hello,

my birth parents were anti-natalists and i have been told about how it is the most selfish thing you can do to have kids because this world is evil. i am wondering what the pro natalist arguments are? i feel selfish because i sometimes desire children of my own. my parents say that is selfish to not adopt when there are already children born that will suffer more if not adopted

The following data was gleaned from ChatGPT. It assumes no immigration. Yes, I know immigration will lengthen numbers but the vast majority of countries have TFRs below 2.1. Only so many immigrants to go around. Factor that they may LOSE extra people to emigration too.

Fertility Rate (TFR), Population Halving Time (Years)

0.8, 33.59 years (S Korea)

0.9, 36.39 years

1.0, 39.70 years (China, Thailand)

1.1, 43.67 years

1.2, 48.52 years

1.3, 54.44 years (Japan)

1.4, 61.62 years

1.5, 72.17 years

I’ve been reading anti natalism and I can’t believe the sheer cruelty and lack of humanity, or values.

I think most anti natalists are truly self serving, materialistic, weak, individuals with no integrity or character. It takes a lot of character to bring a child into this world and raise them up until adulthood with love and support. things like self sacrifice, working hard, losing sleep and helping a helpless little baby grow into a mature adult takes a lot of self awareness, passion, patience, and perseverance. Something I think most of them lack. Depth of character.

Their concerns are mostly their bank accounts and nihilism. Nihilism is such a cop out for weak people. none of them know the feeling of actually creating a life so they lack the empathy to even have an informed opinion on what it is like to bring life into this world.

It’s for the best that people of such character don’t bring a child into the world and I would never try to convince them they should with their attitudes. I saw someone compare bringing a baby into this world with pet adoption. I can respect their decision not to do so and applaud it due to the level of immaturity, what I have a hard time with is them actively belittling parents or people who do think bringing life into this world is a gift.

I know you guys value life and see the importance of having children. But what do you think of adults who are already born, but want to end their life?

Modern human beings have existed for about 200,000 years. That's about 7,000 generations, so for any of us to exist, that many generations were able to raise kids that survived and had their own kids. Over that time, there have been world wars, plagues, famine, genocide, natural disasters, no modern medicine, etc.

Now, we've got so much food, there's 2.5 billion tons of food waste every year and 70% of American adults are overweight/obese. The average American spends $18,000/year on nonessentials and 7 hours a day staring at screens. This is the most prosperous civilization in human history.

And yet, when the topic of declining birthrates comes up, most people are full of excuses about the economy and how hard it is to survive now. Compared with the rest of human history, this is a great time to have kids.

But somehow everyone has been convinced they deserve an even better quality of life before they could consider having kids. It's not clear how this perspective has developed, but it doesn't seem realistic considering the history of humanity.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/11/u-s-fertility-rates-tumbling-but-some-families-still-go-big-why/

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09515089.2021.1946026

This study examines the connection between anti-natalist views and personality traits from the "dark triad" (psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism). The research suggests that individuals with higher levels of psychopathy and Machiavellianism tend to support anti-natalism more, partly due to their cynical and negative outlook on human nature. Depression was also found to correlate with stronger anti-natalist views. Interestingly, the study found that anti-natalist opinions did not significantly shift during the COVID-19 lockdown.

With stipulations such as a background check, health reasons, etc.

https://ifstudies.org/blog/can-education-and-fertility-be-friends

The common truism is that women’s continued advancement and participation in education and work is highly correlated with lower birth rates.

I think it would be interesting to see the opposite.

The 197-page report can be found here: https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/nsw/NSWRoyalC/1904/1.pdf

A noticeable decline in births in New South Wales (Australia’s most populous state, home to Sydney) prompted a concerned physician and Protectionist Party senator, Charles Mackellar, to lead a Royal Commission, looking into both the decline in births and a perceived increase in infant mortality.

Numerous public officials, chemists/pharmacists, doctors, midwives, police officers, labour/union leaders, religious leaders, along with general members of the public, were interviewed.

Multiple causes and phenomena were identified, however the best summation of the views of the Commissioners are in points 83 and 84 of the report. These concluded that birth rate declines were due to the following attitudes in the population:

“i. An unwillingness to submit to the strain and worry of children;

ii. A dislike of the interference with pleasure and comfort involved in child-bearing and child-rearing

iii. A desire to avoid the actual physical discomfort of gestation, parturition, and lactation; and , iv. A love of luxury and of social pleasures, which is increasing.

(84.) It will be seen that the reasons given for resorting to limitation have one element in common, namely, selfishness. They are, in fact, indicative of the desire of the individual to avoid his obligations to the community…”

Recommendations included:

1. Improved healthcare for expectant mothers.

Governmental incentives to discourage female employment in dangerous work (such as in dirty urban factories) with greater encouragement to motherhood or rural-based employment. 2. Encouragement of pro-natal, religious-based teachings on the young. 3. More rigorous legal restrictions on crude contraceptives. 4. Stricter criminal penalties for abortion (imprisonment, rather than fines), especially for unlicenced ‘medical men’ (and women). 5. Support for a religious crusade extolling the virtues of large families, motherhood and with stronger preaching against abortion. 6. Encouragement of immigration to reduce a reliance on natural population growth.

To give credit where credit is due, the longstanding social and legislative changes enacted as a result remained substantively in place until the 1960s. As a result, the Australian TFR didn’t fall below 3.00 until 1924, nearly a generation later. After hovering around replacement level in the 1930s, the Australian TFR rebounded after World War II back above 3.00, staying at that level until the mid-1960s

Hi team this is an honest question, I'm not trolling.

My question comes from my experience on this subreddit where I shared 3 posts:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/Natalism/comments/1gvp029/modernity_may_be_inherently_selflimiting_not/ : This post harshly criticizes the drops in fertility rates way below replacement rate. It criticizes the fact that we're heading towards smaller and smaller populations. This post was successful, 188 likes in the end, plenty of comments who agree.

- https://www.reddit.com/r/Natalism/comments/1gwchwj/some_people_fear_there_are_too_many_humans_on/ This post advocates for a much bigger population than today: 100 billion instead of 8 billion. I would have assumed it would be successful, but it wasn't at all, too many downvotes. Plenty of people criticize in the comments. Most people on a *pro-natalist* subreddit actually do not want population to grow. Enormous surprise for me.

- https://www.reddit.com/r/Natalism/comments/1h0cbvw/a_world_with_2_billion_people_would_be_decaying/ This post also advocates for a much bigger population of 100 billion instead of 8 billion. Both posts include links to articles where this idea is well defended. And yet again it was crazily downvoted, and there are so many critical comments.

"I'm natalist BUT" - I didn't expect this!

Essentially many people seem to be pro-very-limited-natalism. It seems like most people here are in favor of 2.1 kids per woman (already much better the anti-natalist subreddit, that's true), and NOT MORE THAN THAT PLEASE.

When looking at the arguments, it seems like many people are scared of a growing population due to malthusian beliefs (even though they've been proven wrong so many times and for so long), or more generally because they live in the countryside and are scared that a larger population would prevent them from living a quiet life (that's not true thanks to dense cities which can pack most of the world population).

No matter the justifications, isn't this an inconsistent philosophy? If we view children (humans more generally) as a blessing, wouldn't it be good news if there were many many more of them than now? Why stop at 2.1 per woman, as long as we can achieve high TFRs without any coercion?

I do personally believe that this is inconsistent. I do think that people who only favor 2.1 children per women are not true pro-natalists.

Debate me!

Of the countries that have baby bonuses of any sort, are there any that increase the bonus dependent on how many children a couple has?

I'll use an example of what I mean, do not get hung up on the actual totals:

• $1,000/month/kid if you have 1
• $1,100/month/kid if you have 2 ($2,200/month total)
• $1,200/month/kid if you have 3 ($3,300/month total)

etc.

This method could help ameliorate the tendency of baby bonuses to just encourage people to move up the birth of kids they were already going to have, and specifically encourage families large enough to move the overall birth rate above replacement.