Crunchy Pronatalists Need to Pick a Side

Having more kids means more compromises, and something's gotta give.

Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash

One thing I love about Substack (which I haven’t seen anywhere else) is the ability for people to engage in debate—even pretty intense debate—without anyone taking deep personal offense or doing the Internet version of storming off and slamming the door. I also have yet to see anyone retreat from a debate by declaring that someone must be secretly Jewish, which I suspect is a Twitter thing.

I normally don’t publish on Wednesdays, but I had to make an exception today after watching an ongoing loose, friendly debate about parenting (specifically motherhood in early childhood) between the likes of

Darby Saxbe

,

Stephanie H. Murray

,

Lyman Stone

,

Elena Bridgers

,

Kristin Lawless

and

Alex Kaschuta

among several others. They’ve been going back and forth about the classic early childhood topics like daycare, formula, breastfeeding, birth spacing and babywearing, but mostly centered around what is natural for humans (ie: what did our oldest ancestors do), what is optimal and what is realistic. Of course, in modern-day society, very few choices fall into all three categories simultaneously. Just throwing one out there: breastfeeding for the first three years may be natural, and it may be optimal (although some would argue it’s irrelevant after the first year) but it’s certainly not realistic for the majority of modern-day mothers.

Despite the fact that I just tagged a disparate list of writers, both male and female, conservative and liberal, I couldn’t help but find myself agreeing with all of them a little bit. I have this pathological need to hear everyone out and think everyone makes a good point, which probably explains why I usually wind up writing things from a fairly centrist POV (and ironically, that POV pisses everyone off.) Even when I’m not countering anyone else’s view, there’s a constant argument going on in my head when I’m writing, as I imagine what opponents might say to disagree and attempt to get ahead of their objections (my comment section always proves there are still objections I don’t forsee.) Sometimes, I change my entire article after the voices in my head successfully convince me I’m wrong.

I do not have the data chops to answer once and for all whether daycare is suboptimal, optimal, or doesn’t make much of a difference. I will not be doing that with breastfeeding either. I am not a history buff, and will not be able to give the final verdict on whether hunter-gatherers were better parents than people who buy Lovevery subscriptions. But I do want to make one major point, which is that the parenting style generally observed as superior—you know, crunchy, attachment-focused, intensive, child-centric with an emphasis on quality time—is incompatible with the pronatalist ideal of having lots of kids.

Parents only have twenty-four hours in a day. Even the most dedicated SAHM needs to sleep—please spare me with the hyperbole about how you “don’t sleep” because you do, and if you actually don’t, I don’t trust anything you have to say because you’re prone to delusions and hallucinations on account of your sleep deprivation. But anyway, when you’re awake, things need to be done to keep your kids healthy and happy which do not involve constant contact and direct attention to your kids—things like cooking, cleaning, and laundry, to name only a few. These are things that, if not done, could qualify as child neglect. Even if you only have one child, there will likely be times of the day when you are pulled in two different directions. These moments increase as you have more children. For each child you have, compromises have to be made.