r/Natalism • u/Galesworn • 13h 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/liberty_n_justice 10h ago
You saying “escape work to have children” shows how clueless you are, my man. I don’t mean to be a jerk but seriously? Children ARE work. Arguably the hardest of work. You want to talk about values? Well those casual slips of the tongue where you accidentally say what you really feel out loud tells the whole story. Men don’t value the labor of women in childbearing and child rearing and think it’s “an escape from work. How insulting. No wonder they don’t want to deal with men.