no, but a small sliver of mostly white “leftists” have picked up malthusianism but this largely exists due to their misunderstanding of reality, like yt supremacists they just accept the “not enough room for more people” lie of Imperialism
I have heard that from some, but from most I am told that it is due to global warming and the high cost of living.
Life: submit to capitalism, you’re powerless to change anything, the planet is baking, sometimes there are treats, two full time incomes required to survive, everything is poison, it’s only going to get worse
Me: you know who would like this? Children
Rise your kid to be another soldier of revolution!
how is that not conscription?
Maybe in some sense
Yeah those things require revolution to fix
Do we allow the bourgeoisie to practice eugenics on our classes or do we fight back?
If you think we can revolution why not have kids? I’m saying this only if such worries are preventing you from having kids that you would want to have otherwise. I understand it’s not for everyone but I want to push back on people who’ve accepted defeat.
Do we allow the bourgeoisie to practice eugenics on our classes or do we fight back?
we fight, but we don’t have the right to conscript children into that fight.
Easy for you to say when your people aren’t actively subjected to genocide. The people who fight for their children’s futures have little trust in the leadership of people who’ve already given up.
Our job today is to make sure the children born yesterday are to be fed tomorrow and when they grow into adults their role will be the same.
Sorry, are you suggesting that people subjected to genocide have a responsibility to produce new child soldiers for the cause? It’s by no means “easy” for anyone to look at the material conditions of their environment and decide that they don’t want to personally subject new people to those conditions.
Birth rates declining as education, income, medical care, and women’s equality increase are well documented sociological phenomena across history. There’s no need to reduce the phenomena to idealist anecdotes centering around the political affiliation of individual people you’ve encountered online.
No I’m saying nations under genocidal conditions are going to have kids because they want their society to continue, it’s nothing about soldiers and I really don’t like that you would reduce the will to survive genocide as “creating soldiers”. Should Palestinians give up children not knowing if they’ll be bombed tomorrow? Do you shame, pity them for having more kids? Why should they let Israel succeed in killing the idea of Palestinians?
Reproductive labor is necessary labor for society to function. People having less kids because they can focus resources towards fewer children, those conditions only exist for the Imperialist and bourgeois strata. For most of the world having many kids is necessary for the survival of the community.
I wouldn’t urge Palestinians to avoid having children, nor would I encourage them to try to outbreed their captivity. It’s none of my business. It should be exclusively their business. I’ll tell you if I lived in Palestine, there’s no way in hell I’d personally bring a child into those conditions no matter what anybody else thought about it.
My point is that whether or not to reproduce is a deeply personal choice that shouldn’t be viewed as a social responsibility or a political act.
The idea that individuals (by which people always really mean women) have a political responsibility to reproduce and expand their culture is reactionary shit. The only population whose breeding habits I have a political opinion about is white settlers, because I’m a white settler. I’m not having kids, because white genocide is unironically good, Euro-American settler culture is a blight on the world, and our extinction as an artificial racial category is a prerequisite for global decolonization.
I’m saying nations under genocidal conditions are going to have kids because they want their society to continue, i
and those kids grow up where, under what conditions? My childhood wasn’t nearly as shitty as what palestinians are made to endure and decades on I would still have rather been an abortion. it is out of compassion for their suffering that i suggest having kids in dire circumstances is immoral because of what you’re knowingly forcing someone to live through.
Do you shame, pity them for having more kids?
i feel bad for the people who have to live that life. i feel bad for parents who didn’t have the right to choose. i endorse the destruction of the oppressor state and the (trial if you have enough stability to have them) execution of the perpetrators of apartheid and genocide.
Why should they let Israel succeed in killing the idea of Palestinians?
why is the idea of some cultural group worth the suffering of my children? Oppressed people have a morally righteous fight against our oppressors, but condemning another person to live under that oppression is not righteous.
people are people and if i can choose not to condemn someone to a life of suffering why should I value a group identity over my child’s quality of life? I wouldn’t subject a child to life here and we even have running water.
no hedonistic pleasures or satisfaction from achievement could make my torture worthwhile, how the fuck is it OK to subject someone to far worse than what i’ve had?
deleted by creator
What an incredibly rude and ridiculous statement. The very fact you would say something like that only points to me that you are far more annoying than any child I’ve ever been around.
I thought in such a way when my kid was before his first year. Now I love to spend time with him.
deleted by creator
This is true of course, because kids are people, and people are annoying as hell. When you choose to be responsible for the life of another person, you sure as hell better be prepared for a little irritation.
If someone is annoyed by people in general then they need to get over themselves. I have no other advice in such a situation
I guess I can only envy your life being so utterly free of irritating personal interactions that the mere thought of someone else experiencing one compels you to seek them out to personally scold them
Having irritating personal interactions doesn’t allow one to blanketly have a negative opinion of humanity. Finding all of humanity annoying is a conservative thought line Hint: i when it’s everyone else, it’s normally not everyone else
I don’t have a blanket negative opinion of humanity. I have a blanket neutral opinion of humanity. Many individual people are irritating. Many individual people are wonderful. Some are both. Kids have these same attributes because they’re people that are, by definition, learning everything for the first time.
I promise I’m not trying to smuggle in some secret “those people/kids are bad” rhetoric, if that’s what you’re inferring. I’m irritated at myself for mistakes I made yesterday. Kids are literally making mistakes constantly, because that’s how humans learn. It’s extremely easy to be irritated by tiny people that fuck up constantly. Kids require patience and empathy all day every day. Perhaps it’s fine to let people that recognize they’re not well suited to provide that self-select out of a lifelong responsibility for childcare?
And this too and also not wanting to lose ones freedom
And what right have you to state agreement with a comment saying that kids are annoying? Shall it be fine with you when people make comments calling other groups annoying based off of their unchosen characteristics?
I was not stating agreement. I was just mentioning that is another reason that I have been given. But, everyone has the right to find annoying whatever they want though 🤣
Because they are, and people can find different things annoying? I love snakes, but if somebody dislikes snakes and chooses not to keep them as a pet (most people) I am not going to think negatively of them as long as they aren’t going out of their way to harm snakes.
It’s fairly bizarre to think everyone has to find the same things annoying as you.
Is it the same thing with gay people? The same logic?
I will assume you are legitimately asking in good faith as this is a fairly common bingo we hear a lot.
Someone’s age and the way they act is not the same as their sexuality. That should go without saying, but you would be surprised.
People tend to find children annoying because of…the behaviour of children, unsurprisingly. Whether that is the crying, the demand for attention, the manipulation, the risk of damage (to themselves, me or my possessions, or others). Those are regardless of race, gender, sexuality, etc.
Doesn’t mean I actively wish ill on them; quite the contrary, I respect them as much as I would the life and livelihood of any other human. I just made the choice to have nothing to do with them. My partner is the same, so it’s never been a particularly big issue for us. We just don’t go to places where there are likely to be kids, and everyone is happy. Do I expect that in some public places there will probably be children sometimes? If it’s an appropriate venue, yeah I just have to deal with it.
I personally don’t feel the need to procreate. But I don’t think it’s a left wing issue. Many comrades in our party do want kids or have kids it seems.
My understanding is that there’s a trend in fundamental Christianity, here in the US anyway, where people think it’s their duty to have as many children as possible. That said, there’s also a good chunk of people who come from those upbringings who become very progressive minded, defeating the whole effort.
That is a thing in all abrahamic religions because what i heard is that Jews and Muslims also think is their duty to god to be “fruitful” and multiply.
Note: I put fruitful in quotation marks because that is the biblical term
Sounds right. I’m just referring to fundamentalist Christians in particular because they’re the sort I see in the US that push the concept. Most other people seem to aim for 2-3 as the ideal number of kids, or don’t want any. Or they just don’t plan one way or the other.
This belief came about simply because the religious sects that didn’t promote reproduction died out.
For instance, Paul the Apostle advocated that celibacy was superior to marriage. Since early Christianity was an apocalyptic branch of Judaism that believed the end of the world would happen within believers’ lifetimes (at which point Jesus would return to judge all), Paul considered it most important for believers to maintain absolute purity in preparation for judgement.
When that judgement day didn’t come in time, sects that were celibate would obviously grow slower and be outcompeted by sects that advocated childbirth. This has created the religious landscape today, where new children are the predominant way religions grow.
Some sources:
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Childfree here, and I think it might be a side effect of having to do a lot of thinking about society against the current.
Having children is a lot of work that often gets romanticised and oversimplified, so once you look at it really hard it’s no longer that obvious of a good decision. Sexist men also have no concept of how hard it is to both give birth to and raise a child, so if you’re a man and generally think women deserve rights, I bet you’ll be more conscious about that.
Buddy, you seem very concerned with this topic, and maybe you shouldn’t be. Politics aren’t really genetic.
I have a very lax attitude towards kids, I don’t think of it in any larger terms beyond what it is: the responsibility of having a kid.
Also, my wife is pregnant again. Too early to announce, but anti natalists owned once again.
Congratulations comrade👏🙂
Thanks!
I badly want to have (adopt) children. Baby fever has had me in its claws for years and years. The time isn’t right yet in terms of my own emotional development and degree of rootedness. I also haven’t found the right person or people to co-parent with. My boyfriend cried the other night because we could have been good parents together, but we’re incompatible in some other long-term ways which make that unadvisable.
It’s not for lack of wanting. I think there are more leftists with principled hang-ups around having kids that they don’t feel able to work through under capitalism, but ultimately ours is an ideology of love that extends to the future and seems to me pro-children.
If it was up to me I’d have a bunch of kids and turn em all into commies
This is exactly what I am going to do 😁
Many parents are leftists because they care about their childrens’ future. I think the impression that rightists have more kids is because rich people can afford to have more kids while poor people can’t. There are also weird religious beliefs that many far right rich people have that make them think they need to have as many (white) kids as possible while prominent “leftist” rich people are often Malthusian.
I am very childfree, can’t stand being around children for more than five minutes. Had a vasectomy years and years ago. On the other hand, I am not necessarily anti-natalist, I don’t begrudge other people wanting to have children for good reasons. For good reasons is the big caveat there though.
I definitely feel like I see more childfree people in leftist circles, but on the other hand I also see more folks who I think are prepared to be parents for good reasons and that would actually make good parents. As opposed to people who think it is their god-given duty to procreate or just do it “because that’s what you do”, which seem to be more common right-wing tropes.
Obviously that is generalizing to some degree, but just seems to be what I have noticed anecdotally.
I think its related to religion, not economic views. It just happens that religion is very intertwined with right wing politics.
An example, in my city the “old money” families are part of the opus dei catholic sect which promotes having lots of children. These families also are incentivized economically to do so, they need more kids to inherit their ever growing amount of property and land.
The world is awful, parenting is not easy, but ML gives me strength to overcome all this, protect my children, and in the future teach them sense of justice and ML to fight for a better world. Do not buy antynatalism bullshit, we need more educated and brave people!
Anti-natalism seems to be approaching certain fascist brainworms to me. I should certainly hope that no one here needs to be reminded that it’s a bullshit ideology
Not so obvious: Richard Stallman, while not fascist, is an antinatalist: https://stallman.org/articles/children.html
Great remake 😁
I know right?? One of the first memes I ever instantly fell in love with. This being the other one
The notifications pane also applies to apps open.
Anti-natalism as a result of being treated like shit by their parents seems to be a common occurrence I have noticed.
or from suffering for any reason at all, figuring out how bad capitalism actually is. and deciding that it’s wrong to force someone to live here.
Well, that and being broke .
Antinatalism refers to those who oppose having kids on principal. If it’s for monetary reasons then it isn’t antinatalism
I never wanted to have children or to procreate or anything, in fact I hated being around kids… up until I started my transition.
Now I despair that I’ll never give birth and am planning to adopt someday. Turns out, I just never wanted to be a father.
Now, I’m not saying that leftwing childfree folks are all eggs!
But.
Communist>trans>children
Maybe not left wing, but more likely to be socially liberal due to this stance generally goes against the social and cultural messaging, which considers having children to be a normal part of life and necessary to experience, or even mandatory as your duty as a human.
