145 Comments

You don't have to have kids if you don't want to, and you can justify that choice to yourself as you see fit. But the assertion that people with kids can't be radical is unfounded. Most labor militants and many if not most guerrillas have had kids, for instance.

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Oh yes let’s look again who did the actual labour of raising the kids of, let’s say, Marx, or Ernesto “Che” Guevara? The invisible mothers and the inevitability traumatized children, that’s who.

All the while, the “radical revolutionary” could actually be revolutionary- not being held back by changing diapers or having to move closer to a school.

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Actually, it is because of children those people were radicalized. And you ignore indigenous revolutionaries such as the Zapatistas who proudly hold children in one arm and rifles in the other. You’re just wrong. Sorry, speaking as a person who is Nahua and Yaqui Indian and whose people have been resisting since the arrival of colonialists.

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I have never spoken of Zapatists. I spoke about how men managed to be the thinker of revolution while some women were cleaning their clothes, mending their bruises, cooking their meals and carrying and handling their children.

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I know you never spoke of them. I said you ignored them.

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With purpose. My criticism here is to MEN who became stars and centers of their political movements (and I could have said Stalin too) at the expenses and on the shoulders of their wives AND children.

You brought in some other discourse OUTSiDE the point I was making, quite arrogantly too, and pretended to be in the right. Sorry, no. I was talking of something ELSE with a PURPOSE, thank you for NOT coming into MY comment to mansplain or whatever you were trying to do. Please find YOUR own space for the kind of -surely on point - comments you wanted to make about whatever you wanted to talk about, there’s enough space not to suck someone else the air just to make a point.

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Dec 29Edited
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Glad to see that people are not being as misinformed as the author. I became more radical in my views after the birth of my son. Before that I was content with being a cog in the machine. But now I know I have to be an example to my boy and teach him that you have to stand for something. Also, being a parent prepares you for making sacrifices.

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Jan 11
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I think this guy his playing his own drum to avoid admitting he doesn’t see the issues with feminism and pretends the are discussing about colonialism. Nope. It’s about INVISIBLE WOMEN LABOUR.

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LMFAO you are so white. You know that fucks up every way you think, right? White feminism is fucked.

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And you can prove that it is as you describe the situation? :-) hm, honky?

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Marx didn't do anything other then write in his study. Most of the followers of che had families.

You're talking about some radical thinker/philosopher ideal archetipe, but the people willing to rise up are the people with most to loose.

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Spot on!

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It’s completely fine for women to do the labor of raising children while their husbands write theory or go to war against empires. You’re right they should be credited, though.

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Right on

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Dec 30
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Calling someone “gross” online makes you so macho you’re almost Musking. Kudos.

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LMFAO you’re gross as fuck, honky.

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@substack how do we deal with hateful comments?

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It’s clickbait/ragebait. A sign of the times. He’s $truggling and needs the attention, plus he probably cannot find himself a partner that wants his offspring. So now the “childhavers” are the issue.

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Antinatalist leftists are so inconsistent. They want more taxes for healthcare and nursing care, but obviously less labor also means less taxes collected.

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Jan 10
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Hey honky: your people did this. Shut your mouth about “feminism” — you’re a white colonialist settler shithead, and if your feminism is white, non-intersectional, it is SHIT.

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Jan 10
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Jan 10
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Wow. How white. Okay, Golden Girl. LMFAO

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take on jobs Westerners feel too good for (when they are not drowning in the Mediterranean, that is).

Nah dude, I applied for some of these jobs (farm labour normally done by migrant workers) and they are not on offer, I was never responded to and many of the adverts actually stated speaking Polish was a requirement.

Reality is they want migrant workers because they will not know their rights, and lack the language skills to get them enforced. They want slaves. We’re not thinking we’re too good for those jobs, they’re thinking we would not let them abuse us as much as they want to abuse their workers, so they find people who will be too vulnerable to resist.

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Admittedly, my Chicano friends probably didn't have the best Spanish, as they were raised in the US.

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Yes this was my experience on a onion farm. Now I don't speak Spanish, but my compadres were Chicano. They did not hire any of us. We were right there, at the onion field too.

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100% ^^^. I have many friends who have said the same. The best manual labor job I ever got was an independently owned landscaping company that was grandfathered in from old times, every big company hired exclusively migrant in shady illegal ways and paid off whoever was supposed to stop it.

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Dec 20
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Dude the conditions on those farms are kinda fucked you make it sound... weird.

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Neither of my 30 something kids has any interest in procreating. I didn’t either but met someone who wanted an ideal family like he never had (teen mom-ended in bad foster care). It didn’t go well. I don’t envy friends who continually report about their grandchildren. Those kids are doomed to an awful life. The demands of our hyper capitalist society and aging population are driving the JD Vance’s, Elon Musks and their misguided followers to insist that women in the US must have more children (I read that Putin wants every Russian to have six kids)-so they’re eliminating abortion, for starters. Immigration is another solution to the demographic problem but those are nonwhite people so we can’t have that. Thanks for the thoughtful article. Regretting having children (which is more common than most people admit) is way worse than any abortion regret a person might have

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We live life easier than ever. If your kids believe this life is hell, then maybe your anti-life nihilist hedonist crap had a toll.

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My son has student loan debt from three years of college , more than I had to get going through law school. The rent where he lives averages $1400/month for a one bedroom apartment in the Midwest , which is unaffordable for even some skilled professionals . I worked in a legal aid firm where we prevented over 100 foreclosures in the last two years. Tell me man-without-a-last-name, what righteous work you’ve done to benefit your community? I’m betting nothing. Enjoy your privilege

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Dec 22
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Nobody else suffers the consequences of abortion, but a child whose parents can’t take care of them suffers for a long time

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There are problems with this essay-- as much as I agree the sentiment is generally true, or at least might be on paper.

The ruling class-- whether capitalist or communist-- wants to control how many children you have. That's all. Nothing more to see. It really is two sides of the same coin that is population control.

Your post falls into the trap of the natalist vs/ antinatalist binary. Leave this conversation with the assholes that started it and those who continue to mold global policy.

Whether or not people have kids should be the question of the person having them, within community of people who support them. Anything else is misogyny.

Human Breeding is a biological imperative that can be ignored because we're the apes that ask questions.

Discussing human breeding in terms of moral imperatives-- the natalism vs/ antinatalism binary-- is a legacy of authoritarianism. In all its decadence, it amounts to a Marx vs. Malthus vs. Organized Religion circle jerk.

Some, though not all, of the most radical women have had kids. It's just a statistic that most who can birth children will in their lifetime. To suggest that those who are on the front lines of any radical movement are the childfree is lofty, if at all ideal.

The other problem is that of all the childfree people I know-- few of them are radical or ungovernable and several of them will likely end up having children, despite their childfree proclamations. To be fair, I can say this of the parents in my life too. I also give possible exception to those childfree who live with the necessity to be outspoken and radical in their existence because they're Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ+ and/or other people of color/otherwise strategically undervalued. Their being radical effects others only so much in that them existing does, which is to say "somewhat".

They are as consumed in their lives as the parents are, except potentially without the obligatory survival sense that comes with parenting (for better or worse). Again with exceptions, they are professionals in bullshit jobs-- protected and driven by commerce, academia, and bureaucracy.

Ungovernable? Not really.

In an invasion, would any of them be making molotovs beside parents and their kiddos? Would they be throwing stones? Would they be fleeing? I hope whatever they're doing, it isn't freezing and fawning. As you note, many families already do. As the childfree are a growing population, let's hope they don't.

Everyone is governable when a knife is at their throat. Unless they have skill, community, luck and the fortune of timing.

The more arguments are made about whether people should or shouldn't do whatever they can do with their bodies and their lives, the more schizmogenesis. The less fostering community in any effective way. The more governable we will all be and the more things are going to stay the same.

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Amen to that! The Big Lie that "everybody must procreate" is just as outdated, outmoded, and specious as that other pernicious Big Lie that "everybody (and their mother) must work for a living".

https://thechaliceandtheflame.blogspot.com/2024/02/mother-nature-knows-exactly-what-she-is.html

As Edward Abbey famously said, growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. Which eventually kills its host, by the way.

(Mic drop)

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The more optimistic corollary of this is that in a world where every child - no matter their parents - is guaranteed health, safety, opportunity to develop their abilities and the rest… then choosing to become a parent remains a sacrifice of flexibility/convenient, but no longer is a sacrifice of your independence vis-a-vis other adults and their institutions.

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They will only be "guaranteed" these goodies if they comply with every diktat of the state.

Entitlements ensure conservatism.

That's exactly what the author is saying. It's not "optimistic." It's fatalistic.

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Under the current system of neoliberalism and authoritarianism, that is true. But that is not the only possible system, of course.

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My reason for not having children. My older brother, like me, had ASD. He was not capable of keeping a relationship, but really good at producing children. When his first wife had his first child, he left her for the girl 2 doors down the hall. She was alone with a new baby and needed help. I had just turned 17 and moved in with her. I cared for my niece while she worked. The experience changed me. I saw her struggle. I struggled to care for that tiny human. I came out of that knowing I was no capable of hearing children. I made the right choice. I struggled with undiagnosed ASD and alcoholism for many years. I am sober almost 28 years now. I know would have ruined lives if I made another choice.

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I read the title as “Government Realizes Child Free Citizens Are Harder to Oppress”. No child, no one for them to figuratively kidnap and ransom for your obedience. Ouch.

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Sure, we will just have to work until death now as there is no younger labor force. We are so free now /s

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Im a 19 year old female and Ive always known Ive never wanted kids. I am the oldest of 3 to a single mom. My mom had me at 18 so Ive been with her, her entire adult life and Ive watched and witnessed the struggles of single motherhood. She had to work 3 or more jobs to support us. So I was mostly the one at home helping watch the kids with homwork, cleaning, cooking. My mothe dint sugercoat anything. Yes she loves us, but she lectures me all the of what her life could have been and where she was heading if only she chose better. And even if she nevered lectured me me just simply being stuck with my younger siblings I knew I didnt want this to be my life. Society basically shoves the agenda to: go to school, to go to college, to get a job, to take care of their kids. No other deviation really. So I went about life not really thinking of motherhood as a "choice". I dreaded my future. I didnt want all my education and achievements to all be for nothing to be stuck at home to care for kids. I dont really like them. Then I got Tiktok some years later and I came across this Tiktok of these men bashing and critizing this woman for saying shes single with no kids and appeared very happy with her life. They said all kinds of ugly things about her. I watched more of those videos. More people saying awful things about these women but all I could think was how much I wanted that life those women were living. They were called the Childfree Community, beforehand Ive never heard the word childfree before. I went down the rabbithole of those videos. These women were confident, free, traveling and everything I wanted to be. I weight felt like it came off of me knowing that my future could be that, that that was an option. I am so thankful to have found the childfree community, and Im proud to be a Childfreebychoice women.

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…if fucked up world is your reason not to have children, i have a question: AT WHICH POINT IN ALL EXISTENCE IT WASN’T ?! …and if you don’t have children that means you willingly decline a chance to bring up to this world someone who can make a positive impact and change it a little by little along with others, yes it is a dilemma, but only desire for better world can be viable reason to have them, it’s not easy and if you’re looking for easy life - don’t, but do not blame a “broken world” for your decision

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The answer to this is basic math. At which point in all existence wasn't the world fucked-up, or at least, as hugely fucked-up as now (hard as it is to define "fucked up", but we'll give 'er a stab)? At that point when humanity passed perhaps the 2-billion mark, around which point science, crunching all availbale data related to sustainable human carrying capacity of the planet, seems in general agreement our long-term future had exited the building. 1930's then, at that point is which point. There's an answer to your question. All things are not equal to what they used to be in other words, not by any stretch of the imagination. We are now "we need at least three more planets like this one!" level-'fucked'. A place humanity has never before in the history of our species been.

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..i did not ask any questions and i don’t need your “answers”, stick with “atheism”, leave the fucking kids alone with your “simple math”

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Why wouldn't you stay off of the comments sections if your intention is not to elicit responses? I mean, "duh", as they say.

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Dec 8
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You’re obviously very angry over this subject. Relax, bud. Big ol’ world out there. And by the way, defaulting to “you would never undertand so i’m outta here” is a standard tactic of the intellectual coward.

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Nov 22Edited
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The suicide rate is up 30%

You don’t need to motivate people to do this, it is already happening. My suspicion is that if a simple, kind means of ending our life by choice existed, tens of thousands of Americans would do it every year (if not more)

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The main difference is that now, people (particularly women) actually have the CHOICE not to procreate. For now at least. I'm afraid the GOP and Project 2025 have other plans though....

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God you people are tiresome. Has your cult’s decisive rejection by the American electorate instilled any skepticism at all of the narrative being peddled by your cult’s leaders? Like maybe just for a day try asking yourself: what if they’re lying to me? You’ll be amazed at where this line of inquiry can take you.

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I am assuming you are a MAGA cultist enjoying your pride before the fall. And fall you will, sooner or later.

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I don’t vote in U.S. elections. Just an observer. But sure, keep telling yourself that the cult who tells you that men can get pregnant is being honest about reproductive rights.

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Says the guy (presumably) with the name of the worlds deadliest drug by far in his name, lol.

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blah blah blah never happened, never will. Trump won.

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A lot can happen in four years. And then what? Just saying.

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What are you saying? There is ample evidence that at least some part of the MAGA movement that eliminated safe and available abortion is now going after the day after pill (not abortion), and has articulated that they want to also move on birth control.

There is also plenty of evidence of a desire to move to a "tradwife" model, to remove the franchise from women, and other horrific ideas. These aren't conspiracies. Whether they will happen is another story.

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So true. They are saying the quiet part out loud now, for anyone who is paying attention.

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For as often as this article is shared in Reddit, I expected more comments here.

You show very clear insight cutting through the collective natalist pipedream.

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We need to be careful about narratives that blame women, or people, for this problem, and instead attack the institutions and structures in society which play on innate evolutionary instincts to pass on genes through a vast array of cultural tools and soft power exercises. I’d like to read something that explore what these are and how to notice them.

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I don't blame women, I credit them. Endless growth is death.

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Jan 6
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Ah yes, I forgot that easier was better! I’m such a silly little woman…

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Click-/ragebait. Also, quite the contrary, sometimes the most insufferable lemmings.

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If the capitalist class wants you to have as many children as possible, then it begs the question if it even is the ruling class, since birth rates are plummetting below sustainability. But does the capitalist class want you to have lots of children? Does it support policies that encourage family formation?

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Jan 10
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I didn't take a position here about whether depopulation is a good or bad thing, let alone advocate for turning the entire planet into high density family housing. I just questioned the premise that the capitalist class wants you to have lots of children, or if it does then whether it is the ruling class, since people are, in fact, now having fewer children. You extrapolated far beyond what I said.

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I have become an antinatalist.

Not because I hate kids. I have two adult kids that I love dearly. I anti-Natal because humanity is so profoundly anti-human. Everywhere I turn (I’m in Moldova right now) I see wealth destroying culture and extracting everything it can from society, leaving behind a colorless pap of non-places that it calls luxury.

And that is in the good places. In the bad places (Israel, Ukraine) we see the same old stories of domination, rape, and conquest that we have had since man figured out how to create surplus.

I love people. I love community. I love service. All of these are being destroyed. Why would I want more children to face a world of million-dollar college and worthless healthcare, of rent that is 1/3 of their gross pay at a bullshit job that they can never leave?

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Speak for your own cultures, please. You’re describing European culture, and European-derived cultures. Many cultures put people before profit.

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Jan 10
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Name one what, cracker? A culture that is non-white that puts their People before Profits? You dumb cracker: THE MAYA. Hence, ZAPATISTAS.

Fucking whiteys are the WORST.

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There’s this endless demand for a victim narrative around the fact of voluntary self-genocide.

Like whatever man. Hope others aren’t like you so someone is around to enjoy life long term

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