It is important to remember that pronatalist policies are often mixed with racist and fascist ideas and tend to limit women’s reproductive rights.
Demographic decline is a fact, and it is not only happening in rich countries. We have fewer and fewer children and in a world dominated by economic performance, children are like immigrants: their value is understood not so much for who they are as for what they bring. American demographer Jennifer Sciubba says that sex, death and migration shape our world, and the fact that populists mix it all up proves her right. Having children is a personal decision and an exercise of individual freedom, and those who claim to be liberal should understand that before saying that any person or family should have children or have more children.
This is why, to include in the political program that motherhood and fatherhood are good from an individual point of view and not just a collective one, it is necessary to resort to certain populist contortions which are enjoying notable success. One of them is racist and appeals to the famous great replacement: we have children for the country and the survival of the race and to prevent the children of others from freely roaming our ancestral territories. It’s an old idea that has its roots in eugenics from the beginning of the 20th century. Well, the Nazis. We must have Spanish children so that the children of Moroccans do not replace the Spaniards, just as we must have Catalan children so that the children of the Spaniards do not replace the Catalans, and so on up to consanguinity and, in in short, until we all end up voting for Alvise or Orriols. The call to have offspring in a racist competition has the weak point of being useful only to very coffee farmers (there are very few people who think of their country at the time of fertilization) and, to add a news note, this ends up giving Mexico a right in the “natives versus conquerors” controversy.
It is important to remember that pronatalist policies are often mixed with racist and fascist ideas and tend to limit women’s reproductive rights. The (relative) novelty is that those (and especially those) who decide not to have children (or to have few) do so not in the exercise of their personal freedom but because of a cultural distortion and politics that hurt their true selves and condemned them. to misfortune. JD Vance, Putin and religion intersect on this path with the aim of reestablishing a moral framework that women have forgotten at the cost of debauchery abuse, contraceptives and abortions. The bill being prepared by the Russian Duma, which could impose fines of up to 50,000 euros on those who support “the refusal to have children” in any area of life, from informal conversation to the creation of films and books and which the Kremlin describes as a response to the “movement without children» cuddles on the dirtiest couch with the JD Vance of cat women and childless technobros. As a famous influencer would say, feminism has become charocracy.
These influences should not be underestimated. Capitalism, Russia and the Marbella hotelier need you to have children and call for a search for a deep purpose that women can only find if they are truly capable of thinking about the meaning of life, about motherhood. If you end up thinking that having lots of children is a deliberate rejection of a self-centered lifestyle and “humanistic” personal choice, you can combine 1950s family life with a modern rejection of woke up and a sublime call to personal freedom. The messages are aimed at women who have decided to have fewer or no children in pursuit of personal happiness and professional success and suggest, not so subtly, that they are selfish people who will end up alone and devoured by their cats. Disregard for women’s judgment and the realization that many are tired of fighting pointless battles leads to proposing a moral framework that guarantees happiness, tranquility and the realization of a higher purpose.
Women know what we want and, since this is indisputable, it is worth remembering that policies explicitly in favor of birth have not had and do not have great results. Improving the lives of individuals and families should be an end in itself, not a means to bringing more children into the world. Investing in education and health, creating opportunities and tackling inequalities should be goals, not policies aimed at convincing us to have children. Addressing current reality instead of trying to return to a version of the past that never existed and protecting the rights of those who do may not bring more children into the world, but it will will make the future better for those who come. Wasn’t that our heritage?
