Declining birthrates around the world are alarming many people, yet, for too long generations of people were pressured into getting married and having kids, because it was what one was expected to do. Now people are realizing they have other choices and are happy to live their lives how they wish.

While this means that some people won’t become grandparents or aunties or uncles, I applaud people’s decisions, because we had too many people living lives of quiet desperation feeling trapped, or they became abusive towards their spouse and kids because the resentment was too overpowering, or they numbed out with drugs and/or alcohol, creating damage to those relationships.

Too many people and families are living with the emotional, physical even the sexual fallout of those old expectations.

Some people just aren’t cut out to be good parents, and I believe if they are given choices in how they wish to live their lives is a better thing overall, not just for the possible misfortunes of their kids, but for the outward ripple effect on community resources such as foster care, prisons, drug treatment facilities, domestic violence shelters, etc.

I’ve heard people arguing against some people’s choices to stay childless, saying they will be lonely and alone when they are old.

Having children doesn’t guarantee one won’t be lonely or alone. Many children who have grown up in homes where there was abusive treatment have opted to go low-contact or no-contact with their parents as soon as they can get out. Later when the parents are old, they are often left alone in senior homes, their children not calling or visiting.

This has been happening for generations, and isn’t likely to change. So for the mental, emotional and physical well-being of individuals and the children they choose not to have, I support their choice not to have children.

We may bemoan the divorce statistics these days, and speak about people not having loyalty anymore or the will to stick things through the good and the bad, yet if we think that all long-term marriages in the past were happy or healthy ones, we fool ourselves.

If we are to become emotionally and physically healthy as a society, we need to be able to continue to make those important decisions for ourselves and not be forced into becoming parents.

People who choose not to have kids report being happier, and I think there are many factors that play into their increased life satisfaction.

Why point a finger at them and call them selfish? What if they’re right? What if they are better off not being parents?

They know their inner truth better than we do, and they may choose not to speak of being severely damaged by their parents, and do not wish to pass on the troubles to their children, because they’re still learning how to heal and to have better relationship skill. After all, that is no one’s business except their own.

I myself am very happy to have 1 amazing daughter and 3 awesome grandchildren. They are part of the air that I breathe, and I wouldn’t wish to be without them in my life.

Even though I have wonderful relationships and have no regrets over becoming a parent, I also fully support other people’s choices not to be parents, or even to get married.

Eugenics has played a large part in pressuring white people to have children

Eugenics was promoted as a way to “improve” society by declaring the white race was superior to all others and it was the “duty of all whites to procreate and keep a strong white population”. This has been a long underpinning on the various government and community campaigns to urge people to procreate.

Eugenics also pushed the wrong notions that limiting the births of nonwhites was in society’s best interests, so the forced sterilization of large swathes of the population was done actively for decades.

Read: U.S. Scientists’ Role in the Eugenics Movement (1907–1939)

“It was Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin, who coined the term “eugenics” in 1883 while advocating that society should promote the marriage of what he felt were the fittest individuals by providing monetary incentives.¹ Shortly thereafter, many intellectuals and political leaders (e.g., Alexander Graham Bell, Winston Churchill, John Maynard Keynes, and Woodrow Wilson) accepted the notion that modern societies, as a matter of policy, should promote the improvement of the human race through various forms of governmental intervention. While initially this desire was manifested as the promotion of selective breeding, it ultimately contributed to the intellectual underpinnings of state-sponsored discrimination, forced sterilization, and genocide.”

U.S. Scientists’ Role in the Eugenics Movement (1907–1939)

In the Women’s Rights advocacy groups, there were 2 distinct rights being advocated for: white women were pushing for the right to have birth-control and access to safe abortions, while nonwhite women were pushing for the right to be allowed to have children and not be forcibly sterilized.

Today we still experience the fallout of how eugenics permeated the medical schools teachings – even how pain levels were supposed to be perceived by different races – white women were delicate flowers and black women supposedly didn’t feel pain; how the judicial system is administered, as well as how the demographics of cities were divided and “desirable” and “non-desirable” areas affected generations of families and wealth.

If you have an opportunity to see these effects in many major US cities, you will notice that the “redlined” areas, square mile after square mile, many buildings and houses are in extreme states of decay, to the point of looking like a war zone, there are very few grocery stores offering fresh food at reasonable prices (apart from expensive corner convenience stores), few local businesses, and the roads are in terrible repair.

All of this has contributed to high levels of gang activities and violence, depression, domestic violence and substance abuse. If my family lived in those areas for generations, we too would be struggling with depression, feeling rejected, isolated, and have little hope for improvement in the future.

Living in a desolate environment that doesn’t look like it will change will do that to people.

These are the real life results of how deeply Eugenics permeated our entire cultural, judicial, banking, and medical landscapes, to the point that many people today cannot see the cause and effect.

The message of Eugenics has been so internalized and believed that even though the Eugenics laws were struck down decades ago, many whites still teach the principles to their children, believing them to be true, because the leading scientists and thought leaders at the time strongly promoted and pushed laws supporting their ideas, most of which was actually based on folk ideologies, and not on any facts.

Environmentalists have warned about overpopulation of the planet for decades

Environmentalists have long sounded the alarm regarding overpopulation affecting the future health of our planet and the effect of overcrowded cities polluting the air and waterways.

The environmentalists’ ideas were seen as spreading dangerous ideology that countered the promotion of white birth rates, and so were derided.

The people who were actively creating negative campaigns against the environmental movement were willing to sacrifice the well-being of our planet in order to see their personal eugenics views supported, at all costs.

They were the industrialists, the mega-rich who owned large conglomerates and also needed lots and lots of workers to keep their businesses running.

The same ideas are being promoted today by the billionaires, and for pretty much the same reasons as before. Dig below the surface and we don’t have to go very far to see white-supremacist beliefs held very strongly, and often passed down from their parents.

Read: Eugenics and Involuntary Sterilization: 1907-2015

“In England during the late nineteenth century, intellectuals, especially Francis Galton, called for a variety of eugenic policies aimed at ensuring the health of the human species. In the United States, members of the Progressive movement embraced eugenic ideas, especially immigration restriction and sterilization. Indiana enacted the first eugenic sterilization law in 1907, and the US Supreme Court upheld such laws in 1927. State programs targeted institutionalized, mentally disabled women. Beginning in the late 1930s, proponents rationalized involuntary sterilization as protecting vulnerable women from unwanted pregnancy. By World War II, programs in the United States had sterilized approximately 60,000 persons. After the horrific revelations concerning Nazi eugenics (German Hereditary Health Courts approved at least 400,000 sterilization operations in less than a decade), eugenic sterilization programs in the United States declined rapidly. Simplistic eugenic thinking has faded, but coerced sterilization remains widespread, especially in China and India. In many parts of the world, involuntary sterilization is still intermittently used against minority groups.”

Eugenics and Involuntary Sterilization: 1907-2015

As you can see, views about the declining birthrates, if it is a good thing or not, are intertwined in long-held beliefs that have become so internalized into our societies, that we can’t separate out the old myths.

I’m sure this piece may have stirred up some emotions and thoughts in you too!

I welcome civil discussion here, but discourage any name-calling, or overtly negative responses.

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts! Don’t forget to Like, Comment, and Follow my blog! If you want to become a Guest writer, please contact me and we’ll work out the details!

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• 10 Steps to Owning Our Happiness
• Setting “Boundaries with consequences”
• Making a change… “How do I take that first step?”
• Affirmation: Today is a new day! I can do this!
• As we practice being gentle and kind with ourselves, we actually help to speed the process of helping our lives become more positive!
• Always believe that wonderful things can happen!
• A healthy outside starts from the inside!
• Brain Rewiring

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• Teaching ourselves to like, even to love ourselves
• By changing our inner dialogue, we change EVERYTHING!
• Challenge: When a negative thought enters your mind, think three positive ones. Train yourself to flip the script!
• Red Ocean or Blue Ocean? How do you think?
• An answer to dealing with the Inner Critic!
• My top 10 most viewed posts, plus a few bonuses!
• A helpful trick to be able to overcome negatively Comparing Ourselves to others…
• Do you only accept yourself if you look a certain way?
• A new you! Is this possible?
• Start today, start tomorrow, just start!
• There is no enlightenment outside of daily life – Thich Nhat Hanh

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Tamara
https://tamarakulish.com/ Archived Posts: https://tamarakulish.com/archived-posts/

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