Quote from KD

Zed wins again, with his cites on the work of Bowlby, his evolutionary maternal learning theory and his maternal deprivation hypothesis

I'm not overthrown easily...


But I I'm off for now I guess... I do need to feed my primary needs... sleep and such.

Quote from KD

Zed wins again, with his cites on the work of Bowlby, his evolutionary maternal learning theory and his maternal deprivation hypothesis

Seriously? Can you stop sucking zeds dick please? Its getting pretty pathetic and irritating. No one has 'won' this argument yet, and you wont be the decider of who does and does not win it, stop posting.

Kaas, lose the double post.

And Jeremy, I think KD was being sarcastic.

Quote from Kaas

I'm not overthrown easily...


But I I'm off for now I guess... I do need to feed my primary needs... sleep and such.

Muhwahahaha. Now that I know your weakness I can close in.

So you are disregarding every natural proven fact about maternal bonds?

No. I've studied the maternal bond closely. I cite the work of Bowlby here and his evolutionary maternal learning theory and his maternal deprivation hypothesis. Both support my arguments.

If the maternal-bond is fiction than how come I ow so often hear about how women have the natural urge to care for children? Not every woman has it of course, but statistically there obviously is a significant difference between men and woman. The women's mind also is way better adapted to social care then the men's.

The maternal bond isn't fiction but it doesn't exist from birth and it is equally possible for a male to develop the maternal bond with the child. The bonder doesn't even have to be the same species. The child learns that something, be it a mother, a father, a sibling, or (in one quite interesting experiment) a toy monkey, gives it gratification (usually food, although the toy monkey just gave special cuddles) and therefore goes to the figure of attachment more often. This bond, when strong enough, is called love. The mother learns what makes the child happy and feels good when it sees the baby stop crying/smile. The 'feeling good when you make a baby smile' reflex is in-built, but it is equally dominant in all humans and probably most animals (the toy monkey obviously didn't have it but in his case the bonder had nothing else. I never said it was a particularly ethical experiment). As such the two learn to attach to each other.

In some species the male takes the nurturing role as well, but guess what? In the case of primates is is pretty much always the mother, and naturally humans do the same.

In the world of most primates the group is led by one Alpha male and the other Beta males can become the leader of the group if they beat him in a fight. Do you not think we have moved on from there? If women get the vote, men get a say on whether their child is aborted.

Strong point. But even with other animals where both parents have "equal rights" and both care for the child like with a lot of birds the female still has a prominent role with nurturing.

But the father would do all the nurturing if the mother were killed, yes? If we take a baby away from its mother, as would happen in the instance with the father being willing to take his child away, then the same situation is essentially fulfilled, ie there is no longer a mother but the father is perfectly capable of filling in.

Also tape worms don't grow out of your genetic material or grow out of your own flesh.

So the two on their own are invalid but when we combine the two the paradigms synergistically realign and we get something special? It's possible, I suppose, so I can't argue against it, but it is a highly subjective viewpoint.

They aren't stated as terms, they are just facts that prove the example obsolete.

Mine was a poor example from the beggining so I'll try another. Crocodiles have little birds that pick out their teeth for them. The birds eat the same food that the crocodiles eat, but are dependant on the crocodiles to catch that food for them. The two are still seperate organisms. All the growing that the birds do is done out of the food that they have consumed - they don't eat any of the crocodile (or those that do don't live long enough to be noticed by biologists). In the same way, a baby doesn't consume anything of the mother but a portion of her food and the energy of carrying the child around. As for the genetic material, we were discussing the rights of the father and the father has exactly the same amount of genetic material at stake here.

But I'll do have to say that I think you have a very intimite bond with tapeworms. Same goes for other parasitic life-forms.

Answers in italics and you're out of formating :P

So you are disregarding every natural proven fact about maternal bonds?

No. I've studied the maternal bond closely. I cite the work of Bowlby here and his evolutionary maternal learning theory and his maternal deprivation hypothesis. Both support my arguments.

If the maternal-bond is fiction than how come I ow so often hear about how women have the natural urge to care for children? Not every woman has it of course, but statistically there obviously is a significant difference between men and woman. The women's mind also is way better adapted to social care then the men's.


The maternal bond isn't fiction but it doesn't exist from birth and it is equally possible for a male to develop the maternal bond with the child. The bonder doesn't even have to be the same species. The child learns that something, be it a mother, a father, a sibling, or (in one quite interesting experiment) a toy monkey, gives it gratification (usually food, although the toy monkey just gave special cuddles) and therefore goes to the figure of attachment more often. This bond, when strong enough, is called love. The mother learns what makes the child happy and feels good when it sees the baby stop crying/smile. The 'feeling good when you make a baby smile' reflex is in-built, but it is equally dominant in all humans and probably most animals (the toy monkey obviously didn't have it but in his case the bonder had nothing else. I never said it was a particularly ethical experiment). As such the two learn to attach to each other.

I not specificly aiming at how a child can see anything as "it's mother" but rather that a mother will generally take care of the child. Let's put aside whether maternal bond exist from birth or not. Moder life dictates that the child has a mother. Motherless children often are socially weak, I know enough stories from my mother who's a counselor at school. The bond between father and child is pretty much without exeption different from the mother and child. Just like how children of gay parents ofter turn out un-excepted. If it isn't for the lack of "motherly love" it's for social outcast.

In some species the male takes the nurturing role as well, but guess what? In the case of primates is is pretty much always the mother, and naturally humans do the same.

In the world of most primates the group is led by one Alpha male and the other Beta males can become the leader of the group if they beat him in a fight. Do you not think we have moved on from there? If women get the vote, men get a say on whether their child is aborted.


Strong point. But even with other animals where both parents have "equal rights" and both care for the child like with a lot of birds the female still has a prominent role with nurturing.

But the father would do all the nurturing if the mother were killed, yes? If we take a baby away from its mother, as would happen in the instance with the father being willing to take his child away, then the same situation is essentially fulfilled, ie there is no longer a mother but the father is perfectly capable of filling in.

Often if a parent is killed in species with both parents nurturing the child dies... The father could be capable of filling in, but I bet you know examples experiments with one parent family's and how they often fail to produce a good environment for child to grow up in. Of course there are fathers who are capable of taking care of the child, but we're talking about whether a father has the same right of choice in abortion, not adoption and curatorship.

Also tape worms don't grow out of your genetic material or grow out of your own flesh.

So the two on their own are invalid but when we combine the two the paradigms synergistically realign and we get something special? It's possible, I suppose, so I can't argue against it, but it is a highly subjective viewpoint.

They aren't stated as terms, they are just facts that prove the example obsolete.

Mine was a poor example from the beginning so I'll try another. Crocodiles have little birds that pick out their teeth for them. The birds eat the same food that the crocodiles eat, but are Dependant on the crocodiles to catch that food for them. The two are still separate organisms. All the growing that the birds do is done out of the food that they have consumed - they don't eat any of the crocodile (or those that do don't live long enough to be noticed by biologists). In the same way, a baby doesn't consume anything of the mother but a portion of her food and the energy of carrying the child around. As for the genetic material, we were discussing the rights of the father and the father has exactly the same amount of genetic material at stake here.


There are several kinds of symbiosis.
Commensalism : one party profits but the other isn't negatively influenced. (I say your birds are these, since the crocs don't profit but aren't influenced negatively either.)
Mutualism: Both party's profit. (Could also be your birds if you count picking teeth as a service for the crocodiles)
Parasitism: One party profits, the other party is influenced negatively.
I think a child growing in the womb is the latter, so your first example was still better. The mother doesn't gain anything from the organism and loses energy and mobility to the child. The child directly profits.
BUT back to the topic at hand. A child grows from the flesh of the woman, it literally is a part of her for about 9 months.
A better parasitic example would be the eggs of a tapeworm. But I still think we are rather intimate with tapeworms.


But I'll do have to say that I think you have a very intimate bond with tapeworms. Same goes for other parasitic life-forms.

The hell I am. (also, I'll just sleep after this post then :"))

Quote from Zed

In the example I gave the woman would have had no part in caring for the child at all. The baby would have had absolutely no effect on the woman after the pregnancy. The only reason that could justify the father not being allowed a baby in this case is if the woman was working in a high powered business environment where the few weeks maternity leave would drastically effect her life. Morning sickness and stretch marks are no justification for denying a father the right to have a child and causing him the inevitably huge psychological stress and trauma.

"Morning sickness and stretch marks".
NEWSFLASH: WOMEN AREN'T GOING THROUGH ANY PAIN AT ALL WHEN THEY GIVE BIRTH AND CARRYING THAT HUGE THING IN THEIR BELLY WON'T HURT A BIT!

Quote from ScHaLL

"Morning sickness and stretch marks".
NEWSFLASH: WOMEN AREN'T GOING THROUGH ANY PAIN AT ALL WHEN THEY GIVE BIRTH AND CARRYING THAT HUGE THING IN THEIR BELLY WON'T HURT A BIT!

Pushing out a tennis ball trough your nose I tells ya.

This is actually one of the better abortion debates I've read online in quite some time. Keep at it, boys.

Quote from ScHaLL

"Morning sickness and stretch marks".
NEWSFLASH: WOMEN AREN'T GOING THROUGH ANY PAIN AT ALL WHEN THEY GIVE BIRTH AND CARRYING THAT HUGE THING IN THEIR BELLY WON'T HURT A BIT!

The physical pain is temporary. Nine moths and it's all over, and the first five of those months have little to no impact anyway. Compare that to the lifelong psychological damage to the father.

I not specificly aiming at how a child can see anything as "it's mother" but rather that a mother will generally take care of the child. Let's put aside whether maternal bond exist from birth or not. Moder life dictates that the child has a mother. Motherless children often are socially weak, I know enough stories from my mother who's a counselor at school. The bond between father and child is pretty much without exeption different from the mother and child. Just like how children of gay parents ofter turn out un-excepted. If it isn't for the lack of "motherly love" it's for social outcast.

Usually a child is only motherless if the mother has died. Motherless children tend to do worse because they were attached to their mothers and then suffered the loss. This is Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis in a nutshell. There is not a big enough sample size of children who were seperated from their mothers at birth to form any sort of accurate thesis on the long term effects.

The bond between mother and child is only different to that of the father because the father does not, as a rule, get to spend enough time with the child when it is young and forming attachments. This is a result of social pressure for the father to be working and the fact that paternity leave is rarely more than two weeks - children cannot discriminate between different people until they are at least six weeks old.

Children of gay couples are more likely to be outcasts because of the other kids picking on him for it, not from an absence of a mother.

Often if a parent is killed in species with both parents nurturing the child dies... The father could be capable of filling in, but I bet you know examples experiments with one parent family's and how they often fail to produce a good environment for child to grow up in. Of course there are fathers who are capable of taking care of the child, but we're talking about whether a father has the same right of choice in abortion, not adoption and curatorship.

I don't see that there can be much argument over the fathers rights in abortion beyond whether or not they can care for the child. I've already said that the damage to the mother of not having an abortion is not even close to the damage to the father if she does have one when he didn't want her to.

There are several kinds of symbiosis.
Commensalism : one party profits but the other isn't negatively influenced. (I say your birds are these, since the crocs don't profit but aren't influenced negatively either.)
Mutualism: Both party's profit. (Could also be your birds if you count picking teeth as a service for the crocodiles)
Parasitism: One party profits, the other party is influenced negatively.
I think a child growing in the womb is the latter, so your first example was still better. The mother doesn't gain anything from the organism and loses energy and mobility to the child. The child directly profits.
BUT back to the topic at hand. A child grows from the flesh of the woman, it literally is a part of her for about 9 months.
A better parasitic example would be the eggs of a tapeworm. But I still think we are rather intimate with tapeworms.

But the child doesn't grow out of the flesh of the mother. The child grows from stem cells which it has produced for itself, using nothing but the food and warmth provided by the mother. If procreation were a process of cutting a piece off the mother and reanimating it seperately I could understand where you're coming from but it isn't. There is no difference between human reproduction and that of a chicken, except that the chicken provides all of the food up front and the human gets to spread it out into several, manageble monthly payments so to speak.

Quote from Zed

The physical pain is temporary. Nine moths and it's all over, and the first five of those months have little to no impact anyway. Compare that to the lifelong psychological damage to the father.

Rather shortsighted. It's a life changing experience to give birth, how can you even argue that?
And on your end of the opinionating, the mother goes trough the same the father goes trough PLUS an intense and painful expulsion of babies.

Quote from Zed

Usually a child is only motherless if the mother has died. Motherless children tend to do worse because they were attached to their mothers and then suffered the loss. This is Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis in a nutshell. There is not a big enough sample size of children who were separated from their mothers at birth to form any sort of accurate thesis on the long term effects.

You might only go after scientific testing, but I'll just go after general experiences of people I know/ have spoken too/ know of. There are enough children who never knew there mother and are brought up by the father, sometimes with a mother substitute, sometimes without. But there is ALWAYS a different bond between father and mother. It's pretty much undeniable. Even if it is because of social pressure, there is always a difference making a child generally more intimate with the mother.

Quote from Zed

The bond between mother and child is only different to that of the father because the father does not, as a rule, get to spend enough time with the child when it is young and forming attachments. This is a result of social pressure for the father to be working and the fact that paternity leave is rarely more than two weeks - children cannot discriminate between different people until they are at least six weeks old.

I don't agree, but even if that where true, it still dictates the child being closer to mother then father.

Quote from Zed

Children of gay couples are more likely to be outcasts because of the other kids picking on him for it, not from an absence of a mother.

Doesn't have to be the reason, often it is the influence of the outside world who doesn't generally except gay couples.

Quote from Zed

I don't see that there can be much argument over the fathers rights in abortion beyond whether or not they can care for the child. I've already said that the damage to the mother of not having an abortion is not even close to the damage to the father if she does have one when he didn't want her to.

You said it, but I don't agree.

Quote from Zed

But the child doesn't grow out of the flesh of the mother. The child grows from stem cells which it has produced for itself, using nothing but the food and warmth provided by the mother. If procreation were a process of cutting a piece off the mother and reanimating it separately I could understand where you're coming from but it isn't. There is no difference between human reproduction and that of a chicken, except that the chicken provides all of the food up front and the human gets to spread it out into several, manageable monthly payments so to speak.

The child is more the fruit of the womans womb then a tapeworm or parsite is the fruit of a human-host body.
I don't get what you're going with with the chicken, I never denied it is the same.
A rooster shouldn't get a pick of 50% in whether the chick will be aborted either.

Quote from Kaas

Rather shortsighted. It's a life changing experience to give birth, how can you even argue that?
And on your end of the opinionating, the mother goes trough the same the father goes trough PLUS an intense and painful expulsion of babies.

The mother won't go through any trauma at all. As far as she's concerned the child might as well have been aborted. Birth is only lifechanging if you are either looking after the baby afterwards or have had to take maternity leave. The physical scarring can be limited with a ceasarian to little more than an abortion would have caused in the first place.

You might only go after scientific testing, but I'll just go after general experiences of people I know/ have spoken too/ know of. There are enough children who never knew there mother and are brought up by the father, sometimes with a mother substitute, sometimes without. But there is ALWAYS a different bond between father and mother. It's pretty much undeniable. Even if it is because of social pressure, there is always a difference making a child generally more intimate with the mother.

Surely scientific testing is the only way we can ever get close to knowing anything. George Washington was killed by his doctors because of a few isolated incidences of cases where patients had been treated by bloodletting and had lived. Had the technique been subject to scientific testing Washington would have lived to see the nineteenth century.

The point is that we can't rely on individual cases. Statistics are the only reliable way that comes close to showing whether something is right or not.

Is it possible that you are subconciously focusing on the cases which support your line of reasoning? I know I nearly did - I know two people who's mothers are dead, one of them (the one I nearly gave as an example) is fine and completely normal. The other (who I remembered just before clicking post) is messed up and blames it on not having a mother. I don't know whether things would have been different or not if they had had a female influence in their lives. What I do know is that there are plenty of people who had both parents and grew up to be psychotic. Hitler had no real relationship with his father but his mother's influence wasn't enough to keep him good. If mums can f*ck up as badly as Mrs Hitler then I think we need to leave some leaway for the occaisional father.

I don't agree, but even if that where true, it still dictates the child being closer to mother then father.

Doesn't have to be the reason, often it is the influence of the outside world who doesn't generally except gay couples.

I can't remember whether this argument fits in with what I've said before or whether it is a new line of reasoning but it is thus: We allow gay couples to adopt children - it is recognised as a right. Is there any difference between a gay person adopting a child and a straight one taking his own? If anything the straight guy has more right because it is biologically his child. Therefore there is no problem with the maternal capabilities of a man.

The child is more the fruit of the womans womb then a tapeworm or parsite is the fruit of a human-host body.
I don't get what you're going with with the chicken, I never denied it is the same.
A rooster shouldn't get a pick of 50% in whether the chick will be aborted either.

Why not? The chick is exactly the same amount rooster as it is chicken. I can see no biological or moral reason that the male doesn't have the same say as the female if he is willing to accept equal responsibility.

Quote from Zed

The mother won't go through any trauma at all. As far as she's concerned the child might as well have been aborted. Birth is only lifechanging if you are either looking after the baby afterwards or have had to take maternity leave. The physical scarring can be limited with a ceasarian to little more than an abortion would have caused in the first place.

You are denying the trauma of giving birth, physical and mental?
I must say, I refuse to go further into this then.

Quote from Zed

Surely scientific testing is the only way we can ever get close to knowing anything. George Washington was killed by his doctors because of a few isolated incidences of cases where patients had been treated by bloodletting and had lived. Had the technique been subject to scientific testing Washington would have lived to see the nineteenth century.

The point is that we can't rely on individual cases. Statistics are the only reliable way that comes close to showing whether something is right or not.

Statistics are impersonal and work around the exceptions.
But this isn't about the debate anymore.
I see it is as fact that there always is a different bond between child and father and child and mother. Maybe I'm shortsighted in this, I don't know, but I have yet to see solid evidence to prove me wrong.

Quote from Zed

Is it possible that you are subconciously focusing on the cases which support your line of reasoning? I know I nearly did - I know two people who's mothers are dead, one of them (the one I nearly gave as an example) is fine and completely normal. The other (who I remembered just before clicking post) is messed up and blames it on not having a mother. I don't know whether things would have been different or not if they had had a female influence in their lives. What I do know is that there are plenty of people who had both parents and grew up to be psychotic. Hitler had no real relationship with his father but his mother's influence wasn't enough to keep him good. If mums can f*ck up as badly as Mrs Hitler then I think we need to leave some leaway for the occaisional father.

Of course I'm focusing on cases that support my side of the argument.
But I'm not saying that mother of fatherly influence is either bad of good individually. I just say that the Mother pretty much always has the prominent role in nurturing the child.

Quote from Zed

I can't remember whether this argument fits in with what I've said before or whether it is a new line of reasoning but it is thus: We allow gay couples to adopt children - it is recognised as a right. Is there any difference between a gay person adopting a child and a straight one taking his own? If anything the straight guy has more right because it is biologically his child. Therefore there is no problem with the maternal capabilities of a man.

I have to admit I have no idea where we where going with the gay's and the straights :')

Quote from Zed

Why not? The chick is exactly the same amount rooster as it is chicken. I can see no biological or moral reason that the male doesn't have the same say as the female if he is willing to accept equal responsibility.

Quote from Kaas

You are denying the trauma of giving birth, physical and mental?
I must say, I refuse to go further into this then.

Quote from Kaas

You are denying the trauma of giving birth, physical and mental?
I must say, I refuse to go further into this then.

Yes. How is a woman mentally scarred by giving birth? Most women in either of our countries have given birth and the vast mahjority are not mentally scarred.

Statistics are impersonal and work around the exceptions.
But this isn't about the debate anymore.
I see it is as fact that there always is a different bond between child and father and child and mother. Maybe I'm shortsighted in this, I don't know, but I have yet to see solid evidence to prove me wrong.

Yes, statistics are impersonal. Yes, they work around the exceptions. These are their main strengths. If we don't work around the exceptions then we end up generalising that all Austrians are like Hitler. Statistically we know that they aren't, but if we focus on one specific case it doesn't help us.

Of course I'm focusing on cases that support my side of the argument.
But I'm not saying that mother of fatherly influence is either bad of good individually. I just say that the Mother pretty much always has the prominent role in nurturing the child.

And I say that that is only because fathers are being denied rights which they should have. You are using the fact that men have no rights as justification for men having no rights which makes little sense.

I have to admit I have no idea where we where going with the gay's and the straights :')

I'm saying that if we allow gay couples to have children then why shouldn't we allow straight men to have children?

Quote from Zed

Yes. How is a woman mentally scarred by giving birth? Most women in either of our countries have given birth and the vast majority are not mentally scarred.

I never said they'll be off worse because of it, but it IS a life changing experience. You are denying that and therefor I refuse to go further into this.

Quote from Zed

Yes, statistics are impersonal. Yes, they work around the exceptions. These are their main strengths. If we don't work around the exceptions then we end up generalizing that all Austrians are like Hitler. Statistically we know that they aren't, but if we focus on one specific case it doesn't help us.

But the lack of statistics for the other story will make it impossible to defend. Also a lot of statistics don't interlock and make for lousy comparisons.

Quote from Zed

And I say that that is only because fathers are being denied rights which they should have. You are using the fact that men have no rights as justification for men having no rights which makes little sense.

You're acting as if there is no choice. Maybe you should start a Masculism-movement. :")

I don't say men don't have those rights and it completely goes past my beliefs.
I say that females always have a more prominent role in nurturing.

Quote from Zed

I'm saying that if we allow gay couples to have children then why shouldn't we allow straight men to have children?

Sure, why not. But not at the cost of the choice of the mother over her own body.

There was a masculism movement - it was "Fathers for Justice" - but it got closed down when some of the members started going militant.

I think what is really the main debate here should be how much damage is done to the woman by going through with the pregnancy vs the damage to the father by aborting. I am prepared to accept stretch marks, maternity leave and some vaginal damage, but I have so far been presented with no evidence of anything else. The father on the other hand often incurs large psychological damage and the feeling that his child has died (even if it was never truly alive).