Further Ponderings on African’s Having Kids

Indentured servitude for African rapists and a reply to two critics

I’ve recently tickled a few people with my latest article arguing Africans shouldn’t have kids if they can’t afford them.

Aidan Alexander

has maintained that many African women are raped so can’t be held responsible for bringing up their kids, and, disregarding this we should help malaria ridden kids even if they have negligent parents. At the other end of the scale,

Treemanchel

claims the application of my argument in past periods would have led to the extinction of mankind; a counterintuitive anti-natalist conclusion. I address both of these criticisms.

Aidan Alexander argues that many women can’t be held responsible for paying back the loans I have argued they must because they have been raped by their husbands or other men. I agree. In this case, the rapist should be put into indentured servitude and made to pay for the child’s upbringing to the extent that parental duties and retribution dictates. I see no problem with Western men actively enforcing this in Africa with the consent of the raped. Indeed: Given it is unlikely the rapists will be brought to justice, perhaps African mothers could sell their rights of retribution to Western men who could then work the rapists for a profit. Funding the parental duty which the mother and child has the benefit of, though, the rapist the financial obligation, could also be done by the Western men; perhaps in exchange for a lower price for the retribution rights, i.e., rights to put the rapists in indentured servitude. This would be a genuine instance of the civilising mission of the 19^th Century.