Peasant cruelty to childless elders drives couples toward having children

Evidence

The expression about the “staff of old age” demonstrates an instinctive consciousness of the economic need for there to be a certain ratio of young to old over the entire area of society. The sight of the maltreatment meted out in country villages to old people without a family encourages couples to want to have children. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1098

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Japanese officials dehumanize childless women as an incentive to breed; Patriarchal constraint forces unwanted frequent childbearing on women — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2894; Sedentary agriculture gives motherhood sacred status because property demands heirs — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 161 (+6 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Japanese officials dehumanize childless women as an incentive to breed; Patriarchal constraint forces unwanted frequent childbearing on women — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2894; Sedentary agriculture gives motherhood sacred status because property demands heirs — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 161 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Ordinary people conceive family as disinterested love, not power structure #complicates (0.74) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 547