re: #23 Jaerik

The phrase “pretty common strain in all religions” is incoherent. It’s a common strain in religion, but control over the family level is in no way reserved for religion. Eugenics programs were popular in Europe for quite a long time— Sweden closing theirs down only in the ’70s. Sterilization of Roma women still occurs in Eastern Europe. And obviously, China’s “One child per family” doctrine was a gigantic assertion of control over the family.

In addition, there are plenty of major religions that don’t really have much to say about a maximum reproductive throughput, besides a “Kids are cool” statement.

I think that the more common strain is an attitude towards women of control and making them second-class citizens, and I think that stems from the time period in which most religions arose— during extremely mysogynistic and patriarchal times. I think that the control over reproduction is, in general, a side-effect of the treatment of women. But again, this isn’t true for all religions, mostly just the highly socially conservative ones.