Human rights and the Natalism Question
The question of children is a divisive one, and I don't expect it to be an issue that will ever be not divisive for the foreseeable future. We've seen the childfree movement weirdos that refer to them as "crotch droppings" for crying on a plane, and the looming tide of censorship, welfare cuts and other horrific changes coming to the social safety net for Americans. Children who are minorities, particularly Black and Brown and other minority members, are often aged up, sexualized and objectified at increasingly young ages. They are not guaranteed privacy nor rights when facing pregnancy, save from faux-crisis centers that will give them twenty dollars and a pat on the back once the baby is born.
Within this Pandora's box of problems that current and future generations face is this stubborn problem of natalism; the concept of needing to have babies, perpetuate your family and continue the cycle of procreation, lineage usually includes an unpleasant drizzling of ethnonationalism on top. If the people promoting pro-natalism are white, they get some sort of sentimental or curious coverage by magazines or newspapers where a photographer throws in some nice free headshots. Like so. We still don't know why this woman cosplays like she's in a Vermeer painting, but I do not wish to speak to her and ask.
I've researched and examined the obsession with childbirth rates back in my China analysis days in the form of the One Child Policy. For those not in the know, this policy was overtly interventionist in using forced sterilization to prevent second children and encouraging child trafficking for unwanted girls. In recent years, this policy has eased off and dwindled due to the effects of the policy: a nosediving birth rate within China and women indifferent to having a billion babies.
I've looked at the rollbacks of its tenants in an age where China wants more children to boost its productivity and care for a rapidly aging population. Why did China want a One Child Policy then, and why does it desperately want to reverse course now? Their reasons for not wanting more kids is pretty simple: their existing kids aren't taken care of well and the money for raising multiple kids isn't there. “For me to give birth to three children, my future husband must be rich enough to make sure I can live well without a job," one frank commenter said in 2023.
The United States' anti-abortion movement, bankrolled by various Christian denominations and fueled by ethnonationalist natalists like Elon Musk, operates with similar problems. The rising cost of food, childcare and healthcare costs makes things much harder for people without Musk's pocketbook to ensure basic needs for children are met.
Natalism sees children for their function rather than their individual agency, and that's a core part of the problem of pro-natalism politics. Even in cases where children are supposed to bring meaning to parents, the problem is inherently in centering the parent rather than the distinct person that's now in the world as a dependent.
To me, what's never been particularly digestible about Natalism has been its disregard for the children that don't belong to the natalists themselves. There are gestures to food aid, education and healthcare, but nothing really comes close to fulfilling what they need. In cases where it is politically inconvenient for the Global North to empathize with child welfare such as Palestine's child death and malnutrition crisis, the silence stands out even more. Even domestically, natalist logic has allowed anti-child policy to skate by, including cuts to school lunch reimbursement, libraries and parks funding.
When mainstream Republicans did launch lunch funding, they tied it to physical activity requirements, which– are you seriously going to make a kid do pull-ups for sandwiches? Really? I don't care if this is stylistically bad in a newsletter, that's just weird.
The overwhelming obsession with birth as a set of politics that anyone can get behind, as argued by Atlantic columnist Elizabeth Bruenig, is unfit for the modern age. These pundits are often alone and ineffectual in creating or recovering any of the welfare systems being stripped down to the copper wiring by Elon Musk's DOGE. That Musk himself is a natalist currently inseminating dozens of women but who will starve the children of others never crosses the mind of political analysts, of course. They're too busy shaking their fingers at liberals and leftists scraping pennies for children already in the world.
Natalism's disgust, disinterest and otherwise disregard for children outside the small enclave of mostly white, wealthy and Anglo-Saxon children will perpetuate countless human suffering. For children born outside of these categories, starvation, the abduction of their parents and the stripping of their rights in childhood and young adulthood are inevitable possibilities. I suppose that America wants more kids, but in an environment that refuses to guarantee all but a few children their human rights, it'll have to keep waiting.
