May 10, 2021 - 10:44am
It’s official: thinking it’s normal to have children is now a low-status Right-wing dog-whistle. Elizabeth Bruenig, a New York Times columnist, recently wrote about how she didn’t regret becoming a mother at 25, triggering a furious reaction from the “child-free” and late mothers alike. Apparently enjoying motherhood, and wanting more support for young families, marks you out as “a Trad Wife masquerading as a progressive.”
Bruenig was a lone voice in a tidal wave of East Coast anti-natalism that erupted to mark American Mother’s Day. This included a celebration of women who decided they didn’t want to be mothers, also courtesy of the NYT, a meme that sought to reclassify mothers who give birth (or even who are female) as only one in a “diversity of mothers“, and even a protracted argument about whether the word ‘mother’ is too exclusionary and should be replaced by “birthing person”. Elsewhere, writer, lawyer and anti-natalist Jill Filipovic announced that she’d love to read more articles by women who regret having had children.
But even as the status worldview continues its campaign to liberate women from being female, it hasn’t exactly given up on babies. It’s not that having children is now bad by definition, as that it’s infra dig unless you’ve spent a fortune on making it a highly conscious decision. If you haven’t spent $5,000 with a “parental clarity therapist” working out “what’s true for you” about the choice to reproduce, are you even doing it right?
But the more women are encouraged to wait, the more need help to conceive. And this in turn drives both an escalating medicalisation of reproduction, while also opening ever-growing markets for these expensive medical services. For example Julie Bindel reported recently on the April 2020 legislation in New York State, that passed into law in February this year and legalises commercial surrogacy.
And here we see the division of class, culture and status that’s opening in the domain of fertility. The Bruenig position sees children as normal and natural, and calls for society-wide interventions to scaffold that undertaking for new generations — triggering accusations of reactionary dog-whistling. The Filipovic one, in contrast, sees children as at best an opt-in flag to stick in an already-ascended summit of life achievements.
It’s this latter position that is the high status worldview, and can afford its externalities in terms of declining fertility. Circle Surrogacy, a New York based surrogacy agency, is “excited” that “compensated surrogacy” is now legal in the state, meaning ‘intended parents’ no longer need to travel overseas to procure a baby but can do so in-state — if they can afford it. Circle Surrogacy charges between $80,000 and $200,000: in a world liberated from reproduction as a social norm, children are increasingly an expensive luxury good.
Meanwhile, those further down the food chain may struggle to afford their own children, but it’s not all bad. Those with the biological resources (youth, fertility) can opt to get paid (between $30,000 and $60,000) to service the self-actualisation needs of America’s anti-nature overclass. So for 21st-century elite American women, freedom and self-actualisation are more than ever undergirded by not just the domestic labour of poorer women, but the reproductive kind too.
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SubscribeWe need to put an actual wall around the USA. Let them keep their bat shittery.
BUILD THE WALL! BUILD THE WALL!
In reality you only need build a wall around a few Democrat-run cities. Problem solved.
Thank you. There is a very limited geographic area in the US that produces this nonsense. Unfortunately they’re determined to spread it regardless of means.
you can be certain that no small number of us living here are just as baffled by the batshittery. But a wall around some of our bluer cities, one like the Berlin Wall to keep the natives inside, is not a bad idea.
No I;m afraid we have them here too. You not only have to have your baby as late (46-50) as humanly possible you have to do really dangerous strenuous exercise right up to the last day and if people intervene because they fear for you & your future child you report them to the police. When you have had your child you buy as large a child-carrier as is on the market, just to wheel around and get in people’s way. Your child never rides in it-they are left free to annoy people in the museums , art galleries , theatres etc which these yuppies still expect to go to.I see Harry & Meghan are trying their best to get Archie to rebel against them later-Archie didn’t want a waffle maker from the Queen for christmas-H & M did. They are now buying hats ( makes a change from goats) in his name for his birthday.Did his great grand-mother send him the le creuset set of pans he always wanted for his second birthday?
If you believe the US is equivalent to the NYT then you don’t understand much about the US.
But there is a silver lining to the ideas one finds in the NYT. If people who believe that having children is reactionary don’t have them, there will be fewer confused children growing up in the US. And likely fewer confused adults in a generation. Don’t forget, we laugh when we hear terms like “birthing person” and “chest feeding”. There have always throughout history been people with weird ideas. Why would our time be any different? Expecting our time to be free of freaks is a bit arrogant, isn’t it?
The difference now is that the fashion goes viral in less than 24 hours.
And? You believe that people who want children will suddenly based on a NYT article go, nah, I’m not having kids? People who don’t want kids should not have them.
I believe that young people almost always follow the fashion – so why not?
If young people and their dogs think it is important to post a picture of themselves kneeling down, holding BLM posters so that all of their friends can see then it is completely possible that a young woman, surrounded by friends will follow the fashion of the moment.
Sure some will. Do you believe that all young people are doing this? What’s the evidence for that?
That is a silly question. This is a discussion and people say what they think. There doesn’t have to be a list of references for each comment.
Okay. Then think everyone is posting pictures of themselves kneeling if you’d like and not having kids because of a NYT article.
It only takes a handful of movers, fashionistas, celebs, movie stars to form a fashion. Then it really takes off.
Wait up! Some of us aren’t indoctrinated. Just put the wall up around California and a few other ‘woke’ states.
Ha ha, made me laugh that did thank you!
“Elsewhere, writer, lawyer and anti-natalist Jill Filipovic announced that she’d love to read more articles by women who regret having had children.”
Doesn’t this anecdote just show how divorced from reality some people are? To suggest that a mother should publicly admit, in writing, that she regrets having kids, without reflecting on how her children might feel about being dismissed in print as a burden or inconvenience!
Some folks have lost all sensibility to the ever-demanding fealty of being ‘woke’. Brace for the real-world consequences of pressing mothers into saying they regret having their kids. I mean, that will probably help their kids be well-rounded and productive citizens… Right?
Have we run out of first-world problems? The idea that women would attack another woman for having chosen to have a child is so far from normal that words fail.
A very precise and pertinent article that once again demonstrates the Democrat/progressive dystopia. Remember, these are the people who lit up the Empire State Building to celebrate ‘full term abortion’ (I am not anti-abortion but to celebrate the legality of full term abortion in this way is simply grotesque).
Anyway, they have now outsourced every area of their life, including reproduction. Meanwhile, small children are constantly being hit by stray bullets in NYC as shootings have increased by 93% since 2019, so their investment could easily be wiped out very quickly.
I wonder how much money there is in this family planning , as Biden seems to make it a big part of his policy? I know American health service is different from ours but I thought contraception was sorted out years ago-so that mostly , there shouldn’t be much call for these services.Yet it has almost become a badge of honour for some women to say they had abortions as though we were still in the 1950’s
Contraception was sorted out years ago, it’s cheap and freely available all over the US. But you have to actually get it and use it.
Contraception was sorted out years ago, it’s cheap and freely available all over the US.
Is that really true about lighting up the Empire State Building? If so, it is indeed truly grotesque. What would the same people have thought of lighting up the ESB to celebrate the death of George Floyd? Also grotesque, but unlike those full term abortions GF was at least given a chance in life before he was terminated (and did many bad things along the way, it might be added).
Yes, it is true about the Empire State building
GF should have been terminated many years ago and saved us all a shed load of trouble.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees it like that.
Do you honestly believe that all Democrats are woke?
You are right to describe celebration of full-term abortion as grotesque.
The young woman next door is expecting her second. It is cheering up our little part of the estate. We have had three deaths in the last couple of years. A baby is a sign that life will go on.
Demography is destiny and the future belongs to those who turn up for it. So Mark Steyn says and of course he is right.
Who listens to these morons described in the USA. ? Nobody I know would give them the time of day.
All I know is that having a good few grandchildren has made my life immeasurably better . More of course to worry about but that is a condition of life we all have to accept.
My mother used to say ‘My children are my jewels’
Nothing I can add to that.
That’s a very descriptive way to look at it. The future really does belong to those who will be here for it, not necessarily for those who are here now. We are the present, everyone living today is the present. Any one of us can tomorrow not be here. But not everyone wants to be part of creating those who will be here in the future. And that’s okay.
Grandchildren are the best!
First rate Darwin Award! … We should be thankful that this particular bunch of mutations choose not to replicate.
if only they were content to keep those decisions among themselves. When a 25-year old is attacked for choosing to have a child – as this article mentions – that sounds like Darwinists who want to grow their cult.
They have no choice but to keep such decisions personal. How are they going to stop other people from having children? And again, let’s not call this an attack on anyone. If someone says you are a woman who had a child, is that an attack? Even if they say it with great vitriol. Now a physical attack would, of course, be different. But someone saying another woman should not have had a child? Not much of an attack, just an opinion really.
The ‘wokes’ primary viewpoint is all about perceived power dynamics. So if a ‘woke’ is chastizing a mother… errr.. I mean if a ‘birthing person’ is being challenged by a … uh… ‘non-birthing person?’, you can be sure that the interaction will be far more aggressive than a simple benign statement of rhetoric. Stay tuned for the next demonstration.
The further the left wing crazies become disconnected from the real population, the greater the losses the Dems will experience in local and Federal elections through 2022.
Local and State have been trending Right for a while. But as a notorious Commie once said, ” It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes”.
The last paragraph is particularly sickening because it is true.
Most Feminists seem to say something like Children are expensive and troublesome. They interfere with one’s ability to enjoy life to the fullest. There are lesser creatures in the population who can breed.
The reality is that if I change my mind I will just exploit one of these lesser creatures. These rich entitled Feminists show that they do not care a ….. about the wrong type of women, The poor, “deplorable” type of woman, who ‘s bodies can be bought by Feminists to clean their homes and surrogate their kids.
If we flip the conversation around, its always been a societal norm to basically be treated as a bit of a weirdo for saying you didn’t fancy having children or even saying that you didn’t want kids “just yet”.
People are only complaining now the shoe is on the other foot. Its not “socialist” or “progressive” to not want kids but neither is it right wing to fancy having a kid early on in your life.
Yes, the standard criticism meted out to those (like me) who decided in the last decades of the 20th century not to have children for whatever reasons was that they were ‘selfish’.
People can be very intrusive, you don’t normally want to go through your gynae history with people. However if you say something like I’d have loved to have children but unfortunately (invented medical ailment) , which makes them look cruel for asking. If you change your mind later , the child was a miracle.
Or just say no, I don’t have children. Who in the world would go through their medical history after being asked if they have children? Why would you foist that on anyone? People don’t look cruel when YOU foist YOUR medical information on them when they have asked a really simple, normal question. Instead you look like you don’t understand what is inappropriate to share. We have all had people talk about their medical conditions in inappropriate ways in public. (My elderly parents do this continuously) Do you really want to be that person? This is precisely what I mean when I refer to having a chip on one’s shoulder.
These are just conversational type questions. No one is asking for your medical history. Have we forgotten how to have a conversation? These are normal human questions.
This is very similar to how grandparents in mixed race marriages have no qualms about discussing whether the baby will be black or white.
Today, they will still ask the same things but will feel a little more embarrassed about it. But why should that be?
To me it’s not at all similar. Asking someone if they have children is a normal, human type question. Along the lines of what do you do for a living? Have you lived in Tampa long? Are your kids enjoying summer camp? Do you have any siblings? No one is asking for deep, dark secret information. No one is trying to ferret out your medical information. And foisting it on them makes you look daft.
I think you agreed with me. Asking whether a baby will be black or white is a normal, human type question, not a racist slur.
Actually I said nothing at all about that. Mostly because it’s irrelevant.
Maybe but there are people who chose not to have children who walk around with very big chips on their shoulders over it.
Chips on their shoulder? Not sure I understand this. Can you elaborate please?
BTW there are many examples of women who chose not to have children because they wanted to focus on what they preferrred to do – such as write (George Eliot, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf….). If it’s a choice made out of a positive preference for another life it doesn’t tend to produce ‘chips on shoulders’!
Of course it’s a choice. But any choice is one you don’t have to militantly walk around with a chip in your shoulder over.
when I say a chip on the shoulder I refer to the type of explanation you provide for why some women choose not to have children as if 1) somehow this is a revelation and 2) you were in any way challenged about anyone’s decision not to have children.
but even you are judgmental on the subject. When you say this….”If it’s a choice made out of a positive preference for another life” that’s judgmental.
Who gets to say what a positive preference is? Are there negative preference reasons in your view? Preference is preference.
Sorry I should have said positive for the person who makes it – so a choice not made out of fear or pressurre from others.
It’s still preference. All preference is positive for the person doing the preferring.
You are correct in saying that having kids is a preference. I’m also drawing from the content of your posts that you would also agree that it really isn’t anyone else’s business. To which I would also agree.
I think the unsettling thing about all this is that the new orthodoxy of ‘woke’ ideology tends to maintain course, instead of applying the brakes. It is far more common to simply overturn every facet of human nature, in favor of embracing negative dietetics.
In my experience, the only people who are remotely interested in someone’s decision not to have children is themselves.
Those that do seem to want to talk about it and write about it endlessly.
I have never ever heard or read anyone accuse someone else of being “selfish” for not wanting children, while I think I have seen about 50,000 articles by middle-class “career women” in the media writing about themselves and how their decision not to have children is the most important thing in the universe.
Funnily enough, that level of solipsism is exactly what having children cures.
Yes I was taken aback when I was accused of being selfish for not having children. Perhaps selfish is what you meant by solipsism.
This simply doesn’t ring true and I’ll tell you why. Millions of women don’t have children. It is not unique in any way to not have children. It does not make anyone an outlier, nor is it the most interesting thing about women who don’t have children.
In the US, it’s close to 50% of women age 15-44 who have never had children. (It’s actually 47.6%). To believe that anyone is shocked or offended that a woman doesn’t have children beggars belief.
In the UK the figures for childless women (at the end of their childbearing years) are approximately 18% at present. That’s been fairly constant through the 20th and early 21st centuries except for just after the second world war in 1945/6 when it dipped down to 10%, which I think is interesting, ie, a possible biological response to social and environmental conditions.
(figures from the ONS)
“just after the second world war in 1945/6 when it dipped down to 10%, which I think is interesting, ie, a possible biological response to social and environmental conditions.”
Many young men who could have and would have had children were killed in WWII. Take the men out of the equation and it’s hard to produce children.
There would likely be a corresponding number of women who never married after WWII for the same reason. Not enough available potential marriage partners. Although a woman marrying at the end of childbearing years back then likely would not have had children anyway.
A woman in the UK today is more likely to be childless at 40 than anywhere else, except Spain and Austria.
Good point.
“neither is it right wing to fancy having a kid early on in your life.”
why?
Why is one’s choice to have or not to have children either right- or left wing? Isn’t it just a preference?
Have at it, I say. Their self-imposed eugenics will breed them out of existence while the deplorables reproduce like rabbits. In a generation things will be sane again.
In Western countries, I wonder what the average number of children per fairly successful and/or intelligent man is v. the average number for the equivalent woman.
My own (only moderately statistical) evidence from my British peer group is that for fairly intelligent / successful males the birth rate is holding up not too badly. The males are probably managing about 2 or a little more on average as the childless ones are balanced by those with 3 or even 4.
So – just like the sex revolution – it looks like the clever ladies are losing out again, while thinking they are winning.
That’s very interesting, it would be great to see some data on that. I believe you may be into something in that men don’t appear to be reducing their number of offspring while women are. They’re just having them with different women,
Not that long ago, there was a series of stories in the US wherein professional women were lamenting the shortage of financially suitable men. Never mind that considering a man on the basis of financial status upends much of feminist doctrine, there is a broader picture.
Even women steeped in the concept of females being able to do almost anything have an instinctive desire to pair with someone, whether kids are part of the deal or not. At some point, you’d think people might notice that 1) having ‘gender wars’ and 2) treating those as zero-sum games is not beneficial to society.
You make some good points but here’s another perspective. Many men today either do not want to get married or simply function as a child to their wives. I know lots of guys in their 30s and 40s who still sit around playing video games all evening while their wives do everything for the kids. That’s not a partner, it’s another child.
In addition, many men are very happy simply living with a woman with no commitment. They have no child bearing time clock. So you need not only a suitably stable marriage partner, you need a willing one.
Both points speak to the foreseeable consequences of the zero-sum approach. While girls were elevated and encouraged to pursue new opportunities, boys were diminished and the results are self-evident. Christina Hoff Sommers was talking about this 20-30 years ago, but was largely ignored.
There are numerous pushes to raise female participation in certain career fields, but almost none directed at men. And when motherhood is being attacked, it’s not surprising men’s interest in family wanes right along with women’s.
I don’t believe these ‘wars’ have benefitted either sex, and the result does not appear accidental. The left has been quite successful at undermining traditions, including those that are elemental to the continuation of a healthy society.
Well the left is only successful at undermining traditional families with people who are okay with that happening. And maybe that’s not a bad thing on balance. Men who don’t want children and families should not have them. Same with women. Children belong with parents who really actively want them. Self-opting out of the gene pool is often a good thing. Not because they are bad people but because they want to. And they should do what they want to do. If all the people promoting gender wars don’t reproduce, they will go the way of the Shakers. Is that a bad thing?
If this was confined to self-selection, that would be great. But these societal toxins have a way of infecting the whole. It has been heartening to see various states say “enough” by banning CRT from their curricula or boys from girls’ athletics.
I have no issue with those who do not desire families not having them. It sounds like common sense that shouldn’t require discussion. Yet, here we are.
It is confined to self-selection. You have to opt in to odd ideas. One of my daughter’s has a friend who believes that anyone having children is environmentally criminal. She is entitled to her belief and to not have children. But that doesn’t change my daughter having a child.
We won’t all suddenly become Shakers, let’s not catastrophize this. The population is in no danger of dying off although some people will be the end of their particular family history. But it’s always been this way. It doesn’t matter why someone doesn’t want children. If they don’t, they don’t.
Again, you are agreeing with Mr Lekas, not disagreeing. He didn’t say that the world would cease to exist.
Ideas about what questions can be asked in personal surroundings have become societal, not individual.
To change the subject – fat shaming. If a medical person wants to discuss health, she needs information about your body and she needs to advise you about the best way to stay healthy. So you go to a doctor because you are having to pee regularly and she asks, ‘Have you had children?’
If you are tested and found to be diabetic, your feet are swelling, you are going to die soon from a heart attack, you have very high blood pressure… the doctor could prescribe a handful of pills every day OR the doctor could say (in a nice way), “You are fat. You have to lose weight now.”
These have changed from being medical questions to societal questions and that has to be unhealthy for everybody.
I’m not saying the population is dying off; I’m saying there are people far more susceptible to stupid ideas than you are. There are also those who delude themselves by claiming “I don’t care about politics.” Well, politics care about you, and I’ve had this issue with one son. Maybe when his kids are impacted, that will change.
We’re in a time when people say “chest feeding” and are taken seriously. The difference lies in your example: your daughter made a choice and goes about her life; her friend makes a choice and attacks those who disagree. Which of the two is more likely to influence others? I think society has far more sheep than it used to and far fewer independent thinkers.
I agree there are lots of susceptible people. Always have been. That’s a large part of my point, none of this is new, it’s all part of the human condition.
I think it’s fine for some to take the notion of “chest-feeding” seriously and fine for others to laugh their heads off at them. As you noted, there are people far more susceptible to dumb ideas than others and throughout time some people fell for all kinds of ridiculous notions. People used to take talk of witches seriously. At least chest feeding believers aren’t burning anyone at the stake. Human progress.
you made an interesting comment with this…..”her friend makes a choice and attacks those who disagree. Which of the two is more likely to influence others?”
Let me answer this way. Anyone who can be verbally attacked out of having a child they actually want to have probably is self-selecting a choice that better fits with their vulnerabilities. What kind of a parent would such a mentally vulnerable person make? You have to be pretty strong to be a parent, it’s a monumentally tough task. You have to be able to protect your child from verbal abuse and if you cannot protect yourself, how would you protect a child?
Sounds like this is the follow on of working moms stigmatizing moms who stayed at home to take care of their children…
Greenies and lefties were already demonising birth, “the nuclear family”, and “traditional housewives” forty years ago.
It’s truly a first world problem which, thankfully, is its own cure.
The good news is that biology will prevail. Natural motherhood will survive and flourish, or we’ll die out. The ‘East Coast anti-natalists’ and their ilk will either be irrelevant or a symptom of our demise, no more than a footnote in history (if anyone’s around to write it).
I expected the same due to the “Roe effect” but the results are not evident.
Hollywood carries a lot of responsibility for our recent history – bad history, that is.
Hollywood made smoking cool and millions of people have since died from lung cancer.
Hollywood virtually championed the idea that people should not be monogamous in their choice of partner and Aids followed.
Hollywood actresses love to compete to see who can have a baby as late in life as possible (with the backup of medical teams and nannies, of course) and this has become a fashion.
Hollywood has shown that a woman can bring up a baby alone (with the backup of medical teams and nannies) and this has now become the fashion.
Hollywood = woke.
Most women recognize that they can be career women and still have a family. A few believe it’s one or the other, but I’d hazard a guess that that is a minority.
Fringe beliefs will lead some women to act a specific way on the matter of this issue but that’s likely a societal good. Children belong in families who actively want them. I think most women, with or without children would agree.
I would go as far as saying that most humans have the evolutionary wherewithal to nurture and raise a child. Poverty is usually the big justification for being anti-natalist. However, there is an overabundance of women successfully raising children and finding subsequent success for themselves, despite being in poverty… or even being a single parent.
I agree that the only folks badgering others for having or not having children are found in the fringe spaces of society.
Ha ha. Mary Harrington at her best. Absolutely scathing.
Thank you Ms Harrington. This was informative and insightful.
These people hate us, period.
I really think that most of this jaw-dropping ‘news’ is the print version of clickbait. That’s how far they’ve fallen.
I hope so at least.
If I’d have been born with ovaries (that’s me trying to sound diverse and inclusive) I’d have had them surgically removed as soon as I was old enough. Children, gross! (And yes I know I was but it was a very long time ago thank you very much for not bothering to remind me)