I don't oppose people choosing to have their own biological children if that's what they want.
I understand why that's the choice for most couples. I think there should be more incentives for adopting.
It kind of did though.
The main penalty for violating the one child policy was a fine calculated as a multiple of the parent's annual income (usually, enforcement varied from province to province and over the policies lifetime), so it was effectively a conception tax. It caused a lot of problems, but it's hard to argue that the one child policy didn't reduce China's population, or at the very least its population growth.
The Soviet Union largely did away with individual taxes.
Mmm, this ain't the one, comrade. A tax paid for conception would only turn procreation to a privilege denied to the poor. Population reduction is not a good path forward, for obvious reasons.
Make everyone earning less than six figures exempt. An ever-expanding population means doom for the planet.
In 1965 a United Nations report predicted that the world's population would rise to 5.7 billion by 1995. It did.
Means testing? In my hexbear?
:PIGPOOPBALLS:
How bout we just don't do ecofascism.
Right, and which babies are going to have a larger carbon footprint? The ones with parents who can pay the tax or the ones with parents who cannot?
Western countries destroying the earth's ability to sustain life is a product of the western consumer economy. There's a reason that shifting the blame to individuals having kids is so popular with libs
depends how you mean. A child is pretty cheap to conceive compared to the money needed to adopt, but will cost about as much over time. Plus american birthing costs are absurdly high.
Not having the time, money and economic security to raise kids seem to do a good job at overriding that evolutionary imperative. Maybe it's just not that much of an imperative? I mean, humans had to evolve that whole recreational sex thing to trick themselfs into fucking enough and as soon as you give them an option to have recreational sex without the side effect of tons of babies, they're all like fuck yes gimme.
I don't know, maybe we could try detaching basic needs like shelter, food, and medical care from degrading labor? We could give families social support instead of alienating them from one another at every turn and reducing 'time spent at work or at home' to a mere matter of 'taste' to be determined by the market? We have free public education and childcare, those jobs are properly compensated and celebrated rather than denigrated and paid a pittance? Raising children is treated as a community effort and worthy in its own right rather than an individual pattern of consumption or expression?
Blaming people for not adopting is like blaming people for not turning their homes into a homeless shelter. People can and do indeed do that, but it is above and beyond and does not fix the underlying problem. I think anti-natalism is a bit of a :LIB: position and tries to say that by essentially changing our consumption habits and 'choices' regarding children we can fix the problem. That reduces children to an interchangeable commodity, though, which is kind of gross, and is clearly ignorant of the quasi-religious/spiritual significance of reproducing. You may not feel that or appreciate it, but it's pretty fucking infuriating to see someone so glibly disregard it without appearing to even try to respect the reasons.
#sorrynotsorry for going off.
I've grown really disgusted with the anti-natalist movement as being fundamentally misanthropic and rotten to the core with capitalist realism. Their arguments are seductive in a miserable kind of way. They speak to the pain of existence and getting by in our contemporary world, but they don't move us to improve our circumstances. They say, "it can't possibly get better, let's just roll over and die." Defeatist ass libs.
A lot of anti-natalist takes on this site are only half a step to the left of "overpopulation" eco-fashies.
You can be antinatalist and not be defeatist. Adopting kids is probably one of the most significant ways in which you can make the world better.
I was into those ideas for a while and mostly agree with what you say. I still think it's probably best not to bring more kids into this mess, at least until we figure it out.
I don't think that "wait and figure it out" concept is exactly anti-natalism, or at least not the kind I'm referring to/familiar with, then. Anti-natalists generally seem to think existence is worse than non-existence as a rule, that life and all its challenges aren't worth the hassle, and bringing children into the world is a net-negative either for humanity, the world at large, the child themselves, or some combination therein.
Anti-natalists OFTEN try to claim adoption is the morally superior alternative to birth, though, as it avoids the supposed downsides of creating new life and remedies much of the problems of some other child in need of a home and parental relationship. I sort of think this argument is in bad faith, though, and weaponizes kids in need of a loving home against people who, I believe can quite legitimately, want to reproduce and have biological children. Depending upon which problem an anti-natalist points to it is more or less solvable, but it is nearly always a collective action problem. Families are alienated and driven apart by market forces, life is a miserable grind of useless (see Graeber), harmful (see the environment/exploitative conditions) labor, or worse yet, destitution. All of those may be true right now, but they are pretty much a symptom of late-stage capitalism and its descent into neo-feudalism and fascism. Individuals can't solve that, nor should they be expected to martyr themselves in order to stem the bleeding of a dying machine.
To be clear, I'm not saying people shouldn't adopt, but they absolutely shouldn't be shamed into being a bandaid for the meat grinder of capitalism.
The anti-natalist I'm ideas I'm familiar with are not as simple as "harm reduction." It defines existence (usually specifically humans themselves) as on the whole being harm itself, either to the planet or to the people 'forced' to exist. It is not a short term tactic, it is a philosophy that advocates for the self-directed extinction of the human species. Some examples of the prominent veins of thought. Of these sources, anti-natalism is specifically seen as an ethical ideology, or at the very least a moral imperative drawn from ethical reasoning. I will continue to treat it as such given these are the most prominent voices of the movement.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-49298720
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-case-for-not-being-born
I suppose I shouldn't be conflating the 'hard' pro-adoption crowd with the anti-natalist crowd, but i have seen anti-natalist of the variety I'm talking about use kids who need to be adopted as a cudgel for their other beliefs so often I almost do it subconsciously. The existence of children who need adoption is not some pawn in the chest game of debate, and it disgusts me to see them used that way.
I also disagree with the interchangeability of child raising. You're assuming the reasons I (and perhaps people more broadly) have for wanting a child are selfish and chauvinistic ones at best, or paltry and infantile ones at worst. I think that there are likely better and worse reasons for wanting one's own children, but there does indeed exist good ones whether a person is conscious of them or not. In a way that I explicitly disagree with anti-natalists on, I think sentient life is a good thing that should be celebrated. More humans means more brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, friends, teachers, cozy carers, spiritual pioneers, intellectual visionaries, artists adept at exploring the edges of emotional understanding, motivators who excel at telling stories to motivate us through challenging times, and all sorts of different types to enjoy and make this world with.
Furthermore, I think that having children is, certainly not a mandatory, but beautiful and unifying part of the human experience. That we can create new life, and sentient life at that, is a magnificent expression of the universe. We are the universe propagating an understanding of itself, and while one's own contribution may be relatively minor if understood from the cold math of genetics, it can instead be understood as the "pleasure of being the cause of something." Having children is an expression of our bodily capabilities, and taking a direct part in this huge project of humanity. While small in the grand scheme of things, it's quite huge in the story of that family, both immediate and extended. Taking part in that tradition seems prima facia reasonable, and the burden to make it unreasonable would have to be high indeed. Your challenge about "why your genes" is so loaded with assumptions that it's frankly insulting so I'm not going to respond directly, but hope that what I've written above inspires you to pause and consider some other reasons people might have for wanting children that you've plastered over with an uncharitable strawman.
The existence of children who do not have a loving and caring home to call their own is a problem and worthy of great consideration and effort to remedy it. But to tell people who want what kids that they're somehow stupid or malicious for doing that is an abusive way to be. It's a collective action problem. We live in a world where we artificially deprive people of the necessities they need to live stable lives, and then play the good guy when we swoop into these broken families and extract the children. How about we assign the blame a little further upstream than parents who have a prima facia reasonable desire to reproduce? How about we blame our ruling class overlords who create this needy child machine as part of preserving capitalism?
If all you're advocating is harm reduction in the short term sure, whatever, but that's not what the anti-natalist term generally denotes as a position.
Here’s the thing: You are statistically unlikely to create a baby cuter than one that aleady exists. That said I love all babies so if you make an extra one just give it to me.
I love how the struggle sessions on this site are like 20% on leftist theory and 80% on stuff like antinatalism, Marx's view of religion, the ethics of being a soldier, etc
I've never really understood the intense desire to create a biological kid. For a lot of couples it really does seem like "we want to see what we would look like mixed together" which almost seems narcissistic? But I've never raised kids and have barely thought about having a "family" someday so maybe I'm just missing something.
Adoption is actually not easy. Also baby makin' is easy and fun
Fostering and adopting an older kid is cool and good though
Also, I don't think the desire is necessarily rational. I dont think people are debating whether they want a version of themselves as much as feeling a mixture of biological and social pressures to reproduce.
The desire to reproduce is entirely natural, it's industrial society that made it a value proposition
It's entirely natural, but I don't like reducing behaviours to "human nature", since we can't fully separate our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours from the social context we live in, there's definitely going to be some interaction going on since we live in a complex society. Especially since the discussion at hand isn't necessarily a human urge to reproduce, which would more be accidental, it's actual family planning. You figure in family planning the discussion is a little bit more different, and the reason one might opt to have a family rather than adopt would be more due to social pressures than instinct.
I understand that, I just think that the desire to reproduce is just a normal drive and it takes a more conscious effort to do adoption in our highly alienated capitalist society.
That lazy smooth-head trying to get a noble nipple-head and pube-head to look after it's offspring for it. Something must be done about these irresponsible smooth-heads outbreeding the noble bloodlines of etc etc you get the joke its eugenics
