Social activists have identified a major problem in our midst. Is it unfettered illegal immigration? No. It’s procreation by Americans. Having children is bad, the social activists tell us. It may be the most natural thing in the world, they’ll admit, but then, so is the plague. Isn’t the family a bedrock of society? Not anymore. Family is a modern ill right up there with big oil, stripping the environment of scarce resources. In the twenty-first century, having children is selfish, we’re told, even narcissistic. A new parent is one step away from a monster.
How long will it take before the State requires permission to have a child? Too long, in the minds of the painfully-conscious class. In the meantime, the family should be discouraged, not helped along by government tax breaks.
For someone late to the party, the movement of antinatalism sounds unhinged. To start, it’s strangely selective. Mass migration has brought an untold number of families across the US border, and yet, the ire of social activists is not aimed at them. Critiques are directed at people who might feel guilty, i.e., a middle-American population that lives for family. America, it’s your problem. Much like the environmental activists who target American carbon emissions and ignore major polluters in other countries, social activists want Americans to lead the way in giving up their natural rights.
The premise seems presumptuous, invasive, and nonsensical. Is it anyone’s business who starts a family? Aren’t children needed to maintain a country’s population? And who actually believes these activists? We know their type. Young and reactionary, they’ll likely be pushing strollers in a few years.
Or, maybe not. The subject becomes more unhinged. The talk of activists is historically cheap, but not here. In order to show the seriousness of their convictions, a number of true believers are undergoing sterilization as early as is legally possible. They don’t want to add to this weighty problem, ever.
Yes, childless people in their twenties are scheduling tubal ligations and vascetomies, procedures that are meant for the middle-aged. It’s a level of commitment that should worry the rational onlooker. Why would the next generation hate its ability to procreate? Young people are accepting a view of family as a kind of human pestilence rather than a sign of hopefulness. Why?
One could write an essay on the root causes of self-loathing in today’s kids: a politicized, malevolent education system, a lack of grounded, affirming role models, and the effects of mood stabilizers prescribed in greater numbers.
And yet, shrewd self-interest is never too far away. A protestor will deface a world-famous painting to raise awareness for an anti-oil agenda. That protestor later goes home and turns on the lights powered by gas or oil. Another protestor who’s against the patriarchy will hold onto a corporate job.
The anti-family movement is the easiest cause to live out. Today’s activist doesn’t need a child to fulfill political or social ambitions. Having a child impedes one’s freedoms and saps one’s finances. An anti-family stance is the political cause that any dissenter can conform to perfectly. It’s a smart choice.
Declining birth rates suggest a childless revolution of adults who opt against the costs and pressures of family. Instead, more time is devoted to career and a higher standard of living. Perhaps to justify what traditionalists view as a sad, worrisome trend, the attitude against family takes on the tone of a religion. It’s not a practical choice but a moral one. Reactive arguments are plentiful. Anti-family advocates cite the environment, the world’s food supply, and social instability as reasons to skip having children. It’s really not their call.
Parents and traditionalists listen in disbelief. Children will always be born, but the intentional setting of a family is under attack. Family was the cornerstone of civilization. Now, it’s another life choice, weighed heavily on the recusing side.
Wasn’t bringing a child into the world a blessing and a privilege only recently? Couples who couldn’t conceive would spend tens of thousands of dollars on treatments. To be infertile was a life-defining tragedy. It was largely unthinkable to purposely avoid having children. There were many reasons to want kids, but underpinning the emphasis on children was an optimistic view of the future. In the 1850s, farmers had up to nine kids to work the family farm and, one day, inherit it. In the 1950s, a nuclear family of three children was a natural way to participate in a post-war boom. By the 1980s, a pair of kids enjoyed the advantages of high wage-earning couples.
Throughout American life, there were clear, rational reasons for growing a family, both public and personal, offering intangible and practical benefits. Having children was a rite-of-passage. Young women became good mothers. Young men transformed into wise fathers. Bosses viewed these employees favorably. Parenting was a validation of one’s maturity. Raising a family was the best way to contribute to a community and invest in society. It was widely accepted that family was one of life’s sacrifices we would never regret.
Much has changed in a world of cold, technological efficiency. Employees are often hired by a largely-automated system. A societal contribution hardly matters to a computer algorithm. The employee must have an impressive résumé, and having a child will likely make that more difficult. For this reason alone, an anti-family message resonates in the public square.
The question begins: Why would anyone avoid having kids? In view of a struggling modern economy and a society that lives in a bunker of technological distractions, the question flips completely. Why would anyone have a family when the deck is stacked against it?
Children continue to be prized in the flyover states, to the chagrin of social activists. Millions of Americans believe in the cause of family. They enjoy following long-held family traditions, budgeting, sacrificing, and investing in their kids.
Social activists on the political left are bewildered by this dedication. “It’s sentimentality,” they reason, an irrational love of babies who will grow up to become neglected. When it doesn’t happen, when a successful family appears in the media, the social activists change tactics. “It’s egotism,” they explain. People in middle America feel so unimportant, they must raise a family which they can mold in their image. It’s a prime example of the patriarchy.
The critiques are flimsy, and yet, social activists get one thing right. There’s an element of the unseen in a pro-family attitude. By the numbers and many social metrics, there’s little rational reason for children in a modern world. We have no farms to tend to. The future is no longer limitless to our eyes. People are being trained to discount the blessings of parenting, and instead count the costs. Kids are increasingly expensive to raise. As children grow, the potential problems can multiply. They may disappoint you, or you them.
Anti-family activists can win a logical argument. Pro-family people reject this logic. They ignore the numbers, almost recklessly, and see a positive future. They refuse to be held hostage by what-if and have faith in tomorrow.
Where does this irrational faith come from? Many social conservatives believe in their own ingenuity and in the goodness of most people. They share an outlook of grace with the overtly-religious, but stop short. Many other pro-family advocates accept a positive view of the future because they believe God made it. For these parents, a family is a spiritual act, a declaration of faith in doing something bigger than yourself. It makes little sense to over-worry about the economy or the world situation. Christians especially see procreation as a main purpose of humanity. They take it on faith they will thrive. Everyone knows the Bible verse, “Be fruitful and multiply.”
Having a family will, all by itself, broadcast a countercultural faith. At a time when people are living within their own sense of what’s possible, there are fewer children. Being a parent of two, three, even four or more kids is a sign that a different set of rules is being followed. In an anxious culture, parents declare there is another way to make a rational decision, based on a spiritual reality that many choose not to see. Having children is a counter-argument to a defeatist mindset. It says, life is good. It’s worth inviting new lives into.
It has been said, every newborn baby is a sign of God’s optimism. To come into the world is an act not of yourself, an irrational reality to the rational human mind. Religious families understand it can’t be explained. It’s a matter of faith. Ironically, families that have illegally migrated to the United States have more in common with American families than with the childless bureaucrats who usher them in. In migrant cultures, family is valued. The future is viewed as belonging to God, rather than to the perpetually-worried.
In ages past, a lack of children was seen as a harsh judgment, a curse from God. Today, childlessness may be seen as a modern person cursing God. The modernist rejects the gift of creation offered to nearly everyone. It’s never been easier to have children within modern medicine. Instead, social activists denounce procreation as a calamity and obstruct the family through Orwellian laws and workplace discrimination. The two sides of this divide, pro and con, reveal their beliefs about life, God, and their purpose on earth.
For anti-family activists, our temporal existence is a life and death struggle for control. For pro-family people, it’s a journey that must be shared together.
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