Yelling about Pronatalism
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I wanted to make a newsletter because I often have more to say about pronatalism than will fit in a Bluesky post. It seems like it’s only getting worse, what with the pronatalists being fully in charge of the United States of America now. And maybe someday I’ll want to write a book, and it would be good to have a record of stuff I’ve already written. Anyway, here we are, together, yelling.
For now, here are a few links:
1) Today, the New York Times published some letters to the editor (gift link) about last week’s absolutely wild “proposed pronatalist policies” story. I was a bit disappointed that they only picked letters that take the “if we REALLY want more babies, we should implement policies that actually help people” angle, since I prefer the “fuck wanting more babies, it’s super weird” angle. But I understand the appeal of “please help people, if you want this so bad please literally just help us pay for daycare,” given that we have almost no social support for parents and children.
2) Also today, my fellow demographer Karen Guzzo was on NPR’s Fresh Air talking about pronatalists. I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet, but Karen is great at this and she says part of it is about those lovable scamps the C O L L I N S E S 🔘👄🔘 🔲👄🔲
3) Karen’s interview is no doubt a vast improvement over a soundbite NPR ran on Sunday from (grits teeth) fellow demographer Lyman Stone. Philip Cohen has a good blog post about that, focusing on expertise and legitimacy.
That’s all for now! Thanks for being here!
Leslie