8013: Re: 8003: Re: 7996: Re: 7994: Re: 7987: Social Services (fwd): Corbett interjects a distinction....

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Racine125@aol.com

<< Many Haitian women don't want planning
 because their biggest hope of getting a good man to marry them or stay
 committed is to get pregnant "for him."  I've heard mothers counsel their
 daughters along these lines and also heard several conversations between
 Haitian women who are encouraging a friend who wants to catch a man to get
 pregnant asap.  >>

This certainly isn't unique to Haitian women!  Bashing Haitian women is not 
the answer.

Think rationally.  You have no job, you have no IRA, no Medicare, no social 
service progrpams of any kind.  Your only hope in old age, if you live that 
long, is support from your children.

Okay, now - your children will have a fifty percent unemployment rate, a 
twenty percent infant mortality rate, and a pretty high risk of mortality in 
adulthood, let's say another ten percent by age 40 although it's probably 
higher now with AIDS and so forth.  Your daughters will be excluded from most 
fields of employment.  Do the math!  How many children do you need to have in 
order to have two surviving employed sons?

Stop bashing Haitian women!  They do what works best for them, what optimizes 
their chances of survivial.  If their environment changes then so will their 
behavior.

Peace and love,

Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen

Bob Corbett adds:  I would chanllenge Kathy's harsh language which
calls for the original poster to stop "bashing" Haitian women.  However,
while the word is harsh there is an important sense in which the
original post does do just that, while, I think, in no way intending to.

I find the general argument of Kathy Grey to be persuasive.  The
women who seek to have multiples of children are folling a rational
stragety for survival.  The origianl poster had regretted "THIS" aspect
of Haitian culture.  But what was vague was what was the "THIS"
referred to.  In the context it sounded like it was the women's
choice to avoid family planning and to keep having large numbers
of children.  If that was the argument, then it does seem to be
bashing Haitian women.  On the other hand, if the argument was
regretting the STRUCTURAL realities which make the having of
many children to be a rational structure for survival, as Kathy's
argument suggests, then the "regret" is toward that social structure
and not toward the women themselves.  I think this latter argument
is a much more accurate analysis of the situation.

Bob Corbett