A Top Priority: Family Planning Assistance for Rural America
T HE American people have been concerned about rural poverty for some time. As a nation, we took our first significant actions to correct the rural poverty situation in the 1860's [11, p. 1352]. One hundred and ten years later we find the problems are still with us. Through the years our farm programs have not been successful in eliminating the causes of rural poverty. Rural America has had a high rate of human fertility when compared with the urban sector. In 1960 the rural farm fertility rate for all women ever married was 50 percent higher than for women in urbanized areas. In the younger age group, 20 to 24 years, rural farm women had 1.29 children for every one born to urban women [16, p. 359]. Recently there have been serious discussions suggesting that this high rate of fertility is contributing significantly to the continuing economic plight of rural people. It is the purpose of this paper to point out the need for continuing discussion, study, and, eventually, adoption of a national family planning assistance program for the rural poor. The time has come to recognize that high fertility in rural America only magnifies the traditional indicators of rural poverty such as low income, inadequate educational opportunity, and insufficient health care. It is time to recognize the evidence that rural parents do want smaller families.
Family Planning and Poverty
Research on fertility shows that in the United States many of the historic differentials are disappearing. Yet there remain paradoxes one of which is that a disproportionate number of nonwhite families still remain very significantly outside the area of effective fertility control. In terms of family size preferences the author reviews the literature with particular emphasis on the results of the Growth of American Families (GAF) studies that showed that American married women thought 2 to 4 children were an "ideal" size family and that nonwhites wanted a significantly smaller average number of children than whites (2.7-3 children vs 3.1-3.5 for whites). It remains a fact however that the actual fertility levels are higher than the stated ideals or desires. The GAF data shows that 1 out of 5 couples with children have excess fertility which means the last child was unwanted by either the wife or the husband. To understand this apparent discrepancy one has to consider the current state of contraceptives and their usage in the United States. The author suggests that the motivation problems should also be seriously considered.
Between identity and difference: Three ways of reading Nishida's non-dualism
The philosophy of Nishida KitarŌ offers the reader today not only a paradigm for a comparative philosophy, but also a methodological framework to construct a Buddhist philosophy. The key and, at the same time, the obstacle to his philosophy is the concept of the "self-identity of the absolute contradiction." This conceptual cornerstone of Nishida's philosophy is as controversial among scholars today as it is central to his philosophy. Critics, such as Tanabe Hajime and Takahashi Satomi, argue that Nishida's philosophy privileges the principle of identity over that of difference and falls into a monism; his supporters, most of all Nishitani Keiji and Ueda Shizuteru, to the contrary, claim that it comprises the key to philosophical non-dualism. In general, I am convinced that even his "self-identity of the absolute contradiction," if it is read carefully within the context of Nishida's philosophy, will render a paradigm that falls neither into a logical contradiction nor into a monism but that provides the foundation for a non-dualist philosophy. To this end, I will reread it first in the context of Nishida's overall project and, then, on the background of Nishida's debates with his critics.