's the crux of it - I think that you should really want a child before you have one. You shouldn't have a child because it's expected of you... in fact, I don't even think you should have a child in the attempt to hold your relationship together, or because you think it will solve all the problems in your life. I think that you should only have a child if you are willing to put the time and effort into raising them, willing to take on such a commitment and responsbility.

Furthermore, whilst I don't generally mind being told that I will change my mind (after all, it won't be the first time it's happened), but it does annoy me when there's a hint that I'm being a bit self-centred by not having children. As one person wrote on Salon, it's strange that people can think you're selfish for not wanting something. It's strange that everyone is meant to want children. Sure, most people like tomatoes - but would you be selfish for not wanting to eat tomatoes? It's not like we need more people in the world; nor is it likely that the money, time and energy I save on having children would be devoted on myself. In fact, it seems to me that people who want to have children to perpetuate themselves are being more selfish... people who drive around in 4WDs to protect their children at the risk of every other road-user out there is being selfish. I'm the one who does volunteer work and donates money to charities, not the one who voted Howard back into government because he's giving more money to private schools.

Hmm... that was a bit ranty, wasn't it?

The truth is that although I do accept the well-meant "oh, you'll change your mind" with good grace and acceptance that it may well be true, I also get incredibly tired of it. There is nothing else on earth that people have such sublime confidence in... no-one says "oh, you're not lesbian? You'll change your mind" or "oh, you like watching Test matches? You'll change your mind" or "oh, you don't like John Howard? You'll change your mind". [Although I have been told "oh, you don't like cheese? We'll make you change your mind". :-D] Of course, the main difference between the decision to have children and every other decision you make in your life is... you can't back out of it, and ultimately, it's a choice you're not only making for yourself, but also your child.

And I don't see the sense in taking that risk unless you're really want to, going into the process with your eyes open.