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The Universal Declaration Human Rights - Art. 16:
"Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
2. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
3. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State."
The Life Science Initiative promotes the "right to marry and to found a family" entered into freely, informed by equality and protected by law.
At present, repressive legislation makes it impossible to have children without sacrificing financial and emotional well being. On the other hand, repressive practices can make a legal marriage a form of slavery rather than an exercise of choice. Both problems undermine the nurturing purpose of the family.
Women's rights
Despite the Declaration, the rights of men and women "to marry and to found a family" are not being upheld. Women's rights are more commonly compromised than men's. Inadequate legislation and a working life that penalises women for having children are impediments to marriage and family life. So too is violent control over the lives of women and children. Improving the status of women has got to be a priority for their sake and their children's sake. In the UK and worldwide, women are still subject to terrible oppression. One in six women have suffered domestic violence. One in five women are raped, tortured, beaten or assaulted. Women are emotionally and economically exploited. Women still have to face forced marriages, the slavery of illegal prostitution, segregation from many activities like work, education and religion, and genital mutilation. A woman's right to marry and have children freely with adequate economic support must be upheld. Without this fundamental right the human race has no future.
Though we have a right to reproduce and raise children, fewer and fewer people are doing so. Though we have a right to marry, many families have difficulty because they are not adequately and equally protected by law. This is not always because people do not want to marry or have children, but because many cannot.
Low Birth Rate
The birth rate in England and Wales has fallen to an all-time low, official figures show. "The average number of children per woman is just 1.64 - the lowest since records began in 1924. The falling birth rate has been linked to more women opting for a career, work pressures and the higher rate of relationship breakdown. The figures, published by the Office for National Statistics, are based on data collected for the 2001 Census."
Today most parents with children need to work and child-care suffers. It is a necessary and a good thing that women can have their own careers, independence and financial security. But in a household with two parents, double-income is becoming less of an option and more of a requirement. People cannot afford to have children, or if they want them, they must work more, which means seeing their children less, or having less children. Child-birth rates suffer as long as we are without the choice for both women and men to stay at home and look after children. Those that do have children spend very little time with them compared to how much they work outside the home. Over-work and financial insecurity are some of the main pressures that are causing sexual problems
Work Pressure
Work pressure also means that people cannot afford to have sex either. People don't have as much sex as they used to because they "are often weighted down by double careers and childcare." Dead sex lives, over-work and lack of mutual affection contribute to the break-up of relationships and families. A recent survey has revealed that given the chance of an extra hour in bed, most working men say they would rather spend it asleep than having sex. "Sex is a very important part of a loving, intimate relationship. If we value stable relationships as a foundation of society, then society needs to change. We need to get away from the culture of working too long and hard, being too materialistic and driven by money."
"We have been told, again and again, that automation would liberate us from the tyranny of work. We have been promised a golden era of leisure. And yet it has never happened. In fact, in the last 15 years, we've seen the exact opposite."
So the dropping birth-rate does not mean people do not want children - it means they can't. Despite this, people are struggling for more time; more time for relationships, more time for child-caring, more time outside work. According to a survey published by the Department of Trade and Industry, British parents want flexible working hours. "Of the 4,000 men and women interviewed, almost half said that flexible working was the benefit they wanted most in their next job. Of those with children under six, 80 per cent said that when they were deciding whether to apply for a job, work/life balance was the single most important factor.
But the message just isn't getting through to employers; only 60 of the 10,000 posts advertised on the recruitment website used for the survey listed flexible working as a possible benefit."
People have so little time with their children that "children now start school at four or five unable to speak audibly and be understood by others, respond to simple instructions, recognise their own names or even count to five." Full story.
More work, less time, less money
Mothers
Even when parents can get time off to care for and raise their children, the financial penalties are severe. Maternity pay in Britain is the third lowest in the European Union. A British mother earning £15,000 receives £2,458 statutory pay in the six months after leaving work; less than in all EU countries except Luxembourg and Greece.
Time off for mothers in Britain is the fifth most generous among EU countries, the survey found. Only Sweden, Denmark, Italy and Finland were more generous, offering 96, 50, 47 and 44 weeks respectively. But researchers said many mothers could not afford to take their full entitlement under the current system or its successor.
Belinda Phipps, of the National Childbirth Trust, says many women could not afford to stay off work until the end of their entitlement. "Six months is nothing in terms of the life of a woman's career and the benefits of the extra time spent at home to a baby. Women should not be under financial pressure too early." But they are.
Fathers
Fathers too want to spend time with their children. Fathers carry out a third of all childcare in the UK. This means that the UK needs "a shift in the culture, which actually legitimises men's roles so that they feel more confident to ask for flexibility at work". At present, men have low expectations of securing work-life balance practices, and still see themselves as the main breadwinner, with 80% of them saying that work makes it difficult to fulfil their family duties. "Men feel they are forced to work longer hours to provide for their children, but it's not what they want to do; they want flexibility".
Long hours, demanding employers and the lack of a child-caring parent at home infringe on the Universal Human Right enshrined in the Declaration.
Homosexuals, Transsexuals
As a result of these pressures, less and less people can have children, and those that do have children cannot give them the time and the care they need. Furthermore, many families face even more of a struggle because they lack the legal protection marriage can offer. Only recently have transsexuals been given the possibility of marriage by applying for replacement birth certificates showing their new genders. But homosexuals still face insecurity and discrimination. Because gays and lesbians cannot marry, they do not benefit from a spousal exemption from inheritance tax. "Same-sex couples, after the first £242,000 (2001 figure), pay tax at 40%. Some couples are therefore forced to sell their home to pay inheritance tax. Many occupational pension schemes make no provisions for surviving same-sex partners to receive 'survivor benefits'. A same-sex partner cannot register the death of a partner as their "next of kin" Hospitals also do not recognise same-sex partners and therefore do not have to give them any visiting rights. Rules governing what happens to someone's estate when they die without leaving a will make no provisions for same-sex partners."
Non-Monogamy
Other relationships also suffer from lack of social approval and legal protection. Many people in the UK have more than one partner. Usually this is serial monogamy, where a person moves from one relationship or marriage to another. Other people have more than one lover at the same time. Often, this involves deceit, but increasingly people are being honest with each other. This form of "open relationship" is known as polyamory. Polyamorists may not marry because non-monogamy is not recognised by law in the UK even though anthropologists inform us that 86 percent of the world's cultures have sanctioned some form of polyamory (when polyamorists marry, this is known as polygamy). In countries when men and women can marry more than one spouse, they do not have the same rights as couples when they move to the UK. The practices of polygyny (more than one wife) and polyandry (more than one husband) are not legally recognised in the UK. It is illegal for a man to bring more the one wife to this country with him. He must leave his other wives behind. Recently polygamists have challenged this discrimination.
The reason for the growing practices of serial monogamy, casual sex, polygamy and polyamory, is found in the genes. This new wave of free love is not a moral problem but a natural desire. Traditional monogamous marriage practices are reducing human genetic potential by increasing health defects in babies and genetic diseases. Serial monogamy, polyamory and polygamy reduce this danger. Making it safe and easy to have a free and sex-affirming culture with a variety of legal forms of marriage should be a priority.
Sexual tolerance protected by law would reduce genetic diseases and make for a sex-affirming lifestyle and society. This secure love would be free from the domination of traditional ideas that damn our natural desires as sinful, adultery and fornication. These constraints have no place in the modern world of choice and sexual expression.
It used to be the case that divorcees could not re-marry. This is no longer the case. Today, the disenfranchised are homosexuals, transsexuals, non-monogamists and polygamists who still do not have their Human Right to marry and start a family protected and valued.
The nuclear family is still be upheld as the moral and social ideal, despite its increasing failure to provide for satisfying relationships and successful child-care.
Safe Sex
Finally, families can only be fully protected by law if safe sex is also encouraged and promoted. Relationships and marriages are only fully protected if safe sex is practiced. This includes knowing whether a new partner is STD free. Safe sex is a priority now that 40 million people worldwide have AIDS. AIDS will kill 70 million people over the next 20 years unless the rich nations of the world step up their efforts to curb the disease and unless we all have sex safely. Without safe sex partners do not just endanger themselves, but any future children they conceive. In 2002, an estimated 720,000 children born became infected with HIV.
The Right to Love
Intimate human relations and the careful and attentive raising of children involve the most important questions and challenges of our time, yet enough is not done to ensure the most basic human rights to companionship, children, familial love. It should be the goal of the radical left to secure equality for all people in their choice of (marriage) partner or partners and to eliminate economic penalisation for having children.
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