One of the many hilarious delusions of these people is the idea that simply breeding will result in more conservatives. I grew up in a big Catholic family, I WENT TO BAYLOR, I've lived in TX for nearly 30 years, and I know FAR more quivverfull children who eventually become raging liberals following their (nearly inevitable) deconstruction than who stayed "true" to their familes' beliefs. To my eye, they're simply creating more exvangelicals, a pretty potent progressive force imo, though I concede even they can do serious damage before they come to their senses.
And that doesn't even ADDRESS the statistical fact that some of these kids will simply be born not having it (or LGBTQ+, etc.).
I just laughed when I read that post too… very similar story. I also grew up in Texas, was homeschooled, went to a private Christian college with mandatory chapel and devotions before class, etc and now I’m quite gay and liberal. Out of the 4 of us, only 1 is still religious.
It is an interesting biological fact that, and there is available research with a quick google, that the more children a woman has, the lower the testosterone with each birth. This is linked to people being LGBTQ+ in some cases. So the bigger the family, the more of an absolute CERTAINTY it is that there will be queer children in the family. There's also some really interesting info about Queer people hiding in plain sight in Victorian families where numbers were large, so the pressure to get married etc was less. 'Bachelor' uncles and 'Maiden' Aunts were a staple feature of Middle and Upper-class Victorian society, and there is a lot of data to show there were vibrant Queer communities despite horrifying oppression. While I enjoy the irony of the certainty that there will only be more queer youth born into these families, it hurts my heart to think of kids growing up being told they are monsters. We can only hope that biology does her work and turns the world rainbow.
Yep, recovering Catholic here. I'm one of seven kids from a large and deeply religious family but I was done with the church and its hypocrisy by third grade. Out of all of us, only the youngest still goes to church. Between us all we've only had ten kids, the big reproducer had a kid with their first spouse and two with the second.
This is sooooo correct. The biggest liberals I know grew up in Quiverfull Catholic families, although we didn’t use that language until the late 90’s. Protestants didn’t have big families when I was growing up in the 70’s. They’ve since decided that too many women lived to be 50 so they’ve joined the Catholics in rejecting birth control.
My brothers are evangelicals with many kids (not nearly a Quiverfull, though) who homeschool their children (mostly daughters), send them to all the church classes, and teach them to hate "liberal" public education (including all non-Christian colleges and universities). They are not too ashamed to take advantage of state (publicly) funded enrichment programs and testing services that allow their children to have some fun, although as it works out they are able to schedule/arrange it so most of the kids in their sessions are fellow Christians. The fascinating wrinkle is that most of my brother's children are going to Christian universities to learn a special kind of Rhetoric - literally how to debate in defense of Evangelical beliefs. I've learned that it's a giant ecosystem of school courses, degrees, teachers, formal debate competition, and coaches. It's really one giant self-licking ice cream of Church propaganda but quite literally the only "higher studies" that my brothers and their churches are willing to "let" the kids study (at significant out-of-pocket tuition costs to my brothers, too). I would not have know about this educational sub-culture except for my family connections. This is not a rural corner in northern Idaho - this is California! I hope (against experience) that these kids will eventually rebel against the church and my brothers when they find out they've been intellectually armed for almost exactly nothing to survive (let alone thrive) in the real world.
It might comfort you to know that I homeschooled my kids to be left wing AF. We are a queer loving, trans embracing, river of gender fluidity and acceptance. I taught my kids to how to see past social conditioning and media consumption. Through farming they learned to care for other things more than themselves, they learned to communicate with people of many ages and how to tailor themselves to different experiences. They learned bushcraft and survival skills, studied history by visiting real castles, learned biology by looking at the nature they lived in as well as sooooo many books and a million billion science and art projects. My son is planning on heading to Uni to study Liberal Arts, he's interested in gender studies but also ethics. My daughter is homeschooling again, and wants to work in AI. I'm proud that they are both caring and compassionate people, who are capable, have practical skills but are academically strong too. I was so fortunate to so it, but we also moved from the UK to Canada to afford it and it was many, many miserable years in the making. Just to say, us lefties have caught on to the homeschooling too and I know a LOT of liberal homeschoolers who are rabbits ; )
And why is faith in some higher power necessary to experience and, hence, learn love and joy? I'd offer that we learn that as children from loving, joyful parents, families and communities. Love and joy are uniquely earthly experiences, just as hate and suffering are uniquely *human* and earthly experiences.
While I understand the knee jerk impulse to dunk on religion here, please be careful of painting religion with too broad a brush. There are a lot of religious people who fight for justice. The entire Civil Rights movement began in churches. It’s important to remember that
These are my comments and I’m cautioning you against being dismissive and condescending. If you continue to double down I’ll delete your comments because I think we need to create space here for a better dialogue.
I used to have family in Northern Ireland and my mother spent a good deal of time there growing up. She recounts a story of overhearing someone in the town her aunt lived in - a Protestant woman saying that she kept having babies to keep up with the Catholics so they didn’t « overrun » the place.
The concept of trying to outbreed the opposition is very old, and never works out as they think it will. The Irish I know of my generation from both sides of the religious fence have no more or less kids than anyone else.
This bizarre step back in progress is weirdly selfish, and often ends up with the eldest parenting the youngest.
My catholic husband loves the book « cheaper by the dozen ». What he fails to take from is it than none of this children from that family had a large family of their own, in fact many didn’t have any children at all. To me that speaks volumes as to what their real experience of growing up in a huge family was like.
I have a preteen stepdaughter. And even though she’s only with us half the time, she requires, to me, a surprising amount of parenting. How can you possibly devote the time and energy to bringing up children - especially teenagers in this social media obsessed world- when your attention is split in so many different ways. Of course it is possible to do but, in my opinion, you have to be a specific type of person and have a very supportive partner in order to manage it. Your average right wing white man isn’t going to be the type to pitch in ~50% with housework and childcare…
When homeschooling we met a lot of VERY large families (8 kids and still going is what I call a lot) and they did this due to their Catholic faith. But in EVERY case I saw these larger families farming out the duties of the parent to their eldest, usually female, children. 9 year olds taking care of toddlers, running after 5 year olds nearly their size, while Mum chats with friends. I get that this is a break for her, but I witnessed the same behaviour in the homes, and the behaviours were clearly common. Kids deserve to have a childhood, not be adultified by adults abdicating their own duties. I think if the adults had to do a bigger share, ie due to the kids being in school, suddenly we would see a real drop in birth rates in those communities. In over 10 years I never met a 'larger' homeschooling family that seemed like something I'd like to imitate. Sorry to be very negative here.
Oldest of four here and, yup. Rings true (except for the homeschooling part). But my mom just did what she knew: as the oldest of six, she essentially raised the last two. A long line of Catholic intellectual overachievers here, we were also expected to get higher degrees and participate in a ‘life of the mind.’
I have two friends who were in the scenario you mentioned…both were eldest in their families and had to raise the youngest. Both escaped as soon as possible…and one had no children, one had one.
The irony of conservatives hand-wringing about leftists "grooming" their children while they outline how they plan to groom their children to be conservatives like them.
It's deflection, and it's 100% un-ironic. The previously dog-whistled "or else" part that follows "Make Gilead Great Again!" is being said out loud for all creatures to hear now.
Most of recent (white) history is colonizer exploitation and utter destruction of the Global South. Waves of South immigration are washing up on the shores of empire (when they make to shore) and the effort to repel them is Job One for North governments. American bipartisanship in our times is practiced on two issues: militarizing the US border with Mexico and supporting Israeli expansion at all costs. Now, for extra zest, add a dash of climate emergency to make the diaspora bigger, more unpredictable, and more dependent on hoarded North resources. Coercing white god-fearing women to make more white god-fearing babies is the OG business model, and business best be booming. Indeed, that model has never been more parallel to institutional objectives. All the pieces fit together in the most abhorrent ways. What can we do today to smash down our routine inhumanity...?
Thanks to those Lyz-heads elsewhere in this discussion who called out Idiocracy as journalism rather than aspirational fiction. This world of ours is increasingly difficult to satirize.
I agree heartily that the hypocrisy is the point. They want to get away with it is all, they want to be able to be hypocrites, but have the power so no one can call them out. It's like a gang of tweens putting their heads together and figuring out that they can do things much better than the grown-ups. While living in a world, where the people they hate keep working to provide them with the safety and justice they want to deny others. Sadly there is an emotional disconnect, where people don't seem to grow past a certain point, making it easier to control and lie to them.
So many thoughts. I’m constantly amazed that in a nation that celebrates individuality and refuses to acknowledge anything that is negativity systemic (racism, classism, ageism, ableism) that we have whole systems that believe woman are required to marry any human with a penis and have kids whether they want them or not.
Women are allowed to be individuals until 16 and then they should start preparing for taking care of other people until they are too old and then they have to foster their care on another women.
This isn’t about Men not understanding about choice. They know they are asking women to do something they would never want to. They would probably unalive theirselves if they had to spend even 5 of their years providing 24 hours service to others without accolades, money or respect AND in 70% of these relationships you also have to work outside the home. Womenhood and motherhood isn’t like serving in the military, there are no business discounts. When a military person is in public people are not judging them for just being in public but women who step outside are judge for their appearance, their
How their kids behaved, etc. Women are devalued when they age, if they have too many kids, if they can’t have kids, and if they leave a marriage. This happens to all women but this forced childbirth and labor stuff is absolutely from white men.
I can’t imagine what it must feel like that the people closest to you, men who claim they are protecting and providing for you never actually see you. Any milestones or achievements you want to make are not worthy. Any skills you may have outside of managing a household is a threat to managing a household. I can’t imagine this. I would never be able to survive living in a community like that. It would feel like that show The French Village - everyone is suspect, even your parents. That has to be the worst when your own family wants to give your one life away like this. UGH!
The really damaging thing about pronatalism is that they really aren't interested in being good parents, or a loving family. They seem to believe that their genes are so amazing that nurture is, well, whatever. It's a truly bonkers cult, which will most likely produce a great deal of children with a great deal of trauma. I suppose they must also believe that money will sort that out too. Truly a headscratcher.
Musk is an excellent example of that; he's just seeking to have as many children as he can with as many women. He cannot possibly and does not appear to be actually doing the work of parenting all of them, not while he's also involved in multiple companies and apparently on drugs most of the time. He just gets mad when they don't grow up to think like he does (see his trans daughter who has changed her name and no longer wants to be associated with him).
Also on the trad wives thing. It almost seems like a kink to me. I mean, you do you (or whomever) but quit acting so superior to those of us who don’t advertise our kink on TikTok.
I sent my 2 kids to Catholic school for 12 years. Alas, they were Jesuit schools whose teachings include social justice. A Catholic education often leads to a very well read former Catholic.
This is very true. The Catholics I know who when to catholic school are pretty lapsed as adults! Way more so than equivalent Church of England educated.
Dehumanization in all forms is horrific, but this gendered dehumanization paired with eugenics (also ultimately dehumanization) makes me ill and anxious for the world our children will inherit 😭
Damn! You said what I was trying to say in 1/4 the words! Yes! It is so terrifying to me. Because I know if they can do this to their own community, god only knows what they’d do to other people.
As numerous folks have said here, the plan to populate the world with lockstep Christian conservatives inevitably gets derailed by the reality of life and humanity. My family is an example of this. We were in the evangelical subculture for decades. About ten years ago the process began in which ALL of us, my wife and four daughters and me, all of us have left that culture, have reoriented ourselves to a love for all humanity and every expression of life on this beautiful planet.
The freedom we feel is indescribable. It’s why, though I’m afraid we are going to be going through a period of time (hopefully not too many generations long) where we will have to battle hate and misogyny and racism, we will come out the other side with renewed hearts, a renewed planet, and where love undergirds our political and societal structures.
For what it’s worth, what we experienced in the Christian subculture we were in wasn’t tied to eugenics. We and those we were with believed that everyone, regardless of color, sex, etc was made in the image of God. Unfortunately we had a very narrow view of what God approved. This creates, on the surface level, what looks like a commonality between white supremacists and evangelicals, and in many cases I’m sure that is the situation. But the reality is far more complicated, and simply lumping your evangelical acquaintances in with white supremacists is a sure fire way to cut off dialog and foster hate.
Be as gracious as you can out there. Love really is stronger than hate.
For my current writing project I have been researching the eugenics history of Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family . . . it really sucks to grow up and realize you were born into a patriarchal white supremacist eugenicist movement for religious authoritarian aims. But here we are! Lyz I would LOVE to interview you for my project if you are ever interested: https://strongwilled.substack.com/
I think one of the reasons the evangelical base and the right have gelled so well over their years is because they both drive this rampant reproduction agenda. In the case of the evangelicals, it is definitely eugenics. More white Christians equals more power. Literally Nazi philosophy.
In the case of Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires, they need population growth to maintain their large pool of cheap labor in order to keep building their wealth.
Hmmm, a quick search on Chaiya Raichik reveals that she is 29 years old and has 2 children.
Seems like she is not living up to her proclamation that she was going to have "lots of children", because I would expect her to have 8 or 9 by that age if she was being self-consistent.
To me it sounds like she's making the correct mouth noises, but is, like a lot the public-facing next-gen schlaflies we're seeing these days, not actually that interested in just staying home and being a mom.
One angle that I don't always see when talking about the push to get women to produce more babies (voluntarily or otherwise...) is that 20% of women (and that number is growing) do not and will never have children, some by choice, some because of infertility, lack of a partner or a number of other complex reasons. (That includes me.) Women without children have long been looked upon with suspicion, as lesser beings, and more recently with downright hostility by some. I've seen some conservative politicians suggesting that people without children should be taxed more, or not be allowed to vote, or that people with children should be given additional votes for each child they have, because they have "more skin in the game." To suggest that childless/childfree people do not have a stake in the future and/or do not care about the wellbeing of the children around them is downright insulting. (stepping off my soapbox)
One of the things that it didn't have time for is how hard the Clintons seemed convinced that liberal and conservative weren't that far apart during the 90s. The adoration of markets, the deference Ronald Reagan, the casual racism of the 2008 campaign in Iowa, the willingness to countenance restrictions on third trimester abortions, the aggressive foreign policy, all were of a piece with a rightward drift they were part of and which set us up for Bush and then Trump.
I always thought it was nearly pure opportunism on his part. On hers, it's always felt like she was constrained by her Republican suburban upbringing and temperamental caution and that her gradual moves to the left--partly in response to pressure from the left, partly because of the right's intransigence--was a real political and intellectual journey. (Shorter version: I don't like her politics, especially her love for Kissinger's foreign policy I do think she's highly intelligent and honest.)
Whatever the case, now that the mask is off the American right, I hope it's easier for Democratic women be direct rather than trying to be accommodating, when necessary. And I hope that means their paths will be easier for them to negotiate.
I also hope for someone to do a similarly engaging treatment of the difficulties faced by Democratic women of color who aspire to elective office. We need them, too. Not Traister's job, I know.
There is not a lot out there! It took a great deal of effort to find sources that interrogate this. I got a 96 on my paper, and if you or others would like to read it, I’m happy to share it. Perhaps I can upload it to Substack… it’s nearly 30 pages long.
I want to read this paper and appreciate your willingness to make your research available. With your permission, I can send your pdf to the leadership of VoteRunLead, a nationwide nonprofit org that trains women to run for elective office. I learned of their great work from reading Rebecca Traister's most recent book. (https://voterunlead.org)
One of the many hilarious delusions of these people is the idea that simply breeding will result in more conservatives. I grew up in a big Catholic family, I WENT TO BAYLOR, I've lived in TX for nearly 30 years, and I know FAR more quivverfull children who eventually become raging liberals following their (nearly inevitable) deconstruction than who stayed "true" to their familes' beliefs. To my eye, they're simply creating more exvangelicals, a pretty potent progressive force imo, though I concede even they can do serious damage before they come to their senses.
And that doesn't even ADDRESS the statistical fact that some of these kids will simply be born not having it (or LGBTQ+, etc.).
I just laughed when I read that post too… very similar story. I also grew up in Texas, was homeschooled, went to a private Christian college with mandatory chapel and devotions before class, etc and now I’m quite gay and liberal. Out of the 4 of us, only 1 is still religious.
It is an interesting biological fact that, and there is available research with a quick google, that the more children a woman has, the lower the testosterone with each birth. This is linked to people being LGBTQ+ in some cases. So the bigger the family, the more of an absolute CERTAINTY it is that there will be queer children in the family. There's also some really interesting info about Queer people hiding in plain sight in Victorian families where numbers were large, so the pressure to get married etc was less. 'Bachelor' uncles and 'Maiden' Aunts were a staple feature of Middle and Upper-class Victorian society, and there is a lot of data to show there were vibrant Queer communities despite horrifying oppression. While I enjoy the irony of the certainty that there will only be more queer youth born into these families, it hurts my heart to think of kids growing up being told they are monsters. We can only hope that biology does her work and turns the world rainbow.
Yep, recovering Catholic here. I'm one of seven kids from a large and deeply religious family but I was done with the church and its hypocrisy by third grade. Out of all of us, only the youngest still goes to church. Between us all we've only had ten kids, the big reproducer had a kid with their first spouse and two with the second.
This is sooooo correct. The biggest liberals I know grew up in Quiverfull Catholic families, although we didn’t use that language until the late 90’s. Protestants didn’t have big families when I was growing up in the 70’s. They’ve since decided that too many women lived to be 50 so they’ve joined the Catholics in rejecting birth control.
My brothers are evangelicals with many kids (not nearly a Quiverfull, though) who homeschool their children (mostly daughters), send them to all the church classes, and teach them to hate "liberal" public education (including all non-Christian colleges and universities). They are not too ashamed to take advantage of state (publicly) funded enrichment programs and testing services that allow their children to have some fun, although as it works out they are able to schedule/arrange it so most of the kids in their sessions are fellow Christians. The fascinating wrinkle is that most of my brother's children are going to Christian universities to learn a special kind of Rhetoric - literally how to debate in defense of Evangelical beliefs. I've learned that it's a giant ecosystem of school courses, degrees, teachers, formal debate competition, and coaches. It's really one giant self-licking ice cream of Church propaganda but quite literally the only "higher studies" that my brothers and their churches are willing to "let" the kids study (at significant out-of-pocket tuition costs to my brothers, too). I would not have know about this educational sub-culture except for my family connections. This is not a rural corner in northern Idaho - this is California! I hope (against experience) that these kids will eventually rebel against the church and my brothers when they find out they've been intellectually armed for almost exactly nothing to survive (let alone thrive) in the real world.
It might comfort you to know that I homeschooled my kids to be left wing AF. We are a queer loving, trans embracing, river of gender fluidity and acceptance. I taught my kids to how to see past social conditioning and media consumption. Through farming they learned to care for other things more than themselves, they learned to communicate with people of many ages and how to tailor themselves to different experiences. They learned bushcraft and survival skills, studied history by visiting real castles, learned biology by looking at the nature they lived in as well as sooooo many books and a million billion science and art projects. My son is planning on heading to Uni to study Liberal Arts, he's interested in gender studies but also ethics. My daughter is homeschooling again, and wants to work in AI. I'm proud that they are both caring and compassionate people, who are capable, have practical skills but are academically strong too. I was so fortunate to so it, but we also moved from the UK to Canada to afford it and it was many, many miserable years in the making. Just to say, us lefties have caught on to the homeschooling too and I know a LOT of liberal homeschoolers who are rabbits ; )
Faith that widens our capacity to experience joy and love is necessary for survival. Religious education is an oxymoron.
And why is faith in some higher power necessary to experience and, hence, learn love and joy? I'd offer that we learn that as children from loving, joyful parents, families and communities. Love and joy are uniquely earthly experiences, just as hate and suffering are uniquely *human* and earthly experiences.
While I understand the knee jerk impulse to dunk on religion here, please be careful of painting religion with too broad a brush. There are a lot of religious people who fight for justice. The entire Civil Rights movement began in churches. It’s important to remember that
Thank you. Lots of us became liberals by reading the Gospels. Jesus was a huge hippy.
These are my comments and I’m cautioning you against being dismissive and condescending. If you continue to double down I’ll delete your comments because I think we need to create space here for a better dialogue.
Okay. Your substack, your rules. I apologize if I came across as dismissive and condescending.
I am from the U.K.
I used to have family in Northern Ireland and my mother spent a good deal of time there growing up. She recounts a story of overhearing someone in the town her aunt lived in - a Protestant woman saying that she kept having babies to keep up with the Catholics so they didn’t « overrun » the place.
The concept of trying to outbreed the opposition is very old, and never works out as they think it will. The Irish I know of my generation from both sides of the religious fence have no more or less kids than anyone else.
This bizarre step back in progress is weirdly selfish, and often ends up with the eldest parenting the youngest.
My catholic husband loves the book « cheaper by the dozen ». What he fails to take from is it than none of this children from that family had a large family of their own, in fact many didn’t have any children at all. To me that speaks volumes as to what their real experience of growing up in a huge family was like.
I have a preteen stepdaughter. And even though she’s only with us half the time, she requires, to me, a surprising amount of parenting. How can you possibly devote the time and energy to bringing up children - especially teenagers in this social media obsessed world- when your attention is split in so many different ways. Of course it is possible to do but, in my opinion, you have to be a specific type of person and have a very supportive partner in order to manage it. Your average right wing white man isn’t going to be the type to pitch in ~50% with housework and childcare…
When homeschooling we met a lot of VERY large families (8 kids and still going is what I call a lot) and they did this due to their Catholic faith. But in EVERY case I saw these larger families farming out the duties of the parent to their eldest, usually female, children. 9 year olds taking care of toddlers, running after 5 year olds nearly their size, while Mum chats with friends. I get that this is a break for her, but I witnessed the same behaviour in the homes, and the behaviours were clearly common. Kids deserve to have a childhood, not be adultified by adults abdicating their own duties. I think if the adults had to do a bigger share, ie due to the kids being in school, suddenly we would see a real drop in birth rates in those communities. In over 10 years I never met a 'larger' homeschooling family that seemed like something I'd like to imitate. Sorry to be very negative here.
Oldest of four here and, yup. Rings true (except for the homeschooling part). But my mom just did what she knew: as the oldest of six, she essentially raised the last two. A long line of Catholic intellectual overachievers here, we were also expected to get higher degrees and participate in a ‘life of the mind.’
Ah. I have one child, a late entry at 41. I was okay with having none.
I have two friends who were in the scenario you mentioned…both were eldest in their families and had to raise the youngest. Both escaped as soon as possible…and one had no children, one had one.
The irony of conservatives hand-wringing about leftists "grooming" their children while they outline how they plan to groom their children to be conservatives like them.
It's deflection, and it's 100% un-ironic. The previously dog-whistled "or else" part that follows "Make Gilead Great Again!" is being said out loud for all creatures to hear now.
Most of recent (white) history is colonizer exploitation and utter destruction of the Global South. Waves of South immigration are washing up on the shores of empire (when they make to shore) and the effort to repel them is Job One for North governments. American bipartisanship in our times is practiced on two issues: militarizing the US border with Mexico and supporting Israeli expansion at all costs. Now, for extra zest, add a dash of climate emergency to make the diaspora bigger, more unpredictable, and more dependent on hoarded North resources. Coercing white god-fearing women to make more white god-fearing babies is the OG business model, and business best be booming. Indeed, that model has never been more parallel to institutional objectives. All the pieces fit together in the most abhorrent ways. What can we do today to smash down our routine inhumanity...?
Thanks to those Lyz-heads elsewhere in this discussion who called out Idiocracy as journalism rather than aspirational fiction. This world of ours is increasingly difficult to satirize.
Agree 100% but you had me at "Make Gilead Great Again!" Love it and hate that it's so devastatingly true.
I agree heartily that the hypocrisy is the point. They want to get away with it is all, they want to be able to be hypocrites, but have the power so no one can call them out. It's like a gang of tweens putting their heads together and figuring out that they can do things much better than the grown-ups. While living in a world, where the people they hate keep working to provide them with the safety and justice they want to deny others. Sadly there is an emotional disconnect, where people don't seem to grow past a certain point, making it easier to control and lie to them.
So many thoughts. I’m constantly amazed that in a nation that celebrates individuality and refuses to acknowledge anything that is negativity systemic (racism, classism, ageism, ableism) that we have whole systems that believe woman are required to marry any human with a penis and have kids whether they want them or not.
Women are allowed to be individuals until 16 and then they should start preparing for taking care of other people until they are too old and then they have to foster their care on another women.
This isn’t about Men not understanding about choice. They know they are asking women to do something they would never want to. They would probably unalive theirselves if they had to spend even 5 of their years providing 24 hours service to others without accolades, money or respect AND in 70% of these relationships you also have to work outside the home. Womenhood and motherhood isn’t like serving in the military, there are no business discounts. When a military person is in public people are not judging them for just being in public but women who step outside are judge for their appearance, their
How their kids behaved, etc. Women are devalued when they age, if they have too many kids, if they can’t have kids, and if they leave a marriage. This happens to all women but this forced childbirth and labor stuff is absolutely from white men.
I can’t imagine what it must feel like that the people closest to you, men who claim they are protecting and providing for you never actually see you. Any milestones or achievements you want to make are not worthy. Any skills you may have outside of managing a household is a threat to managing a household. I can’t imagine this. I would never be able to survive living in a community like that. It would feel like that show The French Village - everyone is suspect, even your parents. That has to be the worst when your own family wants to give your one life away like this. UGH!
The really damaging thing about pronatalism is that they really aren't interested in being good parents, or a loving family. They seem to believe that their genes are so amazing that nurture is, well, whatever. It's a truly bonkers cult, which will most likely produce a great deal of children with a great deal of trauma. I suppose they must also believe that money will sort that out too. Truly a headscratcher.
Musk is an excellent example of that; he's just seeking to have as many children as he can with as many women. He cannot possibly and does not appear to be actually doing the work of parenting all of them, not while he's also involved in multiple companies and apparently on drugs most of the time. He just gets mad when they don't grow up to think like he does (see his trans daughter who has changed her name and no longer wants to be associated with him).
So, basically the aristocracy for the last millennium?
Ugh. What a great book title.
Also on the trad wives thing. It almost seems like a kink to me. I mean, you do you (or whomever) but quit acting so superior to those of us who don’t advertise our kink on TikTok.
I sent my 2 kids to Catholic school for 12 years. Alas, they were Jesuit schools whose teachings include social justice. A Catholic education often leads to a very well read former Catholic.
This is very true. The Catholics I know who when to catholic school are pretty lapsed as adults! Way more so than equivalent Church of England educated.
They know too much now!
100% !
Dehumanization in all forms is horrific, but this gendered dehumanization paired with eugenics (also ultimately dehumanization) makes me ill and anxious for the world our children will inherit 😭
Damn! You said what I was trying to say in 1/4 the words! Yes! It is so terrifying to me. Because I know if they can do this to their own community, god only knows what they’d do to other people.
As numerous folks have said here, the plan to populate the world with lockstep Christian conservatives inevitably gets derailed by the reality of life and humanity. My family is an example of this. We were in the evangelical subculture for decades. About ten years ago the process began in which ALL of us, my wife and four daughters and me, all of us have left that culture, have reoriented ourselves to a love for all humanity and every expression of life on this beautiful planet.
The freedom we feel is indescribable. It’s why, though I’m afraid we are going to be going through a period of time (hopefully not too many generations long) where we will have to battle hate and misogyny and racism, we will come out the other side with renewed hearts, a renewed planet, and where love undergirds our political and societal structures.
For what it’s worth, what we experienced in the Christian subculture we were in wasn’t tied to eugenics. We and those we were with believed that everyone, regardless of color, sex, etc was made in the image of God. Unfortunately we had a very narrow view of what God approved. This creates, on the surface level, what looks like a commonality between white supremacists and evangelicals, and in many cases I’m sure that is the situation. But the reality is far more complicated, and simply lumping your evangelical acquaintances in with white supremacists is a sure fire way to cut off dialog and foster hate.
Be as gracious as you can out there. Love really is stronger than hate.
I should know better than to follow the wacky links (ballerinafarm). Cold plunges in the irrigation ditch?
People do crazy things when they refuse to sit on the porch with a glass of wine
For my current writing project I have been researching the eugenics history of Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family . . . it really sucks to grow up and realize you were born into a patriarchal white supremacist eugenicist movement for religious authoritarian aims. But here we are! Lyz I would LOVE to interview you for my project if you are ever interested: https://strongwilled.substack.com/
I think one of the reasons the evangelical base and the right have gelled so well over their years is because they both drive this rampant reproduction agenda. In the case of the evangelicals, it is definitely eugenics. More white Christians equals more power. Literally Nazi philosophy.
In the case of Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires, they need population growth to maintain their large pool of cheap labor in order to keep building their wealth.
Hmmm, a quick search on Chaiya Raichik reveals that she is 29 years old and has 2 children.
Seems like she is not living up to her proclamation that she was going to have "lots of children", because I would expect her to have 8 or 9 by that age if she was being self-consistent.
But alas, consistency is not her thing I guess.
To me it sounds like she's making the correct mouth noises, but is, like a lot the public-facing next-gen schlaflies we're seeing these days, not actually that interested in just staying home and being a mom.
My thinking precisely.
Sort of like the Trad Wives who are realizing that it isn't so great after all!
One angle that I don't always see when talking about the push to get women to produce more babies (voluntarily or otherwise...) is that 20% of women (and that number is growing) do not and will never have children, some by choice, some because of infertility, lack of a partner or a number of other complex reasons. (That includes me.) Women without children have long been looked upon with suspicion, as lesser beings, and more recently with downright hostility by some. I've seen some conservative politicians suggesting that people without children should be taxed more, or not be allowed to vote, or that people with children should be given additional votes for each child they have, because they have "more skin in the game." To suggest that childless/childfree people do not have a stake in the future and/or do not care about the wellbeing of the children around them is downright insulting. (stepping off my soapbox)
Thanks for the link to the Traister article.
One of the things that it didn't have time for is how hard the Clintons seemed convinced that liberal and conservative weren't that far apart during the 90s. The adoration of markets, the deference Ronald Reagan, the casual racism of the 2008 campaign in Iowa, the willingness to countenance restrictions on third trimester abortions, the aggressive foreign policy, all were of a piece with a rightward drift they were part of and which set us up for Bush and then Trump.
I always thought it was nearly pure opportunism on his part. On hers, it's always felt like she was constrained by her Republican suburban upbringing and temperamental caution and that her gradual moves to the left--partly in response to pressure from the left, partly because of the right's intransigence--was a real political and intellectual journey. (Shorter version: I don't like her politics, especially her love for Kissinger's foreign policy I do think she's highly intelligent and honest.)
Whatever the case, now that the mask is off the American right, I hope it's easier for Democratic women be direct rather than trying to be accommodating, when necessary. And I hope that means their paths will be easier for them to negotiate.
I also hope for someone to do a similarly engaging treatment of the difficulties faced by Democratic women of color who aspire to elective office. We need them, too. Not Traister's job, I know.
Earlier this year, I wrote my master’s thesis on Black women’s political aspirations and why there are so few Black women succeeding in politics.
Sounds interesting, I find the ugly rhetoric on Kamala Harris disturbing. It is racist and misogynistic and often violent.
This reminds me that somebody probably has done what I asked for, and that I should go find it.
Thanks!
There is not a lot out there! It took a great deal of effort to find sources that interrogate this. I got a 96 on my paper, and if you or others would like to read it, I’m happy to share it. Perhaps I can upload it to Substack… it’s nearly 30 pages long.
You can upload PDFs to Substack. It’s a click and drag! It would make a great post and I’m happy to link in Sundays link round up
OK, I created a new section and posted the paper and the presentation.
https://stillsinging.substack.com/p/black-women-and-politics
Oh wow! Thank you! I’ll do that this afternoon.
I want to read this paper and appreciate your willingness to make your research available. With your permission, I can send your pdf to the leadership of VoteRunLead, a nationwide nonprofit org that trains women to run for elective office. I learned of their great work from reading Rebecca Traister's most recent book. (https://voterunlead.org)