By Jason D. Hill

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Jason D. Hill sounds like he is ready to join Pat Robertson in China. I have just one question about his Modest Proposal for the new millennium: Since no one seems able to agree, from year to year and month to month, how to define good parenting, who exactly is going to decide who gets to have children and who doesn't? If I pass the test this year, but fail it next year as the requirements change, does that mean der Führer und das Vaterland will take come and take away my children?

Thank you, Assistant Professor Hill, for voluntarily removing yourself from the gene pool. Still, I worry about you teaching philosophy to people who so obviously disgust you.

-- Jeff Crook

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As for the author, I'm glad this man had no children. His obvious temper and quickness to judge betrays the fact he would have been a lousy one.

-- Dorothy Nixon

Jason Hill, have you been reading my mind? How encouraging it was to read what needs to be shouted but is only mentioned in whispers.

I am a Texas court-appointed guardian ad litem for children in CPS custody. In my current case, the mother is 25 and has 5 children she can't take care of. Nothing will keep her from getting pregnant again, not even the termination of her parental rights. Based on experience, I fully expect her to have more children. Those of us who work in protective services are truly like the boy sticking his finger in the dyke. If nothing changes, our society will only worsen due to the abundance of unwanted, unplanned, unsupervised poor souls.

-- Denise Havard

I'm sure Hill's article will receive a tidal wave of angry response, but I found it a refreshing counterattack to the constant barrage of procreation propaganda we're treated to in the news and in advertising these days. There's nothing outlandish in suggesting that people, rich and poor, should give serious thought to how many children they can reasonably support. Why is birth control so rarely mentioned, and never advertised?

I did take exception to one thing in Hill's article, however. People who take dogs to animal shelters should not do so with a clear conscience. They should feel guilty as hell.

-- Elizabeth Bass

I offer my congratulations to Salon and my heartfelt thanks for printing Professor Hill's piece. I have rarely seen as much sense spoken in the mainstream press on the subject of parenthood in our culture. The acquisitive incompetence and complete abdication of personal responsibility seen in contemporary American parents almost guarantees us a population of near-animals in 2020, a society of youth for whom self-gratification conquers every taboo.

This perceived entitlement to have babies at any age and cost, to bloat our wombs with fertility drugs and reap a bumper crop of statistical freaks, is the ultimate in überconsumerism, and is destroying our planet. For the childfree, the trendy baby-making frenzy is a horror flick, churning along to the shrill soundtrack of parental demands that the public assume any actual parenting duties and shoulder the blame for their personal failures. I could not agree more with Professor Hill. Serial breeding must stop.

-- Gaby Kaplan

Charming. Jason D. Hill says that his friend needs a dose of "critical thinking 101" and then proceeds to present hackneyed, uncritical misanthropic cliches as an "argument" riddled with internal contradictions and lacking any semblance of logical reasoning.

Andrea Yates, who is reported to have been psychotic, is compared to the rest of us who "judiciously" (that is, sanely) reject our darker impulses. On the other hand, her anomalous case is presented as evidence in support of some kind of national eugenics program. Is she a monster or are we all? Both, according to Hill. He admits he is "childless by choice" but presumes to know better than those of us with children, including his friend the "yuppie juggling fatherhood," what the emotional strains and burdens of being a parent are like.

The real problem, according to Hill, is, of course, feminism: "families with two working parents" are presumed to be unable to provide "serious devotional parenting." Parents -- that is, mothers -- ought to "devote everything, and I mean everything" to their children. What Hill means is that women should quit their jobs and stay home. Isn't that what Andrea Yates did?

So "kids in America hate their parents." Two questions. First, if they do, could that their hatred comes from the same unrealistic expectations that Hill has, that all parents should be perfect and children with imperfect parents ought never to have been born? And second, has Hill, Freudian that he is, considered the possibility that he might be projecting onto his students a hatred for their parents that they don't actually feel? Maybe it is Hill -- not his students, his friends, and society in general -- who really has a problem.

-- Tedra Osell

Some 20 years ago, my aunt killed herself and her three children, ages 10, 13, and 16. She had diabetes that was eating away at her body, and by the time of the murders, her mind couldn't handle her physical deterioration.

No one knew at the time of her children's births that their deaths would come so soon. My uncle knew she was depressed over her condition, but had no idea that the loss of his entire family would be the end result.

According to Jason Hill, she should never have even tried to have any children. Well, Mr. Hill, where's that crystal ball that tells us who's going to be a fit parent and who's going to fall apart and kill? I don't know the details of what my aunt's and uncle's family life was in those 16 years of being married with children, but neither you nor anyone else could have predicted in 1966 that my cousins wouldn't be happy, healthy adults contributing to society.

Yes, most children have problems with their parents to some extent. Some even hate them and will never forgive them for the way they were raised. But I don't believe that anyone would say that they should never have been born. I know my uncle would never say that about his children.

-- Name withheld

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