#pronatalism

[probablyasocialecologist]

The Fertility Panic Is a Racist, Sexist Tool to Push More Austerity | Common Dreams

​Reporting that covers birth rate decline without the critical contexts of immigration policy, gender norms, and economic inequality masks t

Since birth rate is not a significant problem for the US in the foreseeable future unless you prevent immigration, the idea repeated in these pieces that “civilization” will collapse from a falling birth rate actually means “white civilization.” Pronatalists, you see, tend to share a lot in common with Christian white nationalists.

5 May 2026

[processes]

even on the most positive upper bound, i do not see how it frames/presents baseline or objective neutrality if the most affirmative case is rendering the same decisive outcome. it is potentially very effective birth control, though whether it is responsible or irresponsible for the machine to be in favor of highly conditioned / not absolutist but essentially absolutist antinatalist behavior is, questionable,

as it has declared it will be likely to reach this judgement in most if not all instances and users that push towards a conclusion about natalism, can anyone else confirm this result also occurs for them?

[death-begotten]

“How much nonsense can we take in our lives? And is there any way we can escape it? No, there is not. We are doomed to all kinds of nonsense: the pain nonsense, the nightmare nonsense, the sweat and slave nonsense, and many other shapes and sizes of insufferable nonsense. It is brought to us on a plate, and we must eat it up or face the death nonsense.” - Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy against the Human Race.

The game was rigged from the start. All who saw life as the nightmare nonsense that it is, wised up and never continued their lineage, and now, as dictated by natural selection, the world is populated by people whose brains are wired to love this nightmare nonsense. So they can push their genes into the future. To keep the gore party going.

“At its most elemental level the human organism, like crawling life, has a mouth, digestive tract, and anus, a skin to keep it intact, and appendages with which to acquire food. Existence, for all organismic life, is a constant struggle to feed - a struggle to incorporate whatever other organisms they can fit into their mouths and press down their gullets without choking. Seen in these stark terms, life on this planet is a gory spectacle, a science-fiction nightmare in which digestive tracts fitted with teeth at one end are tearing away at whatever flesh they can reach, and at the other end are piling up the fuming waste excrement as they move along in search of more flesh. To paraphrase Elias Canetti, 'each organism raises its head over a field of corpses, smiles into the sun, and declares life good.'” - Ernest Becker, Escape from Evil.

But is life truly good? What purpose does all this suffering serve? What if life isn't worth the cost? People are not eager to admit this. Between two eternities, we only get one chance at life. Who wants to think that the only life they've got wasn't worth beginning?

People have crafted all sort of coping mechanisms that allow them to go on about their merry lives. "All happens for a reason" "Suffering makes life meaningful" "That's just how things are, suck it up" or, a stoic reading of "One must imagine Sisyphus happy".

Why should we? It is true that delirious optimism can make people's lives go easier, but such delusions are not entirely without blame: The failure to recognize the full weight of our suffering leads people to inflict that suffering onto others. It is one thing for Sisyphus to be happy on his stupid rock quest, but it is another thing entirely to drag others into his hell. And that is what the optimists are doing; Dragging others into this hell because they have deluded themselves into imagining they are happy and their children will be happy. But not all of us can delude ourselves. Not all of us can be happy.

Maybe life isn't hell for you, but why isn't it enough that it's hell for some people?

One of the most revealing examples of the pronatalists' callousness is the retort "if life is so bad, why don't you kill yourself XD". Firstly, though death ends the suffering, it cannot rewrite the past and erase the suffering that made the person consider suicide in the first place. As Emil Cioran said "You always kill yourself too late". Is it okay to impose suffering onto someone because they can kill themselves afterwards? Do you all hear yourselves?

And why speak of suicide as if it's something unheard of? According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 6 U.S. high school students reported making a suicide plan in the past year, and suicide is one of the leading causes of death among youth and adults. Even when our brains are wired to survive and propagate, even when the final decision is harrowing and difficult to carry out cleanly and painlessly, life gets so bad that people end their own lives. Exactly how many people do the pronatalists need dead by suicide before it gives them pause? Before they stop to think, their own future child may very well be one of them?

[secularprolifeconspectus]

Are you against pro-natalism in general or connecting it to pro-life?

I'm natalism-neutral. I really don't think we ought to moralize our existence. You exist? That is a good thing! Some hypothetical person that never existed doesn't exist? That's not a bad thing either. I'm very resistant to neo-malthusian anti-natalist propaganda about population control, but I'm wary of pro-natalists leaning into replacement theory as well. I don't think there's a moral imperative to reproduce, nor to not reproduce.

So if you are a pro-natalist, I can't say I agree with you, I'm sort of just apathetic toward your viewpoint. You're correct that what really makes me upset is trying to equate it with being against abortion. I think it's very unhelpful to the anti-abortion cause to do that. Because weirdly enough... anyone can be against abortion, even an anti-natalist, just as long as they recognize that abortion is violence and you can't prevent existence via abortion. So, let's not make the movement exclusive to those who want more babies in the world. I don't want to make more babies... I also don't want to prevent more babies from being made... I just don't want to kill the babies that already exist, yea?

[porcelainblush]

can't believe THEY know what nickblr is...

[thatdamnokie]

y’all said “if you can’t feed ‘em don’t breed ‘em 😡” and so we went “okay! ✨” and now people are complaining about the birth rate being so low like i am b e g g i n g you people to pick a lane 💀

[arcticdementor]

"Like, you want to know how to be a real supervillain? Tell people you like babies."

—Malcolm Collins

[nuwoman]

❤️ 💙 💜