Shame and Guilt Won't Raise the Birth Rate
Making parenthood look miserable will not help the pronatalists
A while ago, when I wrote about the fertility crisis, I got accused of being a crypto right winger for even acknowledging the birth rates were declining in many countries, let alone having any opinions on it. That criticism was stupid, but I think there’s something to be said for examining why someone cares about birth rate decline.
Some people have reasonable economic and quality of life concerns about what happens with an aging population that falls below replacement rates. I don’t believe this fear is inherently right-wing, although perhaps some conservatives have it. I think it’s largely apolitical—even the CCP, notorious for implementing a draconian one-child policy for population control, eventually reversed course and began encouraging (albeit not forcing) people to have three children. The desire to boost birth rates is hardly limited to racist white right-wingers.
But I think there are other people whose enthusiasm—if not complete fetishization—of big families has more to do with limiting or reducing women’s options and freedoms, and less to do with actually wanting more children to be born.
For some people, this is overt. They’ll see an accusation like that and respond with an emphatic-Chad-yes. I don’t think it’s conscious for everyone though, and I think a lot of women actually fall into this category. In fact, most of the people I’ve seen talking this way are women themselves.
But more importantly, I’ve noticed that a lot of purportedly “pronatalist” people talk about motherhood in a way that sounds, frankly, awful. And if you actually took them seriously, you would want to have fewer kids, not more. You might not want to have any at all.
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