To Birth or Not to Birth?

A Baby Bonus

Americans are being asked an interesting question: “would you have a child if it meant you received $5,000 cash, no strings attached?” These ‘baby bonuses’ and other measures proposed by the Trump administration are part of his plan  to incentivize American women to have more children. With Vance and Musk making similar remarks about the want, or even necessity, for a ‘new baby boom,’ a clear pronatalist ideology has taken root in the American right. The goal behind this push for babies? To reverse the US’s plummeting birth rates in order to save the economy and to revive traditional family values, reconciling  both the new tech bro right and the conservative republicans. But writer Antonio Melonio asserts there is more to it, proposing an underappreciated reason for the ruling elite and government’s pronatalist agenda: control.

The Childfree Are Ungovernable

In his short essay The Childfree Are Ungovernable, Melonio posits that “having children is […] most often the end of radical sentiment and, in many ways, freedom itself.” Once you have a child you are tied to and controlled by the system. Before all else, a parent’s top priority is always their child. And when you have mouths to feed, “it is very hard to protest, organize, riot, and set police cars on fire.” You do not have the time, money, or resources to fight against the system.Most of all, you are unable to take a risk; it is harder to switch to a more fulfilling but less-paying job, harder to emigrate if your country’s politics do not suit you if you need to provide stability and care for another human being. In this sense, having a child is a vulnerability that those in power are more than willing to exploit to create coerced citizens that are absolutely obedient to the system. Very practically: to have a child is to be controlled, making resistance almost impossible.

But not having children does not just make it easier to resist, it is also a form of resistance in itself. Melonio writes that having children makes it “harder even to crave any sort of significant political change, no matter how unjust and parasitic the system becomes.” He argues it is not growing older that makes you more conservative but having children. Deviating from society’s expectations of having children makes you a nonconformist which often translates into other parts of life as well; it is easier to go against the grain once you have done so already, easier to question other aspects of the world as well. The childfree are ungovernable, which is why the elites want you to have children.

Having Children as Resistance

Though convincing to many, the essay also rendered some critical responses. One counter argument posits that childlessness as resistance does not work for everyone.  Importantly, minority groups have been persecuted and targeted by systemic erasure. Reducing birthrate has been and still is a tool of oppression, ranging from underfunding hospitals that serve more black patients to the overt sterilization of Native Americans or Jews. To be childless would then actually be doing what the oppressors want, and would be to partake in your own people’s erasure. Thus, to have a child is resistance when your community’s very existence is at stake.

Furthermore, having a child can actually be an incentive to resist more, especially for minority groups. Those that have been and are oppressed fight so that their children can be freer than them. In general, having a child can be an incentive for resistance, for a child is something worth fighting for. Parents might feel more of a responsibility for the future of the world than the childfree, for their children will live in it. If  a parent’s number one priority is their child, would fighting for a better future not be the greatest act of parenting? In this sense, parenthood is then actually a radicalizing experience. And although resistance might be easier for the childfree, those with children might have more incentive for it. Melonio sees the fact that parents have something to lose as a hindrance to resistance, when it can actually be the very reason for it.

Finally, raising a child can be an act of resistance itself. Parents can educate their children on discrimination and injustice, raise their children to become activists and instill the importance of resistance into them. And this quieter form of activism is of great importance. As Eugene Hung explains: ‘To succeed, the battle against injustice has to outlive us. So through our influence on the next generation, we can help to sustain movements that insist on treating all human beings with the dignity, respect, empathy, and love that […] they deserve.’ Though it is true that it is harder to protest when you have mouths to feed, when you teach those mouths to speak up against injustice and to spread some oh so necessary love and compassion, is it not a good thing you were there to feed them?

While this article has barely scratched the surface of the natalism debate, it is clear that having a child, something we consider to be a very private matter, is also inherently political. Whether you decide to have a child, however, should always be your own choice, not the government’s. So when a power tries to influence that decision, as Trump is doing, you should always question their motives. And, more importantly, you should remember that both having and not having children can be politically subversive; there can be resistance in both.