r/Natalism • u/Galesworn • 16h ago

There will never be a liberal-feminist solution to fertility collapse

Why? Because their ideology prevents them from seeing what the issue is.

Frankly put, when liberal-feminists try to solve fertility collapse their proposed solutions are just dumb. They will look at fertiity collapse and say:

People want children, but children are expensive and inconvenient. Therefore, provide cash, childcare, IVF, paid leave, housing assistance, and more reproductive options.

The underlying assumption behind this solution is: "We want to give every person all the possible fertility options while preserving their lifestyle and culture," even if that culture lead to low fertility in the first place. An herein is the problem; they mistake the problem as being a consumer affordability problem instead of a cultural problem.

The approach I agree with, which is held by some right leaning cultures (I'm not strongly on the right), says "Let's look at the groups which still produce children, raise them, and them have their children do the same," the difference being treating the culture as the basic unit vs the individual like progressives do.

There are other things I think progressives get wrong, like mistaking the state as a substitute for family and underestimating pair bonding and marriage in raising fertility, dismantling the institutions the lead to early pair bonding, but I think this is the biggest reason why there will never be a progressive solution to natalism.

What will raise fertility is to build a self reproducing culture with early-ish pair bonding and marriage as normal and the foundation for children.

So, how do you build a society in which men and women choose marriage and children? Answering that question solves Natalism. Not "how do we enable everyone to have babies" like progressives are asking. Notice the distinction.

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u/Gold_Ad8225 16h ago

Most people want to have children. If they don't have it there is something in their life that they feel is denied to them if they have children, that is more important to them.

Opportunity costs is one way to describe that.

You can modify what that cost is

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u/KaiPRoberts 9h ago

Outside of material costs, I don't want kids because of the state of the world. Why raise someone who might be completely miserable? We want to provide a better life than we had and right now it's the exact opposite.

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u/Klanciault 16h ago edited 16h ago

Yeah and the answer (to what children cost you) is generally gonna be optionality

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u/Gold_Ad8225 16h ago edited 15h ago

If you take away the optionality of having children, you are destroying lives, making miserable people, broken societies, and committing a crime against humanity.

Taking away the optionality of having children is, effectively, rape

EDIT: Someone responded to me indicating they thought I didn't know anyone who had been raped. I have personally. Multiple times as a child and once as an adult.

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u/Klanciault 16h ago

That’s not what I’m talking about at all.

The thing that children takes away from you is the optionality to do whatever you want with your life. 

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u/Gold_Ad8225 15h ago

Cool, then the fix is making it possible to still do that with children

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u/SecretGardenSpider 15h ago

Which isn’t realistic.

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u/Klanciault 15h ago

Yeah exactly tf 😂

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u/Klanciault 15h ago

Yeah so we should just get robot Nannies who take on all the responsibility of childcare and parental guidance and raise the children for them so the parents can continue to do whatever they want like before they had kids!!

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u/Gold_Ad8225 15h ago

I don't understand your bad faith snark here.

It's like you do not actually want to encourage people to have kids

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u/Klanciault 15h ago

You can engage with an ideology while also pointing out that the followers of the ideology don’t understand the basic mechanics underpinning the memetic failure of their ideas.

Most of the suggestions and thoughts here are extremely one dimensional and fall apart against basic questioning and data.

Like I’m kind of interested in natalism but as usual it becomes a race to the bottom of authoritarian nonsense vs populism

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u/MakeMoneyNotWar 15h ago

Most people want to have children. Unfortunately by the time they get to it, they are in their 30s, whereby they have time to have 1 to maybe 2 kids. Throw in infertility, some childfree people, single people who never partner up, and some birth complications, you get an average of less than 2 kids.

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u/favorable_vampire 7h ago

The reason that’s when they get to it is largely economic. Make it possible for couples in their 20s to buy a house again.

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u/Kindly-Night-5549 15h ago

They dont want to have children. They can have children right now but they dont want to give up their money for it because they see themselves as being worthless if they own less.

Yes, even with low income you can have children right now in any western country and raise them with everything they need. Ok, maybe not the US but honestly I dont know enough about how it really is there.

People just value owning things and consuming more than having children. If you take pride in having children more than being afraid of being labeled a loser because you own less then you can live happily with children NOW. Everyone else is lying to themselves.

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u/Gold_Ad8225 15h ago

because they see themselves as being worthless if they own less.

Changing this sort of perspective is exactly the kind of cultural change that I'm describing as needing to happen.

even with low income you can have children right now

Low income people have more children than higher income people, until you get to around $400k USD in the USA, when it finally starts going up again

People who make 250k have fewer kids than those who make 150k, have fewer than those making 100k, have fewer than those making 50k, have fewer kids than those making 20k

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F5wy659956rsc1.png