Great post and thanks for the link to Manov’s review. The whole JD Vance debacle shows that it is not just childless millennials who “act like eternal children”. In a better world, the way that online rhetoric seems to have warped Vance’s moral sensibility would have forced an honest reckoning with the erosion of the norm that every human being, whatever their choices, is entitled to being treated with dignity and respect. This ideal has never been perfectly implemented, but the Internet seems to have convinced a lot of people that they bear no responsibility for upholding it (because there is always a provocation from the other side that lets them off the hook).
I like this and tend to agree. I see it as a continuation of excessive materialism in our culture. When you can choose whether or not to have children, there is a risk that children become one more ornament that the individual gets to opt into, or out of. This misses whole aspects of procreation that might deliver a great deal of meaning (and sacrifice!) to the individual. (One added benefit, you start to form villages when you want to raise children. You do for their benefit, and your sanity.) Vance is in some ways alarmingly correct, but he his calling a symptom the cause. The cause is more malevolent in my view. Capitalism and freedom have made the "individual good" such an idol that it erodes all the undergirding social relationships that once held society together. The right is as culpable as the left in this imo.
I think in the best light, the childless cat-lady critique is one where we poke fun at how self-absorbed people are, particularly those people who could have children and are choosing not to because they have not met personal criteria, or honestly are just selfish. I don't like people who are selfish, but I am selfish, the key is to know yourself well enough to push back against the walls of culture closing in, which I don't think many of us do.
TLDR: You don't need incentives from the government to boost birthrates in a culture that celebrates new life and the joys of childhood, but you won't find that culture in the west.
One final point, before the strawmen come my way, you can be a part of a family without pro-creating, Jesus had a lot to say about that.
There’s a certain irony in the existence of ideologically conservative women, a contradiction so glaring that it’s almost amusing. Patrimonialism—the spiritual and intellectual backbone of conservative thought—when stripped of its ideological embellishments like “appreciation of domestic femininity,” is fundamentally about the subordination of women under the head of the household (i.e., the Father). So why, then, do conservative women bristle at the suggestion that their worth might be tied to domesticity, motherhood, and childbearing?
The Mother, after all, stands in opposition to both the Whore and the Virgin—categories that, pragmatically speaking, conservatism should be hell-bent on maintaining. Any deviation from this isn't conservative by any stretch, though it’s admittedly a tough stance to uphold in the face of equal rights, marital law reforms, and the rise in women’s education and economic independence.
Also, expecting the Republican party to resolve the existential crisis of our modern age? Well, that’s laughable at best.
I have no children and will not have children. Vance’s comment was about people who might not care about the future because it. Probably. It did not offend me at all. Who gives a shit.
White? Of course, you pay no mind to the many millions of poor White children who are affected by the governments' failed policies: inability to address the outsourcing of jobs to China and the fentanyl epidemic, for example. Truth be told, it is individuals like you that I disdain because you are sanctimonious, like a sow that eats its farrell. You exhibit an inability to show mercy to all of God's children.
Great post and thanks for the link to Manov’s review. The whole JD Vance debacle shows that it is not just childless millennials who “act like eternal children”. In a better world, the way that online rhetoric seems to have warped Vance’s moral sensibility would have forced an honest reckoning with the erosion of the norm that every human being, whatever their choices, is entitled to being treated with dignity and respect. This ideal has never been perfectly implemented, but the Internet seems to have convinced a lot of people that they bear no responsibility for upholding it (because there is always a provocation from the other side that lets them off the hook).
"I would have a baby right now if the Republicans ran on a platform of subsidizing [attractive] men who would treat me well and love me forever."
There, I fixed that for you.
i mean duh
It's an important detail to leave out!
Live your own life, your own way! I’ve been a non - conformist my whole life. Stick and stones….
I like this and tend to agree. I see it as a continuation of excessive materialism in our culture. When you can choose whether or not to have children, there is a risk that children become one more ornament that the individual gets to opt into, or out of. This misses whole aspects of procreation that might deliver a great deal of meaning (and sacrifice!) to the individual. (One added benefit, you start to form villages when you want to raise children. You do for their benefit, and your sanity.) Vance is in some ways alarmingly correct, but he his calling a symptom the cause. The cause is more malevolent in my view. Capitalism and freedom have made the "individual good" such an idol that it erodes all the undergirding social relationships that once held society together. The right is as culpable as the left in this imo.
I think in the best light, the childless cat-lady critique is one where we poke fun at how self-absorbed people are, particularly those people who could have children and are choosing not to because they have not met personal criteria, or honestly are just selfish. I don't like people who are selfish, but I am selfish, the key is to know yourself well enough to push back against the walls of culture closing in, which I don't think many of us do.
TLDR: You don't need incentives from the government to boost birthrates in a culture that celebrates new life and the joys of childhood, but you won't find that culture in the west.
One final point, before the strawmen come my way, you can be a part of a family without pro-creating, Jesus had a lot to say about that.
There’s a certain irony in the existence of ideologically conservative women, a contradiction so glaring that it’s almost amusing. Patrimonialism—the spiritual and intellectual backbone of conservative thought—when stripped of its ideological embellishments like “appreciation of domestic femininity,” is fundamentally about the subordination of women under the head of the household (i.e., the Father). So why, then, do conservative women bristle at the suggestion that their worth might be tied to domesticity, motherhood, and childbearing?
The Mother, after all, stands in opposition to both the Whore and the Virgin—categories that, pragmatically speaking, conservatism should be hell-bent on maintaining. Any deviation from this isn't conservative by any stretch, though it’s admittedly a tough stance to uphold in the face of equal rights, marital law reforms, and the rise in women’s education and economic independence.
Also, expecting the Republican party to resolve the existential crisis of our modern age? Well, that’s laughable at best.
Funny, as someone who is extremely conservative and a feminist, I seem to be missing that backbone. Does the exception prove the rule here?
I have no children and will not have children. Vance’s comment was about people who might not care about the future because it. Probably. It did not offend me at all. Who gives a shit.
White? Of course, you pay no mind to the many millions of poor White children who are affected by the governments' failed policies: inability to address the outsourcing of jobs to China and the fentanyl epidemic, for example. Truth be told, it is individuals like you that I disdain because you are sanctimonious, like a sow that eats its farrell. You exhibit an inability to show mercy to all of God's children.
In rereading my comment, I can see that what I wrote was the opposite of what I meant and I’m editing it now.
And I couldn’t edit it so I deleted it.