Jen Gerson: Okay, aber wir brauchen mehr Babys

Thats a whole lot of words and none of them were “predatory capitalism is eliminating the middle class, and creating a vast sense of hopelessness”.

I think the main issue is raising children is prohibitively expensive with society imposing massive expectations on parents about how they should raise their kids. 20 years ago I would come home when the street lights came on. My parents just trusted I wasn’t burning down the neighborhood…

Now we expect both parents to work meaning all spare time is going into parenting with no time left for the parents to be themselves. In order for birth rates to climb we need to accept that workforce enrollment will drop and it should be a burden shared between men and women. For too long the subjugation of women boosted birth rates while leaving them trapped in abusive marriages and financially dependent. Capitalism hates families.

>When Conservatives talk about „family values,“ I think most progressives detect hypocrisy, or hear a dog-whistle attack on gay or trans rights, and abortion access. There is some truth to this. But when I hear Conservatives talk about these issues, I infer a far more holistic meaning. Conservatives understand the importance of sustainable family formation, and put that understanding at the core of its ethic and policy goals.

I wish that I could infer a more holistic meaning; but as a parent, I cannot hope but recognize that it is conservative politicians, federally and provincially, who fight tooth and nail against Government programmes that help families the most. Affordable daycare, dental, pharmacare, [education ](https://thepointer.com/article/2025-02-26/ontario-s-education-crisis-ford-s-underfunding-and-what-the-opposition-parties-plan-to-do)and [even zoning](https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/dan-fumano-during-child-care-crisis-city-hall-rejects-daycare).

A vote for a conservative *isn’t likely* to achieve necessary funding goals for services that are important to families.

The obvious response is that by reducing services they can reduce revenues, but that doesn’t help *all* children; just those whose parents are meaningfully impacted by saving a tiny fraction of their income. But worse, it lowers the baseline of acceptable funding, meaning any additional service improvements relies on community efforts; like a School PAC, and that can take *years* to organize effectively and will vary wildly by region.

>Put bluntly, since people tend to raise children in line with their own beliefs, the left is opting out of the demographics race, and that is allowing conservatives to win policy battles, or at least put up a hell of a fight, by sheer weight of numbers.

It does sadden me that my vocally progressive friends aren’t coming along for the journey of parenhood, but not as much as it saddens me to see that the only adults I see engaging with children outside of school tend to be other parents. It’s not like the 80s, where volunteering for youth organizations was a form of social engagement for adults, even those without kids. I suppose that’s just another *third space* that is dwindling away.

>Even parents entirely in favour of trans rights were put off by the implicit assumption that they — and their retrograde values — were a problem to be solved by the benevolent moral leadership of school boards and enlightened technocrats.

>Conspiracies aside, the outcomes of all of this are clear. In the U.S., [higher fertility correlated heavily with votes for Donald Trump in the last election](https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-conservative-fertility-advantage). We can argue the Chicken-Egg problem interminably; does conservatism incline a family toward more children, or does having more children foster a more conservative outlook?

I happen to be a parent who thinks my children should be free to keep secrets from me, and I believe that some children keep secrets from their parents in order to protect themselves from harm.

***But***, I understand the *pain* and *indignation* that some of my parent peers express and feel when confronted with the notion that teachers and doctors should not be obligated to share information with them; it’s not so different than the *normal* struggle of coming to terms with your child aging into adulthood, and coming to understand that they are their own person with the capacity to make their own choices. It’s *hard* to let go of that little person you cradled in your arms, and know that you cannot be the one to protect and support them forever. So I have sympathy for parents who struggle with being confronted with barriers to information about their kids.

>Millennials and under are the collateral damage of Boomer excess, and our generational response to it is a categorical rejection of the political assumptions of our forebears. But we don’t yet have the language or intellectual foundation to replace it with anything better — hence all this populist flailing. We sense our systems and assumptions are failing. We want to burn it all down, but we are bereft of the moral vision required to build it back up again.

… By embracing neoliberal politics and voting Conservative or Liberal? That’s just making the same choice the Boomers made, time and again. If Canadian Millenials and GenZ were to reject the political institutions that got us to where we are today then they wouldn’t vote Conservative or Liberal.

>There really is no reason progressives can’t flip these alignments and become champions of working-class *families*, yet again. In our ongoing discussions about housing policy, it amazes me how little we’re talking about cooperative housing, for example.

Housing reform is too far away and abstract. The best method to create acceptance between social groups is *integration*, and in order to experience that the *progressives without children will need to socialize with families*, which may mean volunteering in organizations where parents and children can be found.