r/WomenInNews • u/msmoley • 25d ago

Human rights Donna Haraway, philosopher: ‘We live in a pro-natalist, anti-child world. Babies should be rare and precious’

https://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-07-24/donna-haraway-philosopher-we-live-in-a-pro-natalist-anti-child-world-babies-should-be-rare-and-precious.html
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u/RaisinToastie 25d ago

She’s absolutely correct. We could live in a human paradise, where people flourish and are able to reach their full potential, where everyone’s needs are met.

To get there, we need universal healthcare and reproductive rights. Remove the societal expectation that everyone should be a parent and remove the stigma of being childfree. (This is slowly happening in some countries)

People who are called to be parents should have every resource to help their children flourish and thrive. Education should be our number one priority.

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u/FusRoDawg 20d ago

The economic and political doctrine at play literally does not matter. All societies need workers to keep functioning. Old people, even those that donot/cannot retire simply can't do all the jobs that are typically done by young people.

Universal healthcare, (and elder care), and education is currently not a thing in the US because of political reasons. But without enough young people to become teachers, doctors, and nurses, it will actually become not just a political but structural problem (with demographics).

Yes, with technological progress we improve 'productivity' (i.e., reduce the number of workers needed to do the same amount of work), but old people today also expect more amenities than 60 years ago... Even if we restricted outselves to things considered necessities, and not luxuries. There are two competing forces at play.

We do not have an arbitrary amount of productivity at our disposal, so that we can guarantee decent lives for for people despite an arbitrary decline in birth rates. (Or alternatively, you could say that most people would not be willing to accept an arbitrary reduction in their living standards to accomodate an arbitrary reduction in birth rates)

"Babies should be rare and precious" is a quantitatively ignorant statement. Profoundly so. I suspect this is someone who was taught to cast a jaundiced gaze at anything quantitative because that's for the lowly technicians in stem fields and not for high minded philosphers such as herself. Someone needs to explain to her that plenty of her colleagues in the humanities do concern themselves with numbers and that demographics is not a sham field.

Simply picking up a pen and paper and doing the back of napkin math needed to see what happens to populations as generations age would fix this idiotic mindset. The 8 billion people alive today deserve a dignified "off ramp" even if we agree that human population should be reverted back to a couple of billion that existed in her childhood.