I think it is kind of odd to be talking about concern and compassion for the women and then turning around and laughing at her.

It’s the normal state of affair for me. They’re not mutually exclusive. Often times, I find tragic things funny. I think it’s called “dark humour”, people make entire films with it, they’re in the “black comedy” genre.

Pollution, starvation, epidemics, plundering of dwindling resources, extinction of plants and animals, poverty and it’s resultant civil unrest and war are the inevitable consequences of too many people.

I agree with you that we’d be better off if our population was, say, half of what it is now. However, the effects you mention are in no way a necessary consequence of population size. While there is most definitely a maximum population that our planet can support, advancing scientific knowledge is steadily increasing that number (for example, before vaccines and sewers, there’s no way our planet could have handled 6 billion). The claim about war in particular is suspect: while a greater population would create land-use strife, wars have historically been about aggrandizing sovereign power and nothing else, since war can’t create new land but only change who collects taxes on it.

On the plus side, UN statistics suggest that the populations of free-market societies are growing logistically (that is, approaching carrying capacity and then leveling off). Whether this trend will extend to non-free countries remains to be seen.

I would question, though, how much mother-worship is actually embedded in our culture. It gets some lip-service, but once the child is grown it’s more mocked than celebrated, if the child is male. Father-son relationships are all over popular culture (Field of Dreams, Finding Nemo, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter) and often the son is an adult. Mother-daughter bonds in popular culture are common and viewed positively (seldom easy but usually good). Father-daughter is rarer, but still, usually positive. But mother-son relationships where the child is no longer a little boy? Not so much. In fact, the first one that comes to mind is Psycho. I believe the usual pejorative term is “mama’s boy”…

There is a pretty funny comedy bit on this topic done by Bill Cosby originally; and then “borrowed” by Carlos Mencia . It involves a father through the years sacrificing and spending time teaching his son football. Endless afternoons at practices and games in the cold and rain through the high school and college years. The son finally makes it to the professional level and scores a touchdown the television camera focuses in on him and he says…”Hi MOM!”

pretty funny.

I posted on the topic of this family on my blog obviously I am of the opinion that they are fair game for joke making.