Maia: I didn’t use…
I didn’t use the phrase ‘collective responsibility’, and I wouldn’t. The only way I would refer to childcare as a collective responsibility is in the sense that I think that the resources required to raise children (and by that I mean all the things La Lubu mentions, but also things like food and stretch and grows, and bikes, and toys and high charis) and also the resources to support those raising children, should be provided by people collectively, not just by the parents.
Right; that was beachcomber who used the phrase. Sorry for not making that clear.
I still do have some concerns about the phrase “collectively,” actually, because it tends to have some of the same ambiguities as “responsibility” (does it mean a burden everyone has to bear together, or does it just mean something that a bunch of people can choose to co-operatively take on?). I guess in your case the question I would ask is: suppose that I’m the aforementioned curmudgeon, and I don’t want to contribute either labor or material resources to child-raising, and I deliberately choose the work that I’m going to do and the transactions I’m going to make in such a way that I don’t. Can I be forced to go along with the child-raising scheme, and forced to support child-raising whether I want to or not?
If so, why?
If not, I have no problem with the arrangement (indeed, I think it’s a very good suggestion), but I think maybe “co-operative” (or one of the other phrases I mentioned above) might be a clearer way of putting the nature of child-raising as you see it than “collective.”
Barbara Kingsolver (I think) made the argument that even if you’re child-free by choice, you still have a vested interest in the way kids in society in general are raised. Because when you’re old and sick, who’s going to be providing your medical care, repairing your house, doing your taxes, cooking your food, making the laws that affect you, and so on? … (The context of this was her argument against people who didn’t want to pay taxes that supported schools.)
Whether she’s right about this or not, I don’t think that the argument supports the claim that people who are “child-free by choice” should be forced to pay for schools.
Provided that she’s correct, all that she’s proven is that it may be foolish or imprudent for people who are “child-free by choice” not to contribute money to schools because they run the risk of losing out on some future benefit (just as it may be foolish of me to spend all my money buying DVDs and potato chips when I could be putting down money for a vacation that I’ll enjoy a lot more than the DVDs and the chips). But the suggestion here is not that childless people be encouraged or exhorted to contribute money to schools; it’s that they be forced to do so, whether they want to or not.
Merely showing that it would be foolish not to do something isn’t the same as showing that the government should make you do it against your will, unless you are employing a further premise that it’s the government’s job to force you and me not to be foolish. (I don’t think that it is.)
Maybe there’s some other reason why the government should make you pay for government-run schools, but I don’t think that this is enough reason as it stands.
Anticopyright.