My stance on anti-natalism/pro-natalism

I am no expert in this topic and I haven’t researched about this much but I did talk to a few people who supports natalism and are against natalism.

What is Natalism?

Natalism is the belief that promotes reproduction of life. - John McKeown¹

Basically the belief that having children are a good thing/compulsory(in some cases) is known as natalism. And people who are against that, are anti-Natalists.

So at first glance, anti-natalism may sound absurd but it is, in fact logical from many perspectives. Just to clarify, by anti-natalism, I do not mean forced anti-natalism, which itself is violation of free will.

While Natalism is seen as a moral obligation or sometimes just promotion of having children and anti-natalism is also seen the same but it counters the ethics of having children.

Both ideologies/beliefs try to justify the ethics and morality to give/not give birth to children and both in senses, have their own facts and logic.

Depiction of Natalism and Anti-Natalism in culture and media

Natalism and anti-natalism are often portrayed and depicted in modern culture and media. It was also a topic discussed in ancient culture in old civilizations.

Historians date Natalism movements back to ancient civilizations. Especially in Abrahamic religions such as Islam, Christianity, Judaism etc. where people were encouraged to be Natalists to continue fertility rate and increase population.

The concept of anti-natalism and its popularity movement is a new thing. Not really new but it is seen a lot more now than before mostly due to industrialization and the robotic workflow us people go through now.

People in a few countries such as Japan prefers anti-natalism and they reason their cause on it. I will get more on that later. Video games and media such as Half-Life 2 series or the anime Darling in the Franxx² promotes natalism in a few ways.

Most of the reasons showed towards both sides are conditional/adheres to the environment they are talking about. For example, in scenario A natalism would make sense and in scenario B, it does not make sense. And sometimes both ideologies are encouraged by external obligations such as religious and social beliefs.

People’s reason to be Natalists/Anti-natalists

Here, I have oversimplified the arguments of Natalists and anti-natalists. Some of these may not be accurate or maybe more but this article is about my two cents on the topic, so I am just displaying this to try to make an objective sense about this to the reader.

Arguments of Natalists:

There are vast arguments for Natalism since most of us grew up with this mindset, most of them are related to normal affairs of the world. Anyone can think them up in a bit so I’m not going to display them here.

Arguments of Anti-Natalists:

There are TONS of arguments about anti-natalism and that cannot be covered nor a lot of them I don’t know. Since as I said before, this article is just my two cents about this topic.

• Impossibility of consent.
  • You cannot determine the fact that your children wanted to be in this world. This is an important topic to think about as this world may work in their favor or may work against them. Which ultimately brings the fault to the parent.
• Death is a harm.
  • People have to die someday and that is a miserable thing to leave this world. So a lot of people wishe sthat they weren’t born.
• Dissatisfactory life
  • This is self-explanatory. :’(

My pick on this matter

I might sound both pro and anti natalist but mine is mostly condition/environment based.

In a few societies (such as mine), married couples tend to marry to share the responsibility in a society instead of out of true love. Which as a result, makes taking care of each other as a responsibility instead of out of free will. This creates problems in familial units in a society, often such as ending up as a nuclear/detached family instead of a joint one.

Although I would say a nuclear family is suitable for a modernized society due to its efficiency and distribution of jobs and workplaces. But, the problem lies on the responsibility, not the will to be together.

For example, if two people are married for the reason of to be together and have children to make the society stable, the family itself won’t be stable. They are doing this out of responsibility even though they might have loved each other at one point in life. This causes quarrels, fights and conflicts within the family.

This ultimately ruins the grooming of the children and hampers their rational thinking of the society. But we cannot blame this on the parent’s fault either because they are also groomed in such a way to think that natalism is a natural obligation.

People back then supported natalism by a lot for the fact that they have to continue their generation because the mortality rate for children was very high. To continue the civilization they thought it was justified to be natalists and anti-natalism was seen as something bad.

But now, the need for children (don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean it in a bad way) is a lot less than before and so people reproduce a lot less. So people marry either out of religious or natural obligations to maintain the society. As I said before, it results in a bad environment for the child to grow up.

My point is that I want to clarify anti-natalism is not a bad thing and people should not be obligated to be a natalist nor obligated to be an anti-natalist. These will harm the future of their children if they wish to have or destroy the society if they don’t.

A solution for this is in my opinion is to encourage people to think about natalism and anti-natalism for themselves and choose to believe/do which they want to without any influence from the society or from the culture. They should do what they think is best for them.

People are stupid. Yes, including me. This adds support for one of my reason not to support democracy but that’s another topic for another day. This is why we should get as much as rational information for both sides and pour them out to people so they may choose the best for themselves consciously.

This is my take on natalism or anti-natalism. If I said something wrong and you want to correct me, just contact me on discord or send me an email to majorgamerjay@protonmail.com and as always, thanks for reading my worthless stupid opinion about another mundane topic.

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