... in "Don’t Let Climate Change Stop You From Having Kids" (NYT).
The ignorance and lack of empathy is simply astounding. Always? "Always" refers to all of human history, replete with slavery, rape, the subordination of women, and the lack of perfect birth control and the freedom to use it. You didn't need hope! What drivel is this?
I know, women's emancipation is not Klein's focus. He just forgot about it. Outrageously! He's saying — presumably unwittingly — that when women have been raped and impregnated and continued in their pregnancy to the point of childbirth, they were TAKING ACTION — not merely experiencing an ordeal — and — what's more — it was an ACT OF HOPE. Always!!!
That is so profoundly wrong that I'm virtually certain that Klein would rewrite his sentence if anyone else had read it and nudged him to notice the problem. But he's focused on the privileged slice of humanity — such elitism! — the ones who think about whether they want to have a child and only proceed with a pregnancy if they fully embrace the idea. For them and only for them, to bring a child into the world is necessarily "an act of hope."
Now, Klein's main topic — the thing that's so important that it blinds him to his embarrassing elitist lapse — is that for these women who do enjoy pure choice, there's not enough hope. Funny, isn't it, that the most privileged beings in the history of humanity are insufficiently inspired to hope? What a nutty predicament, compared to, say, the plight of a raped slave or a miserably poor woman whose religious faith denies her birth control and requires submission to her husband!
The privileged human beings that crowd the mind of Klein have talked themselves into a terrible pessimism about climate change that has inspired what he calls "sacrifice." I remember when not having children was called selfish, but he's saying that to forgo parenthood is to "sacrifice."
He says: "A climate movement that embraces sacrifice as its answer or even as its temperament might do more harm than good. It may accidentally sacrifice the political appeal needed to make the net-zero emissions world real."
So... have children because if you don't, you'll be giving up on the future, and the climate-change movement needs your participation? Keep using your body as a hope-manufacturing machine. That's a hell of a reason to have a baby! Klein is pressuring young people to generate hope for the sake of the movement, which runs on hope.
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85 comments:
No one has less respect for Little Ezra Klein than I do, but I think this critique is a little over the top. Maybe one should just accept that not every essay about having children has to acknowledge every aspect of pregnancy raised in the last 2000 years or get accused of ignoring or forgetting such history.
On the essay itself- if one really believes climate change has to be dealt with by having fewer people around, then not having children would appear to be a necessary step along with, I would argue, a lot of other life changes including up to taking yourself out of the equation, especially if it stops even 1 quintillionth of a degree rise in temperature. I believe in encouraging people to put their money where their mouths are.
File this one under "Ezra Klein is an idiot". But then I always knew that, and I'd hope that others have recognized the fact as well.
Progressivism is a mental disease.
I suspect you got derailed by the "always." I don't think he's trying to force people to have babies. He's telling them not to let the environmental movement bully them into not having children. He's saying go ahead if you want to. Act in hope and from fear.
Also, I don't know that his main point was that environmentalists having kids would benefit the environmental movement. That's an added plus or something he says to convince the Greenies. The larger point behind that is that if you think you are an intelligent and worthy human being then not having kids could mean turning the world over to those less intelligent and less worthy.
Yes it's a snobbish argument designed to appeal to snobs. But people's heads are filled with so much smog from interest groups and activists and the media that adding one more thing to think about may not do much harm. If people have considered his point of view and still don't want kids, fine. If they do want kids or don't know if they do or not, and have been cowed by all the other talk, his argument is worth considering.
I know a little about Klein and a lot about the Times, so I hesitate to agree with either, and I am loath to disagree with our hostess, and, I’m an old white guy, but…
A woman who brings a child into this world, whether planned and desired, accidental but treasured, or the result of rape and/or slavery, can always hope that his or her life will be better, or that he or she can make other lives better.
The odds are against such hope being fulfilled, but that’s the whole point of hope.
"Dammit! It sounded so good. And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for that meddling professor." - Ezra Klein
"The ignorance and lack of empathy is simply astounding. Always?"
Well, usually. Considering that family survival was "always" tied to having children. Giving birth = hope of survival. The lack of empathy for 99% of humanity expressed by modern "feminists" is astounding.
"when women have been raped and impregnated and continued in their pregnancy to the point of childbirth, they were taking ACTION"
How often does this happen? What percentage of the millions of American abortions addressed this problem? Numbers, please.
"But he's focused on the privileged slice of humanity — such elitism!"
Now that's rich, coming from one of the most privileged women who ever lived.
"So... have children because if you don't, you'll be giving up on the future"
Klein's movement plea is silly, but without children humanity has no future. Obviously.
"Keep using your body as a hope-manufacturing machine. That's a hell of a reason to have a baby! Klein is pressuring young people to generate hope for the sake of the movement, which runs on hope."
Actually, the movement runs on phony despair. But yes, part of the beauty of sex, pregnancy and birth is to manufacture new life, new humans, the perpetuation of families and the species. It is the one unique thing women, actual women, contribute to our meaningful existence on earth. Which, until the day before yesterday, 99% of humanity "always" took for granted.
"To bring a child into this world has always been an act of hope," writes Ezra Klein...
Was he assuming an implied "purposely" in that sentence? From the context... a decision to attempt to conceive.
He'd see it as a crazy old lady objection.
"if anyone else had read it"
Are you suggesting that the New York Times doesn't in fact have layers and layers of editors and fact-checkers?
BTW, how many children has Ezra Klein birthed?
When are these shaman going to be called out for the climate change crap. What exactly has occurred? The temperature is either dropping or barely going up. EVERY EVERY prediction has been wrong. We have more trees than ever. More food than ever. We have more virtue singing wastes than ever.
Yet here we have a dementia patient enacting the ridiculous new green deal ( or attempting to, I expect physics will have the last say here ) by executive order. Our congress doesn’t even matter anymore, we are ruled by totalitarian regulations made by unelected beuracrats.
As Elon says, liberals hate everything, including themselves.
I suppose it is an act of hope in the way that getting up in the morning and making it through the day is an act of hope.
The value of life is premised on the principles of dignity and agency. That said, there is no mystery in sex and conception, a woman (and man) has four choices: abstention, prevention, adoption, and compassion, and an equal right to self-defense through reconciliation. The wicked solution a.k.a. planned parenthood, selective-child or one-child delegated through religious sanction, is neither a good nor exclusive choice, denies a woman's (and man) dignity and agency, and reduces human life to a negotiable commodity for social progress, redistributive change, clinical cannibalism, and fair weather (e.g. climate stasis) causes.
Such dark thoughts. The elite world appears to be littered with self-doubt and a landscape dominated by myopically enlarged horrors of rape, male subjugation, poverty, end of world climate fantasies, and cardboard representations of people. This is what the modern, progressive, and secular mind has brought?
Overreaction much? I think it is pretty obvious he is talking generally.
What about the father? I've never been in this situation, but when I was a young man I had many male acquaintances who learned that they just became cash cows to some lucky female (lucky because she could choose to bear the responsibilities of parenthood, or not, a choice denied to my friends). The birth of those children represented something very different than "hope" to these young men.
Think of the men, Althouse!
I think being raped and thus impregnated and deciding to birth and raise that child is nothing if not an act of hope.
Klein is responding to his audience. He says his audience is continually asking him if it is morally acceptable to have children at all. His audience is elite, and he is addressing elite people asking about their own lives and climate change. That's his topic. They're not asking him about having a baby if they are raped.
I don't see the dissonance. One would hope he doesn't drop copies of this essay from an airplane over impoverished flood victims in Bangladesh, but they're not his audience.
Thanks for your post Ann. Yours is a perspective that I hadn't considered. I, like Klein, have always viewed having a child as an act of hope. I would phrase it differently, maybe as an optimistic act. Your vehemence is persuasive.
I am a P.U.N.K., which is a "Professional Uncle, No Kids". I have many siblings and am old enough that my nieces and niece-in-laws are having kids. Two are currently in a family way. In my personal experience, someone having a baby means a charming young woman and a strapping lad are optimistically adding to the family. A sign of maturity on the parents part and general good feeling for the rest of us.
Ezra Klein may be an elitist, but I don't feel like one. Taking a much wider view, globally and historically, being pregnant isn't necessarily a blessing. It can upset an already tenuous existence. Since I'm not writing for the NYT, perhaps I can be forgiven, but Klein certainly should be taking the wider view.
Ezra Klein certainly qualifies as an elitist for thinking that anyone should consider climate change in their family planning. He is only 38 years-old, so may not have noticed that there is always an impending global catastrophe looming in the near future. When I was in high school, the world was running out of water and an ice age was expected, then we switched over to ozone layer depletion.
Ezra doesn't think critically. Remember when he was touting the VA healthcare system as the model way forward for all America?
Ezra has always been a bit thick. His kind of weak mind would not cut it outside the cosseted confines of the center and the center-left. A Mitt Romney would relentlessly seek common ground with Ezra until they agreed that mush was a great dinner.
1. Billionaire Bill Gates lists a book by Ezra Klein as an absolute must read and one of eight best books of ALL TIME. Title? “Why We Are Polarized.”
2. I’ll never forget being in Austin at the Texas Book Festival when a beautiful young undergrad asked Samantha Power why she should bring children into a world suffering so many crises as listed in Power’s book.
Power said things are bad, but not that bad and have hope.
My thought was that Power was using her status as a liberal icon and influencer to push her garbage on weak young minds. What a pathetic person and complete phony. Glad I had earlier called her a liar to her face over her warrantless searches and unmasking in wiretaps.
Life is reproduction.
Sorry.
Everything else is a hobby.
So the problem is that he didn't insert the word "voluntarily"? What percentage of births was that in 1800 bce and 1800 ce? So voluntary births only started 100 years ago, limited to the 1st world?
So-called unmasking abuse was debunked in a recently declassified report. Google it.
“ Think of the men, Althouse!”
I did. It’s just didn’t fit this flow of remarks on the hope theme and the history of the exploitation of women and the natural state of women. I don’t think the issue you raised, that the prospect of support from a man is one source of hope for a woman who chooses to bear a child, would fit my discussion very well, since I am talking about how common it is to give birth *without* hope.
Somebody's confusing "bringing a child into this world" with "getting pregnant."
It is hilarious to see a typical middle aged white woman liberal complaining because a man said we need to encourage women to have children. Just hilarious. It got you a link from Instapudit but not because he agrees.
And yet the young women of my acquaintance birth away without giving the slightest thought to AGW or any of the considerations in Althouse’s (presumably) parodic rant.
It’s weird. Almost like they want children and the experience of family or something.
It’s been said many ways before, but articles like this do give me a bit of hope. The hope that hysterical ideologues choke out their own insanity by neglecting to reproduce. The American future belongs to the White working-class and, more certainly, aspirational Hispanics.
Given that he's addressing people who are trying to decide whether or not to have children, I think it's entirely fair to interpret what he's saying as "to *choose to* bring a child into this world...."
Seriously, do you really think he's trying to urge rapists not to let the threat of climate change stop them from raping women? That seems like a really bizarre and uncharitable distortion of his comments.
Seemed like boilerplate stuff to me, but I'm an old guy who never knocked anyone up unintentionally, and discounted the "things are too bad to bring children into the world" trope all along.
OTOH, we're well into Idiocracy territory already, and more little idiots arrive than don't.
What a bleak, dystopian universe you inhabit, Althouse.
Get a fucking grip!
Wow Ann. Damn. Just damn. Does Ezra need private security? How big is the poo-gram you'll be sending to his house? What spell is the coven at Ms. Magazine putting together to hex him with at your behest? When are you planning to kill his dog?
Damn.
NYT… The daily hymnal of the Upper West Side…
I'm no Klein fan, but the set-up of the article - the first few paragraphs - is about people who are struggling with the decision to have children. So I didn't take the "always" in that quoted sentence to be completely universal. More like "to choose to bring a child into this world has always been an act of hope". Of course, he could've worded it that way, but it seemed like the context made it pretty clear that he was referring to those who are legitimately struggling with a choice.
“To bring a (planned)child into this world has always been an act of hope.”
FIFY.
And I think you’re dramatically wrong, Althouse.
New life, new creation…
Yeah, whatever.
This is the point of the column:
"As Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist, notes, many credible estimates from a decade ago put us on track for the average global temperature to increase 4 or even 5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels by 2100. That would be cataclysmic. But the falling cost of clean energy and the rising ambition of climate policy has changed that. The Climate Action tracker puts our current policy path at about 2.7 degrees of warming by 2100. If the commitments world governments have made since the Paris climate accord hold, we’re on track for a rise of 2 degrees or even less."
It's an attempt to claim that the end-of-world predictions made by climatologists and their models were correct but the effects of global warming have been abated by government action and thus the climate hysterics have saved the world - so go have a kid or something. He needed a hook and the motherhood angle was his choice and congrats to him as it seems to have distracted certain readers.
It's a lie and he knows it but at some point our betters have to find a way to explain away the failure of their predictions.
… &if you’re conditioned from birth to believe you will go nowhere burdened by children or a pregnancy, you will believe there is no hope(raising children is so expensive!!) &sacrifice this burden to the water treatment facilities of you local planned parenthood.
You know- the place women go to to rid themselves of unplanned pregnancies.
Looks to me that the "hope" he mentioned is the "hope" that the child will live through its childhood. His following sentences are about child mortality.
There are likely a few mothers who do not hope that their child lives, so Althouse's absolutism is legalistically correct.
You've gone around the bend. Your reaction to the word "always" is overly literal and unbalanced. Perhaps you should consider a decaffeinated coffee?
I think for propaganda reasons "bring" is the key word. Choice. Voluntary new life. Not rape, not couldn't-get-an-abortion anxiety, not shotgun marriages. More than a few people are growing concerned about the global birthrate collapse (contra the left-wing angst of Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb of the 1970s). Nazi Germany promoted large families. China pushed for 1 child families. If it fits the current political narrative, government mouthpieces are happy.
In case your Sunday isn't depressing enough, don't forget the piles of dead baby boys found at the bottom of brothel toilets in ancient Rome.
E.g., https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-14401305
Progressivism is a mental disease.
It an [unqualified] monotonic ideology, where principles may and do diverge with catastrophic, wicked effect.
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/mar/23/gayle-smith/did-we-really-reduce-extreme-poverty-half-30-years/
Yo, Ezra. The world today is a much better place than it was when you were born.
And I can find similar stats for climate quality--the world is actually cleaner (mainly in the developed world, and unquestionably in the US) then when you were born.
And we actually have a declining birth rate--below replacement. We really need more wealthy entitled children. The things that you hold dear (especially in the environmental realm) are luxury items--which are overwhelmingly the product of advanced, wealthy societies. The rest are fighting to escape poverty; environmentalism is a luxury that they really can't afford.
The entire premise is based on foolishness and nonsense.
(And I agree that the good Professor is grossly overreacting).
Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Let's get together where women and men are equal in rights, complementary in Nature, and reconcile in moderation. #HateLovesAbortion
I rather suspect by "always" Klein was thinking of a general principle that applied "at all (normal) times" and not "in every single case." And that he was trying to make a rhetorical point, not asserting a scientific fact.
I dislike Ezra Klein as much as the next person, esp. because he would be among the first to go into faux outrage over similar statements, but... Really, Althouse.
Plus, some women choose to have children for selfish reasons. Reasons like: All my friends are doing it or I feel it's part of a successful life or I need someone to care for me when I get old or I think this will same my marriage, ect. (BTW, having a child just to try and save a failing marriage rarely works out well for everyone involved.)
not speaking for Klein
could not the woman [in whatever situated] project hope into the child for its future? if there is so-called maternal instinct?
I think AA is being a bit harsh on Klein. I read his comment in the same way as I would read "Disneyland has always been a place of fun." It doesn't mean every single person who has ever gone to Disneyland had fun, only that the typical/expected experience from going to Disneyland is to have fun and that this has always been so.
As for the rest of it, I think the point he's trying to make is that you can't ask people to give up something as fundamental to (most) humans as raising a family in order to combat climate change. People (for the most part) aren't going to see that as a reasonable tradeoff.
Wow, Professor, I guess he touched a nerve, huh? I don't usually see you react that way. Let's not perpetuate stereotypes here. Next you're going to start writing about "Gilead."
I took his statement more generally. Yes, "always" is obviously untrue. But for the most part, the birth of a child is a hopeful act, and the child embodies hope for a better future (including that the child's life will be better than the parents').
I knew high school girls (in the 80s) who were not planning to have children because of the threat of nuclear war. But then, they grew up. Now for the young, it's global warming. Same shtick.
"I don’t think the issue you raised, that the prospect of support from a man is one source of hope for a woman who chooses to bear a child, would fit my discussion very well, since I am talking about how common it is to give birth *without* hope."
Well. Isn't "the prospect of support from a man" the chief difference between getting pregnant by rape and getting pregnant the other way?
"""To bring a child into this world has always been an act of hope," writes Ezra Klein..."
This sounds like a 'This is not who we are' disclaimer, like the Greek chorus following the window breakers on State Street in Madison. It's like saying 'we don't really mean overpopulation is so much a problem that you shouldn't have kids. But please don't.'
His audience is progressives, who are losing their demographic, thus his use of absolute phrases; "always been", "only for them", "act of hope". His language seems extreme because it is, but remember, this is the language many of them use and respond.
Of course, many on the right will likely miss the middle ground to be had here. For example, what is wrong with telling a woman, if she asks, that whatever sex she has ought to be for entirely selfish reasons? Why must she bare children for climate change or any other religion? Why must she abstain, if she wants to enjoy sex?
I've never seen you write anything quite as obtuse as this.
Just how common is it to give birth "without hope" and how would you know that? It's abortion that is without hope. We know how common that is.
Having children is the essential act of hope for the future. I would add that it is an individual hope and an individual choice (there's that word again) no matter what the circumstances are. You've trotted out all the usual feminist hobby horses to suggest that procreation is merely a helpless default to oppression, violence, and despair.
It's ironic that the prominent voices who conspicuously champion so-called women's rights view women as sheep who lack personal agency and should think in lockstep as though they are just the flotsam of the human condition, continually and singularly buffeted by the slings and arrows that comprise all of history.
Talk about an embarrasing elitist lapse.
It is an act of hope. Giving birth to a child, even one conceived in violence, gives voice to the hope that we are not bound by our past, that good can come from evil, and the future isn't set in stone.
Your gripe seems to be the term "always" in Klein's column.
Sure it is imprecise since there are exceptions.
But you say, "I am talking about how common it is to give birth *without* hope."
Common? Debatable.
"Without" as in no hope at all? Doubtful.
This post is overwrought and misses the target IMO. Klein does deserve criticism for hackneyed writing and a sheltered worldview, but even if trite it’s still a truism that the birth of a child represents hope. What you seem to object to is that women who are poor and/or not of the elite class have to bear an inordinate share of hardships to bring that hope to fruition.
For goodness' sake, stop meddling with a self-correcting problem. If some pair of dopes think Climate Change is a good reason to forbear having children, quietly back away. It's the best answer for all of us.
Aside from a socially liberal religion, failing to prove the existence of a rape... rape-rape culture, feminists and masculinists are bent on normalizing the wicked solution a.k.a. reproductive rite a.k.a. elective abortion for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes that deny a woman and man's dignity and agency, and reduces human life to a negotiable commodity. That said, four choices and an equal right of self-defense through reconciliation.
Forced birth sort of sucks the hope aspect out of the act of giving birth. You must give birth and be happy and hopeful or else. As for having children despite or because of climate change, well Klein needn’t be too worried, women will be engaging in forced birth without hope and having unwanted children if the Supreme Court has its way.
Is it telling that at the mention of children, AA's first thoughts are of "slavery, rape, the subordination of women, and the lack of perfect birth control"?
As is often the case, Instapundit wins the Mic Drop Award for this comment on Ezra Klein: "Well, when you’re writing about climate change you’re bound to say something dumb."
Of course, we should consider that the dumbness propagates: it does not remain fixed on the rant about climate change. It might permeate the rant about the rant about climate change. Secondary, tertiary, even quaternary iterations of dumbness, reaching all the way down the comment thread. A viral phenomenon. Getting closer...
I'm masking up and signing off.
Althouse is better than Ezra.
Childbirth used to be a great deal more perilous. So much could go wrong. Placenta previa, puerperal fever. Dozens of things could cause a woman to undergo an early and excruciatingly painful death...I have read that some women enjoy sex and that some other women found fulfillment in motherhood. It does seem, however, that not so long ago the negatives far outweighed the positives in this proposition. If it was up to me, I'd have gone to a nunnery and the human race would have died out, yet most women persevered and continued to have children. The subtext of our existence is our continued existence. There seems to be quite a lot of Darwinian stuff going on in child bearing. It's never been a rational decision. Perhaps in our present moment where we have decided that the great enemy of the human race is the human race, there's the possibility that we're tinkering with our Darwinian wiring. My guess, though, is that human reason is not sufficiently powerful to subvert the urgings of our reptilian brains.
Why do so many women see having a child as a bad thing?
Why do so many women want to kill their unborn children?
Why are women more likely to murder their newborns and babies as men?
In cases of filicide, why are more children likely to die of neglect from their mothers than their fathers?
In cases of filicide, are fathers ever given the excuse of post-partum depression?
Why are fathers more willing to sacrifice their lives to save their children than mothers?
Perhaps it's because these women treat children as commodities and think they can always have another one if they want to. Men don't have that privilege.
The American future belongs to the White working-class and, more certainly, aspirational Hispanics.
Americans, all. The American system of governance does not represent or tolerate diversity [dogma], but rather judges by character. #PrinciplesMatter
If you do have children, please take care what you name them. It's hard for someone named "Zeke Hausfather" to speak with authority about anything.
Being a father is a man’s greatest reward in this human races’ short life span. Whoever is a 20 + man and cannot see that is terminally stupid. Selah
Evoking a raped slave to make your point is the new Hitler.
I can't say that you should never use always, but you should think about its use at least as carefully as you would using never. Close readers will come back and beat you to death with either one of them.
Beware.
Conception, pregnancy, and raising a child is the hardest job you'll ever love with forward-looking returns. In this light, both the mother and father can take steps to ensure that the mother and child are safe and healthy. There is no mystery in sex and conception, acknowledge and respect the dignity and agency of the couple, enjoy, be prepared, take personal responsibility for the sake of the mother, father, child, and sustainable civilized society.
But God's own descent
Into flesh was meant
As a demonstration
That the supreme merit
Lay in risking spirit
In substantiation.
Spirit enters flesh
And for all it's worth
Charges into earth
In birth after birth
Ever fresh and fresh.
We may take the view
That its derring-do
Thought of in the large
Is one mighty charge
On our human part
Of the soul's ethereal
Into the material.
~Robert Frost
I am a P.U.N.K., which is a "Professional Uncle, No Kids".
Hey--I'm in your club as well. And what a great acronym for our little tribe; I'll have to use that sometime.
"Perhaps you should consider a decaffeinated coffee?"
That was my first thought. Klein is an asshole, but I seriously doubt he was talking about rape victims. Some people actually do see the birth of a child as more than evidence of oppression.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
“ Think of the men, Althouse!”
I did. It’s just didn’t fit this flow of remarks on the hope theme and the history of the exploitation of women and the natural state of women.
. . .
I am not sure at all that it makes sense to think of the theme and history of the exploitation of women w/o taking in consideration men. Who is exploiting them? It would be like discussing the theme and history of the exploitation of slaves w/o mentioning that they have masters. It's a duality, w/o impregnating men, there are no pregnant woman. Feminism is still shot through with the idea that the woman is passive, the man is aggressive. He makes her pregnant, she becomes pregnant.
Why would anyone bring a child into a world with inevitable nuclear war?
Why would anyone bring a child into the world when acid rain will kill the oceans?
Why would anyone bring a child into the world where the ozone layer will disappear?
Why would anyone bring a child into the world when....
And yet, here we are. Though some populations are shrinking due to not reproducing to replacement rates. Not a worry for me.
https://youtu.be/Tba3g-ASJdI
The answer… to the CO2
Each one of us, no matter how ridiculous or subnormal, is the product of tens of thousands of generations of successful reproduction. Every one of our ancestors made it through the very risky road from uterus to infancy, survived childhood diseases and the many risks of adolescence, and somehow acted in a way that pushed that ancestor's DNA into the next generation. For 99% of the generations that managed to surmount the reproduction hurdle, the act of sexual coupling had a poorly understood relationship to childbirth.
We now live in an era in which the former mystery of procreation has been reduced to something as mechanistic as the filing of tax forms. Once upon a time, a society would reproduce if it could only persuade its young to copulate. A pretty easy sell. Now, you not only have to persuade them to copulate, you have to persuade them that the expense, opportunity cost, and general grossness and thanklessness of parenthood are worth the big payoff of turning your children over to the state to be molded into hectoring little Greta Thunbergs. This is not an easy sell.
Ha! Althouse complaining about SOMEONE ELSE being ignorant.
It is to laugh.
I know from missionaries, that in sub Saharan Africa, young women want to have children because it increases their status in the community. I know from teaching in alternative school, the same dynamic exists there. I had a girl in my 9th grade class twice and was pregnant both years. She brought her first child to school and was the queen of the school for that day. It was OOhs and aahs from all the female teachers and students. As a single mother, she got WIC, SNAP, and a section 8 apartment--as a 9th grader. Her children and others like them will inherit the Earth --whether it's warmer or not. The future belongs to those who show up.
Klein is preaching hopefulness to a congregation beset by apocalyptic fear and misanthropy.
Wow, what a strange, obtuse take. Klein's topic was the thought process of people who are deciding whether to exercise the choice to have children or not, and how their view of the future shapes that choice. When he said "always," he meant all those people facing such a decision, not some other people who aren't doing that. Those other people are certainly worthy of consideration and sympathy, and maybe someday Klein or someone else will write a column about them too. Hope Ann finds this clarification helpful.
My daughter, who was a Bernie Bro in 2016, got married and has an almost 3 year old./ She loves being a mother and says it has changed life. She had the daughter at 42 and is thinking about another one. Althouse, you need to get outside your depressing bubble.
Ann Althouse said...
I did. It’s just didn’t fit this flow of remarks on the hope theme and the history of the exploitation of women and the natural state of women."
The history of exploitation of women? You mean the world in which men went out and were eaten by tigers while searching for food to bring back to the women in exchange for sex? Yeah, poor women.
Wow. Althouse is really unhinged here.
Inga said...
Forced birth sort of sucks the hope aspect out of the act of giving birth. You must give birth and be happy and hopeful or else. As for having children despite or because of climate change, well Klein needn’t be too worried, women will be engaging in forced birth without hope and having unwanted children if the Supreme Court has its way.
6/5/22, 1:49 PM
If you willingly had sex, then there is no such thing as... FORCED birth. YOU did this. There are consequences. If you kill it. It is ON YOU. Grow up and take responsibility for your own actions instead of FORCING death on an innocent.
"...." many credible estimates from a decade ago put us on track for the average global temperature to increase 4 or even 5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels by 2100."
There were no credible estimates from a decade ago.
Mark Steyn said "the future belongs to those who show up."
Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but demographic trends usually take a while to change significantly.
Who'll be around in 75 years, and what will their attitudes be towards all the things you think are so very important today?
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