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The Progressive Pronatalist Book that Broke My Wife ( "What Are Children For?")
Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dissect the new pronatalist book "What Are Children For?" by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman. This in-depth discussion explores the challenges of promoting childbearing within a progressive framework and the broader implications for demographic trends.
Key points covered:
* Overview of "What Are Children For?" and its reception
* The difficulty of justifying childbearing in a progressive worldview
* Analysis of the book's central themes and claims
* The impact of soft cultures on attitudes towards parenthood
* The importance of having an objective function in life decisions
* Critique of progressive arguments against having children
* The unintended consequences of fertility strikes
* The role of overthinking in modern parenting anxieties
* How pronatalist arguments can reach progressive audiences
Whether you're interested in demographics, cultural trends, or the intersection of politics and family planning, this video offers a thought-provoking analysis of the challenges facing pronatalism in progressive circles.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, everybody. It's Simone Collins here. And I'm so glad to see you here today. I am taking over this podcast. Oh no! It's been taken
Malcolm Collins: over!
Simone Collins: Yeah, because I am going to lead the discussion today. I've decided not to phone it in. And we are going to talk today about a new Pronatalist book that came out called What Are Children For?
Which is basically the left's attempt to At pronatalism it is a book that we were just told about by a friend at a conference and she basically explained it as this is the pronatalist argument. But from the perspective of a, an educated Brooklyn elite, who's highly progressive.
Yeah, but they got like
Malcolm Collins: an opinion piece in the New York Times, for example. Yeah, it got
Simone Collins: an opinion piece in the New York Times. It got a write up in the New Yorker. Obviously and they would never even consider giving us a platform. We
Malcolm Collins: have done we've reached out to them before. They don't,
Simone Collins: No. They don't talk to us, but they do talk to them. Because this was co written by two of their people. [00:01:00] Yeah. And so obviously we're super excited to read this book because, oh my gosh, maybe. Because we cannot apparently speak to pronatalism in a way that gets progressives excited. Maybe two progressive pronatalists could speak to progressives in a way that gets them excited.
And so they did, and so I read the book. Um, and okay, let me just start off by giving you the book's description, Malcolm, and I want to get your impression because I've read the book, Malcolm has not. Let's see what you think. So this is What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman.
It came out on June 11th. So right now only three Three reviews have been written about it. It's very new. Here's the description becoming a parent. Once the expected outcome of adulthood is increasingly viewed as a potential threat to the most basic goals and aspirations of modern life, we seek self fulfillment, we want to liberate women to find meaning and self worth outside the home, and we wish to protect the planet from the ravages of climate change.
Weighing on the [00:02:00] pros and cons of having children, Millennials and Zoomers are finding it increasingly difficult to judge in favor. With lucid argument and passionate prose, Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman offer the guidance necessary to move beyond uncertainty. The decision whether or not to have children, they argue, is not just a woman's issue, but a basic human one.
And at a time when climate change worries threaten the very legit
Published on 1 year, 5 months ago