The childfree left
What's so progressive about being an evolutionary dead end?
I increasingly think that America is one of the most propagandized places on earth. It’s is not surprising, I guess. America is still an empire, even if an increasingly dysfunctional one. Empires tend to get cocky and dumb, believing that they dominate the world because of some innate superiority. America is also a country that gave birth to advertising. It developed how to mass-market and sell not just useless goods to its consumer-citizens, but ideas as well. I feel that the “selling ideas” part is the most successful and powerful PR enterprise here. It’s an all-encompassing psyop that’s hard to recognize from within. So maybe I’m in a better position to see it.
With growing democracy and universal suffrage those in power had to figure out how to still run the show smoothly behind a democratic facade. Edward Bernays — nephew of Freud, father of PR, and the evil genius behind “engineering of consent” — would openly admit it.
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
So PR people — right hand of the industrialists — successfully convinced average Americans to believe in things that harm them and to buy things that make them miserable, all while selling it as happiness. This approach has been working just fine for almost a century with some disruptions here and there — but nothing that couldn’t be overcome. Since the decline of the labour movement, class analysis and class politics are not really present in the American mainstream. The way I see it — oligarchs who founded and promoted libertarianism have largely won. And the thing is you don’t even need to know this word or be interested in politics to be affected by that way of thinking. If you believe you are an individual with freedom to do whatever you want and that the state should leave you alone? Congratulations, you are a libertarian.
Libertarianism is a strong streak in America, even without any conspiring on the part of oligarchs. It comes out of a frontier society mentality. But a lot of time passed since America’s inception and we are not out there fighting for the best plot of land and killing the natives, but instead live in a hyper-connected technological society.
What I find interesting is that the libertarian ethos that is used to divide and conquer people affects even Americans who claim to be on the left, or who even proudly identify as Marxist or Maoist radicals or whatever. These are the people who ostensibly want a better future for humanity — who want to fight power, criticize American imperialism, help the working class — yet many of them are so personally defeated or confused that they don’t believe in a future. This lack of faith in the future can be seen in the anti-child mindset that I’ve just come to realize exists in the American left. Many are opposed to having children on principle — because the planet is getting too hot, because the water will be scare soon, everything is polluted, the world is overpopulated…
I get the criticism and as a mother I worry about these things all the time. But life goes on until it doesn’t. And I want my daughter to live in a better world — but I hope it’ll be better not just for her but for everyone else, too. Who knows, the generation that’s growing up now might have lives that are more fulfilling and more profound than anything we’ve known. Maybe they’ll have to tackle all the questions that previous generations, living in modernity, including us hid under the rug while mesmerized by all the consumer trinkets pushed on us? They might grow up wiser and have much more fulfilling lives than us, even if their existence is harder by our very pampered standards.
But here’s the thing: if you’re against children, why engage in left politics at all? If you don’t even want people to be around on earth in a century, why does anything really matter? Why fight for a better world and the future, if you don’t believe in the possibility of a better future? If you don’t think beyond your own lifespan and the life span of your comrades, why not just enjoy the ride now? Why not make the most money you can and make the best material life for yourself?
I’ve been getting a lot of hate online the last few weeks from a bunch of people who identity as part of the left — simply for talking about how wonderful it has been to be a mother…how connected it has made me to the world and how it enriched my art life. People have called me a broodmare, an idiot, a glorified housewife, and talked about my “fascist turn.” They said that I’m actually miserable and hate my kid and my husband and that I’m a bad mother because I’m tweeting about motherhood while supposedly neglecting my child. This last bit of slander — the fact that I’m abandoning my child by tweeting — is funny but it’s also conservative beyond belief. Do these left people think a mother should just be an appendage to a child 24/7? Is this how they see the role of women? We should shut up and do our reproductive labor? Sounds very reactionary to me — not progressive at all.
The online hate that I got was very education. To be honest, I was very surprised by these attacks coming from people on the left — not only from anonymous accounts but from left semi-intellectuals, people with some media standing. I was a little confused at first. I had not been active on Twitter until very recently and was not aware of this kind of online political discourse. I had no idea that virulent antinatalism is so popular and normalized among a certain type of very vocal, very online leftists. Now that I am aware, it strikes me that antinatalism is very strange position for an ostensibly left-progressive crowd to take. What is leftwing politics if not fighting for the future of humanity?
This kind of anti-kid thinking is nihilistic and extremely defeatist, and its feeds right into an individualistic trap — a trap that could have been set by Edward Bernays himself.
What I see in metropolitan America — which is the America that I know — is that neoliberalism, combined with zero state support and little intergenerational help, has made it extremely difficult for people to have children. But instead of recognizing these structural forces that robbed many of an opportunity to be parents, admitting how barbaric this society is, a lot of people on the left have apparently convinced themselves that there’s nothing systemic about them not wanting to have children — that they’re making an individual choice.
Looks like people have internalized a deep-seated libertarian ideology: denying systemic forces, making everything about personal choice. They’re acting like perfect obedient consumers — economically squeezed and prevented from having kids while screaming that they never wanted kids anyway.
Some will say things like, “Eww kids! How irresponsible and selfish in this climate, in this economy! What a horrible world to bring the kids into” or “kids are a nuisance” or even call children a “fuck trophy”. “Women are forced to have kids by patriarchal fascists,” others will say and then pat themselves on the back. “We’re enlightened progressives who are not going to fall for this trap!”
And yet despite all this talk, there are the underlying economic conditions. For example: it’s not surprising that the number of women not having any children started going up in a major way after the 2008 financial crash.
I know these childless people. I’ve hung out with them in New York and LA. I’ve gone to graduate school with them — where, by the way, I was somewhat looked down upon for being married so young. And no one in my graduate program in New York City was married or had kids, even though many were in their 30s. And from what I heard, most of my cohort is still childless a decade later. I hope their artlife is at least going well.
But back to antinatalist twitter — seeing this kind of rhetoric from people who are supposedly on the left made me realize that this group is not as leftwing as they think they are. Really, they’re just regular American consumers playing at being on the left. Because the rhetoric I see from this group overlaps almost perfectly with another antinatalist millennial type: the liberal childless consumer.
This other type of antinatalist millennial is not restricted or limited by the financial hardship. Maybe they have a bit of family wealth or a decent job and even a partner who makes good money. But because they’re hyper-focused on maintaining their consumerist lifestyle, they don’t want to have kids — they realize that they can’t afford to have a kid and not change their way of life. They’d have to lower their consumption levels, have fewer “experiences” — meaning constantly going out and touring the globe. They’re focused on themselves, on their own comfort, on their own self-realization. And this is often enough to dissuade them from a kid.
For this group, a child is not a good consumer product because it doesn’t maximize fun and enjoyment. So instead of kids, they have a dog or two. There’s even a term for this kind: DINK, “dual income, no kids.”
Often though, the desire to have kids, the so called biological clock does kick in at some point for women in this group, and it starts to outweigh the need to maintain their “lifestyle.” But then it can be too late for them to go the natural course, and so many women have to resort to IVF.
IVF, naturally, has its own set of problems: it’s expensive, it can take a number of cycles before it works, and it’s a hormonal shitshow for women that can destabilize and scar them psychologically. Just go on the IVF subreddit if you’re interested — you can read about women turning into “hormone monsters” and getting “roid rage” and becoming total emotional wrecks.