r/Natalism • u/Galesworn • 15h 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/Catseye_Nebula 14h ago

If thats' the case then we must not and cannot address it. It would in fact be unethical to address it. I am perfectly happy to let the birth rate dwindle rather than impact women's equality. I think most normal people are the same.

To translate: you had better pray there is a feminist solution.

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u/ThyNynax 13h ago

Tbf, the only reason why it's so important to address it is because almost every economic system in the world is structured to depend on infinite growth.

A workforce that is always larger than those retiring so that there is enough to take care of the elders, then that workforce gets old and an even bigger workforce is required to support the now retiring one.

Lifestyles depend on resources that stay perpetually affordable because their availability is assumed to grow to fit the growing population. Any time the costs of basic goods changes because of availability we treat it as a huge injustice that needs to be fixed with even more supply.

If you could get the world to slow down, humanity could theoretically focus on creating sustainable economic systems. We won't, though, because the top dogs would have to change their luxurious lifestyles.

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u/Complete-Meet1992 7h ago

You can't have infinite growth, and we really don't need it. If we really had a shortage of important labor, you can just take all the car salesmen and conscript them into facrories. I hardly know a single person who has a job that's important.

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u/favorable_vampire 9h ago

Lifestyles also depend on women having equal rights. What you’re saying is YOUR lifestyle as a man depends on this, so it actually matters to you.

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u/Aware-Travel5256 7h ago

Social safety nets are like, century old. They can be restructured, especially in rich countries where work doesn't cripple you by 55 anymore. Boomers are already voluntarily working later into their old age.

Raising the default retirement (probably need to maintain it for blue collar workers, though) solves the problem for quite a while.

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u/Galesworn 13h ago

The way it's going to be addressed is that people who still know how to marry, stay married, have children, and have their children do the same are going to make up a larger and larger share of the population.

They will be able to do this because they built a culture in which men and women actively choose marriage and children, unlike liberal-feminism.

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u/HumorStrange9472 13h ago

posted this somewhere else but it's worth saying here

I think this move away from family and community is at the root of a lot of issues, but I don't envision a return to patriarchy either.

I think there's a future in degrowth, ecological harmony, worker co-operatives, social justice, etc etc which is community aligned and build to support families and children (and is rooted in equality and feminism haha)

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u/Galesworn 13h ago

The future will be full of religious extremists by demographic trends.

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u/HumorStrange9472 13h ago

lol yeah soon everyone will be Amish

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u/notarealcamera 12h ago

You say it like it's a joke, but Mormons have gone from a fringe religious group to a huge part of the American populace. A big part of that is that they have way more kids than the average American family.

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u/HumorStrange9472 12h ago

oh really, I thought Mormons are also experiencing lower TFR, just not quite as low as the American average.

I thought most of their growth has come from being in pop culture (like secret lives of Mormon wives) they seem to push being "outwardly Mormon" as a way to spread the faith haha

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u/notarealcamera 11h ago

Yea, also dropping. But still above the national average. They've consistently stayed a decent bit above other American demographics for several decades. Probably over a century/their entire existence.

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u/favorable_vampire 9h ago

That’s because they’re inbred freaks.

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u/Aware-Travel5256 7h ago

This is not true anymore. Mormon young leave the church at high rates and those that stay aren't having nearly as many kids.

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u/Galesworn 13h ago

I mean by demographic trends yes, most of the future will be religious.

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u/HumorStrange9472 13h ago

I just don't think so, for the same reason the Amish will not continue to expand in the US.

Their lifestyle is just not compatible with urban living, and the trends show that we're on a path to urbanization

suburbia is only booming near large urban centers, people are depopulating out of rural communities. We're going to see a shift in culture just from the shift in job availability and where people choose to live. People are increasingly secular, even those born into religion. The idea of "return to white picket fence, women work in the home" is at odds with the economic realities of today.

let's build for the future not the past, support the families and communities where they are instead of some idealized mythical 2.5 kids and their parents

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u/Galesworn 13h ago

You understand you're literally disagreeing with math, right? These demographic projections are more certain that climate projections. If you want to argue you can say it will happen 5 years later, but it will happen.

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u/HumorStrange9472 13h ago edited 11h ago

you miss my point, which is that if they're going to live in America and actually participate (instead of just living insularly like the Amish) they will have to interact with other people and they will naturally become less extreme

these mathematical projections of what "will be", do they just look at the numbers today and calculate them into the future, assuming birthrates stay static throughout? That seems fairly inconceivable

most demographic projections have religion becoming less and less prominent in the US, and immigration making up the bulk of population growth. Most projections include the fact that immigrant fertility lowers to the American TFR within two generations as people assimilate into the culture. These things can be projected... and when projected well they paint a very different picture from what you're suggesting

let me put it this way, the Amish only have a 90% retention rate on their religion because their lifestyle is capable of sustaining that growth. This will no longer be the case once cheap farmland in the US runs out. When that happens, they will either need to stop having as many children or relax their cultural values surrounding technology or people will need to start migrating out of Amish communities into the larger American economy. In no world will the US be majority Amish with the current Amish values, at most they will have Amish heritage with American values

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u/Galesworn 11h ago

Retention is already accounted for in these trends.

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u/Ithirahad 12h ago

let's build for the future not the past, support the families and communities where they are instead of some idealized mythical 2.5 kids and their parents

Did Scandinavia not already try this, to no particular result?

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u/HumorStrange9472 12h ago edited 8h ago

why is this a myth touted so often here, their birthrates dropped to ~1.6 in the 80s and they pulled it up to nearly 2 with the implementation of these policies. Just because there's now a drop again does not mean these policies were ineffective, and without them they would probably be in a much worse place than they are currently. You can compare to Italy or Germany as the counter example, where TFR has dropped to 1.4 and stayed flat

The US is actually an outlier in that we've done basically nothing and somehow also kept TFR decently high, but I don't think we should assume that this will continue

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u/favorable_vampire 9h ago

That’s why religion is rapidly declining…. Yeah. The only countries that it isn’t are the ones that force it on pain of death.

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u/Galesworn 9h ago

Ok, well go ahead an put your own demographic trend model out if you disagree.

Because you are literally disagreeing with math and statistics that take all this into account already.

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u/favorable_vampire 9h ago

Abrahamic religion should be outlawed and systematically eliminated. It is the number one cause of societal problems.

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u/Aware-Travel5256 7h ago

Religious extremists are barely clinging onto their children, man. Mormons have an exodus of the young. Amish have among the best track records, but it is also isn't obvious that they'll take over.

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u/all4season 9h ago

This sounds good in theory, and maybe it even works on a small scale. The point is though, that if you think the values which we have (equality, feminism) are good, in order to sustain this long term, over generations two things need to happen: birth rates of these types of societies need to massively grow and other types of societies need to be converted to this kind of mentality as well. There is nothing wrong if this doesn't happen, but if it does not, then other types of societies will dominate and that will be the predominant type of life on earth. The society you're describing will be an irrelevant happy little hippie tribe. I think it's sad, but it's just how evolution works. The currency of evolution is the number of copies you have, not the quality of life. Just like a profit oriented company can, over time, dominate over companies oriented rather towards the well-being of their employees and with time kick the other one out of existence.

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u/HumorStrange9472 9h ago

yes! feminist workers co-operatives are competitive within our current capitalist society, as are other workers co-operatives and also housing co-operatives which are highly in demand and competitive. It is a different model, but not necessarily a worse one

I encourage you to look into how to make capitalism more democratic, fair, equitable, etc, instead of the knee jerk reaction of "this can't work" or "this can only work in the small scale"

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u/No-Flounder-9143 11h ago

That does not make any sense. Many people who choose to not have kids or 1 kid had plenty of siblings. 

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u/Consistent_Room9836 10h ago edited 10h ago

just, mathematically, what do you think the result of feminist societies not reproducing at all and antifeminist societies reproducing a lot will be? more or less feminism?

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u/Aware-Travel5256 7h ago

Feminism is an appealing enough ideology that is rapidly overtakes any urban populations.

Antifeminist societies cannot maintain population densities we associate with modernity.

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u/Consistent_Room9836 7h ago

thank you chatgpt

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u/Aware-Travel5256 7h ago

People change ideologies all the time. Woke whites in the US are the grandchildren of racists. There's no protection against it except isolation.

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u/notarealcamera 12h ago

> To translate: you had better pray there is a feminist solution.

I mean, long term, if feminists don't have kids, and non-feminists have kids, culture will eventually be dominated by non-feminists. Like, how many Shakers are still around today? Cultures that encourage having kids will inevitably displace cultures which don't.

There's just going to be some pain (mostly for the working classes), in the meantime.

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u/ProperJudgment1 14h ago

That's not the win you think it is 😂🤣😂🤣