I'm not an anti-natalist nor am I planning to have children, but I am generally interested if there is a good reason to have children.
It is obvious that capitalism makes it hard to raise kids but even without capitalism, is there a good reason to bring new humans to earth?
I don't know am I caring too much?
It's a foundational human desire that brings great joy and I believe everyone should deserve a chance to experience it should they choose. The fact that capital makes it hard for the poors to reproduce just emboldens me in regards to this. That mindset implicitly says that only the bourgeoisie should reproduce. Fuck that noise, I say. They've already coopted all luxuries and pleasure from this world, they're not going to steal the joy of parenthood from me too.
I am childfree, but honestly the only good reason I see is that you actively want children and are prepared for the responsibilities that come with that.
Not because they're cute, or because that is what you are "supposed to do", or you want a caretaker when you are old, or you think they will get rich and buy you a house (all arguments I have heard). But because you are actively ready for the responsibility of raising another human being. I am not, nor ever will be, so got sterilized years ago.
I know some good parents that I think became parents for good reasons, but I know a lot more who did not.
Without "new humans", who will continue the socialist cause? If you're not having kids and raising them as socialists, capitalists will still be raising generations of future capitalists, and indoctrinating proletarian kids to service capitalism.
As an individual you are free to make your own choices, but for socialism to succeed, socialists have to survive in the first place.
I would argue that a single child is such a time sink that you are doing a disservice to the movement because that time could be spent radicalizating dozens of strangers.
So is doing anything other than communist activities then lol. What's the point of actually having a life if every waking second has to be spend furthering the cause?
Hey, I'm not the one advocating for making a permanent 18 year commitment to using all your free time to further the cause.
Raising children is certainly not easy and comes with its own set of issues, but hopefully most would agree that education is very important to the socialist cause. Children are at the age where they have time to learn, because humanity has decided that child labour is not acceptable, and they are more receptive to all sorts of information whether progressive or reactionary.
Educating children and radicalizing strangers are not mutually exclusive activities because of the division of labour. Some comrades will be teachers, some will be communicators (propagandists), others might be workers, farmers, soldiers, students, scientists, leaders, or even capitalists (yes!), and certainly all of them can have children while taking on those roles. Maybe this is a foreign concept to some, but children don't have to be raised solely by their own parents, because grandparents, comrades, friends, or relatives can all help out.
I am aware that the nuclear family is a bad model for raising children. My brother lives with our parents and is raising a child. Even with their help, he still barely has time to do anything between raising his kid and his job. If he were a communist, his participation in an organization would take a significant hit. Raising a kid is a whole-ass 18 year commitment even with help, especially in the first few years.
You could radicalize so many more people with that time than just one child, and as another user pointed out, your child could always turn out like Pete Buttigieg or Kamala Harris: neoliberals with Marxist parents.
Raising a kid is an "18 year commitment" only if you view children as a product in a capitalist society that takes 18 years to produce. Children are a lifetime commitment, as is any serious relationship whether bonded by blood or not.
So what happens if your kid turns 18 and becomes reactionary one way or another, is this person then different from the strangers who you want to radicalize? Where do these strangers who you want to radicalize come from in the first place, were they not children once? Do you then prioritize radicalizing strangers who do not have kids over those who do?
Even if the traditional (bourgeois) family relation were to be abolished (as touched upon in the Communist Manifesto), the relationship between people will still be there just by their existence in society. As Marx also mentioned in "Theses On Feuerbach" (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/): "But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations."
I also want to mention that other than the traditional idea of reproduction, there may be more options in future that have ethical issues like surrogacy and artificial wombs. These potential options do not change the physical blood relations between mother and child, but if they were to become mainstream along with accompanying societal measures for childcare, they would fundamentally dismantle the traditional family unit too.
All this is a long-winded way of saying, how children will be raised in future might be different from today, but it doesn't change the fact that you need children for society to continue functioning. Children are the future, not just philosophically but also materially because the old will pass and the young will carry on the flame.
Throughout my comments I have not mentioned the emotional value of having children, because I think it's easier to explain the practical value of children to society to someone who doesn't understand the basic idea of why reproduction is necessary to humanity.
Final point that I haven't mention, is that revolution involves bloodshed, and fighting counterrevolutions too.
Like I said, if you don't want to have kids, that's fine, some great communists like Zhou Enlai and his wife Deng Yingchao don't have kids either. You can use any reason to justify it, no one is forcing you to have kids. However, the consequence of not having kids is very clear, there will be less potential comrades on your side.
Also, if you cannot bring up your own kids to be socialists, how confident are you in radicalizing strangers?
I think there's something to be said about raising kids in a Marxist environment, though. Even if they grow up and have a fundamental disinterest in that sort of thing, you've normalized Marxist thought and maybe even warded off some brainwashing from capital. That's a powerful thing, making even one to three new people who believe Marxism to be normal and logical in the west.
You're not wrong at all but there's also the chance your kids turn out like Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg (both their fathers were/are Marxists).
This is the most haunting thing anyone has ever said to me on this website.
is there a good reason to bring new humans to earth?
Maybe when ye settled your mind... you'd find one, or not...
What are you looking for when you ask for a good reason? When you ask for a reason it sounds like there is an implicit counter argument.
I'm not the best to offer reasons, my partner and I are child-free, but you can find all sorts of reasons to have kids and I don't really think they matter. If you want to have kids, go for it*. If you don't, thats awesome too.
*consent for procreative acts and we live in a society etc. but we're ignoring capitalism so...
No, even asexually, also we'll probably find a cure for aging in a couple of decades so we won't have a problems with lack of population or anything like that at all.
We’re totally all going to become immortal and be able to fight for communism for centuries.
Well yeah technically, we won't have to worry about the lack of us. But communism will already be established by then from now so we'll be able to enjoy it.
Children care for you when you grow old as you cared for them when they were young. I'm an atheist and see creating the child the same as killing a child (you just get the luxury of not seeing them old and decrepit), but plenty of children need adopting as well.
Children care for you when you grow old as you cared for them when they were young.
I am admittedly childfree so I am biased, but I have never particularly cared for this argument of having kids. It has always seemed inherently extremely selfish to me. There's no guarantee that children would be willing and/or able to take care of you when you're older. What if you needed special care for example.
Not to mention that even if I were a parent, I would not want my children to put their entire life on hold to take care of me when I am elderly. I can't imagine my parents wanting that either. If I had to take care of my parents I would have to quit my job and fly across the planet to a country I haven't been to for 20 years. My partner would either have to do the same, compounded by the fact that she doesn't speak the language, or we would have to be seperated for a very long time.
Plenty of children need adopting as well, but it's made extremely difficult in comparison to just doing a creampie repeatedly. I would love to adopt. I consider it an actual dream of mine. But my government has essentially said, no, if you aren't pulling in a high income and have the means to travel internationally frequently, you cannot adopt.
If you want a kid "for fun" you aren't old enough to have one :/
You don't get a kid "for fun", your kid is not merely something you have to have fun, your kid is their own person and you have to respect that.
