Kelly Weill: The "pro-natalist" movement claims low birth rates will bring societal collapse. Those rates reflect declines in teen pregnancy. If they want adult women to pick up the slack, it's time for governments to start paying moms like the world depends on it. www.momleft.com/p/but-the-bi...

The "pro-natalist" movement claims low birth rates will bring societal collapse. Those rates reflect declines in teen pregnancy. If they want adult women to pick up the slack, it's time for governments to start paying moms like the world depends on it. www.momleft.com/p/but-the-bi...

But The Birthrates!www.momleft.com If "pro-natalists" really believe we're on the brink of civilizational collapse, they'd better start paying moms like it's the end of the world.

(I'm back from a break, btw. Tanned, rested, ready to blog.)

Seriously. You want to be pro-natalist? Okay, fund child programs and family support systems like Denmark. Oh...no? Then go fuck yourselves. Maybe you'll make babies that way.

As the father of a young child right now and planning for 1-2 more, raising children is an enormous amount of work, cost, and health risk to their mother. There's no way in hell I would be having more kids than desired without eye-watering payouts that would let me or my wife work less.

I think the area you might see more success is empowering couples financially to enable them to have kids. I know there are people out there who would like kids but for cost or work reasons just can't have them. That means better child support, parental leave, and more accommodating career paths.

100% All kids deserve to have caregivers that love and are dedicated and are ready & resourced to care for them. Pro-natalists claim it's selfish & bad to delay or choose not to have kids. But it's society that owes parents and kids, & kids that are owed good parents, not the other way around.

Here's some more supporting data for pro-natalists to ignore. www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Americans have fewer kids than they say they want. Alaska has a solution.www.vox.com Alaska’s small basic income is causing parents to have more kids.

Well, either that or do everything in their power to push those teen pregnancy rates back up. Seems pretty clear which tack they prefer.

UBI but it also includes babies!

They’d rather society collapsed than pay women

you can’t be a full-time parent and a full-time worker. if you want more babies, literally just pay mothers.

i think the soviets actually did it. paid women who’d had six (i think) kids a permanent pension in places where they wanted to expand the population.

Nazi Germany did. Of course they were selective in who's babies counted. As, I feel, most pro-natalists would be.

no doubt

the soviets did in fact subsidize daycare and the whole thing

And now they’re all being sent to war to die

it’s a heartbreaking waste of humanity

Why do we want more babies?

because if there aren’t enough people desperately looking for work, the capitalists would actually have to invest in their workers instead of discarding them and hiring cheaper ones. the labour shortage lie.

but we all know what they actually want is more teen pregnancies and more women shackled to loveless marriages for the sake of their children.

Well they’re really all about race.

Kinda implicitly racist, don’t you think? Global fertility rate is an over the replacement rate and well above the replacement rate in Africa. If pro-natalists were worried about not having enough people, they would support immigration. But I think we all know why they don’t.

And if we start treating humans as economic units of labor to be acquired, which is really awful way to think about people, immigration is far cheaper than raising children.

As Africa develops, it will experience the same fertility decline that developed nations in North America and Europe have already undergone. Unless we start working on solutions now, we risk a global crisis in a generation or two.

Sorry pro-natalists. It ain’t happening. Feel free to have an extra to make up for me.

And yet, the Southern Baptists just officially rejected IVF. Because, life? I guess?

Exactly. ☝️ Create an environment in your country where having kid(s) is possible. Housing/rent prices etc are a massive factor in that for starters.

If they’re worried about societal collapse, they should become climate activists.

Even if everybody was fucking and every fuck produced a baby, climate collapse is still coming for us.

Another notch in the Handmaid‘s Tale trend…

There is no economic security for a single person today, imagine for a family of 3.

Write ups of family friendly government expenditure should have to include the cost of raising a child in that country for comparison. The “generous” numbers I’ve seen don’t even cover the cost of daycare, let alone anything else.

Jesus loves the little zygotes, More than the children of the world. Well, so long as they are white, And welfare's not their right, We can let them grow by Heaven flags unfurled.

“Social collapse” means “there will be less people to buy our useless junk

White societal collapse? I think thats what the anti-immigration prolifers are talking about.

I'm not worried about declining birth rates at all idk. We don't need growth all the time in every facet of existence it's ok.

Well…did we really expect different with all the new laws against both abortion and contraception? Who wants to get pregnant and take a chance?!

Or, you know, just let in more immigrants and give them work permits.

Self described pro natalists are just creepy out of the closet racists, and self described anti natalists are just weird degrowther death cultists that are in the closet racists. There’s an easy and effective way to fix low birth rates and it’s called immigration.

immigration kicks the problem along to early/mid-development countries with a birth rate spike. All those countries will eventually develop & experience birth rate plateaus. It's simple, effective, but not sustainable in the 50-100 year term.

The problem is structural. People need stable and safe environments to raise children, and to feel mentally prepared. Mothers are fertile from about 20-40, and nobody wants to have children in their 20s because of the career/education & social penalties, besides just not feeling ready.

So that leaves a ten-year window in which people need to absorb 1-2 years of career stall, earn enough to support their children, be healthy & emotionally mature enough to bear & raise a child, and have the *time* to attend their children (or $$$ for nannies).

Childcare credits are good but not sufficient. South Korea has them, but they fall short because of the crippling overwork culture. For people to have children, it needs to be an easy choice instead of a luxury.

One might hope* that 50 to 100 years would be enough time to figure out an economic system that isn't reliant on continuous growth.. (* Yeah I know, this isn't going to happen either)

The world is already overpopulated. Earth's ressources start to be stretched to the limits. Our idiotic society and economy model based on neverending or rather ever increasing growth cannot hold forever, especially with global warming on top of it.

Birth rates for older adult women are actually going up. Won’t help pop growth as much, but the difference with age is telling, and it probably leads to more stable families.

“Screeching sounds” - natalists

And meanwhile - outlaw health care for pregnant people and wonder why maternal mortality rates are up.

Maybe we invest in quality over quantity? Good health care, high quality education, big community housing so kids can grow up near others around their age? Maybe we cut back on all the toxic emissions and pollutants that stunt growth? Or not? Just fire a zillion more sperm out there and pray?

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