#birthstrike

[extincto]

Everyone quit on the spot. No notice, pack up and don't go back

[jrmilazzo]

<< Ghodsee’s book builds up to her ultimate and most radical anti-institutionalist proposal: that the modern monogamous nuclear family should be redesigned. She argues that insular family units should be replaced with communal living situations wherein care, housework, and resources would be shared among relatives, friends, and neighbors. She knows that questioning the family is still something of a third rail in the United States and other Western countries (even though the queer community has been modeling chosen family over biological bonds for quite some time now, and practices that challenge traditional families abound—polyamory, cohabitation, BirthStrike, cooperative apartment buildings, and so on). But she convincingly argues that the nuclear family is part and parcel of individualistic societies troubled by extreme wealth inequality and frayed social safety nets because it prioritizes a small, insular group over neighbors and the larger community. It is within the nuclear family unit that patriarchy reasserts itself, that capitalism reasserts itself, that property is passed down and assets are inherited, maintaining class inequality and driving competition.

For Ghodsee, therefore, we must fundamentally rethink the organization of our intimate lives. She notes that Plato said more or less the same thing in The Republic—the oikos (meaning “family” or “house”), he argued, undermined social cooperation. But she also points out the utopian behaviors that many readers might already recognize and amplify in their daily lives: Sharing more means consuming less; marriage need not determine the experience and organization of parenthood; nourishing friendships and expanding chosen family will multiply affection and care; swapping childcare with other parents will free up time; letting the kids spend more time among relatives and friends further spreads nurture; strangers can become kin; social dreaming is an act of radical hope. >>

[alondonjournal]

[ariainstars]

Why I Don’t Want to Reproduce

Warning: This is a very personal entry.

My two cents on the subject, since lately I’ve repeatedly come across words like “birth strike” and “antinatalism”. 

I do not dislike children. And they don’t dislike me. When I was a child myself, smaller ones always came to me instinctively. I am not a career woman who will give anything up for success. I do not hate household chores and I do not share the opinion that a woman who likes tending her home is a “silly victim, abused by that ass of her husband”.

I am a family person with a strong desire for belonging and good, solid relationships. My upbringing was rather conservative, but not in a repressive way. Until I was about 30, I always thought as a matter of course that I would have a husband and children, since that seemed the natural thing to do.

My parents separated when I was 11. To my mother, the aim of her life became taking revenge on her ex husband respectively proving him wrong and showing him how much better off she was with him.

In my opinion my parents never ought to have got married and have a child. They both were born during war time in Europe and both their fathers were violent men who raised their children like they were soldiers. At the time they got married, both were traumatized and marriage was an escape for them to a seemingly better future. Needless to say, their marriage didn’t go well. They were rather good parents as long as I was small, but when I started to think on my own and to wish to make own decisions things quickly went downhill.

Having a German mother and an Italian father, I was raised bilingual. I always was good at writing and memorizing new words. But for some reason or another, despite all their differences my parents both were separately of the opinion that I would never be good enough for anything than a menial office job. So I learned languages and that is the field I’ve worked in for over 20 years now.

During the separation, my mother practically kidnapped me to her home country and blackmailed me to stay although I detested it. (“You can’t do this to me, after all your father did.”) So now I was responsible for what he had done. Knowing her, I guess what he “did to her” was having a free will and a dignity of his own.

Not only did I spend my youth in a place and with people I detested and whose mentality until today I find utterly repulsive (selfish, mean and vulgar), I also became the waste bin for her frustrations: job life, family, friends, search for a new partner. It seemed there was nothing that wasn’t loaded with problems for her. I found out only many years later that she has a huge personality disorder and that there was nothing I could have done to help her. No therapist or “expert” ever told me that. Other “adults” usually blamed me for being an ungrateful daughter if I complained - they probably were glad to have found a fool on whom to load that woman’s crises and hysterics. My father shut himself in and was silent as a grave. Not one word, even when that woman was about to drive me out of my mind. (Except for, “You’ve grown so fat.”)

It was by sheer good luck and the help of a few good friends that I could escape that life and move 800 km away from that woman, and also could break contact once the pressure she exercised on me became unbearable. Nothing could shake her conviction that I and her ex husband were conniving against her. She spied on me and spoke behind my back with family and friends to control me better. At last she was firmly convinced that I am “mentally sick” and that only she, aided by a professional, could save me from myself.

I came away “only” with a few traumata, which weigh on me until today. I know of other people in similar situations who weren’t that lucky. I have heard of victims of emotional abuse who committed suicide or had to struggle with their shattered lives and broken feelings all of their lives.

But despite all of their differences, for some reason or another, both my parents separately told me (directly or through others) that they expected me to get married and have three children.

I have weak tissue and if I had had only one child I probably would have ruined my health for good. Not to speak of my nerves (which are shattered enough), my free time, my figure and my economic situation.

I have seen my cousin’s children: nothing is too good for them. They are sent to the best schools and universities and showered with love and praise. Grandparenting really seems great.

After what I went through, I was supposed to wreck my life for good to watch my parents giving my children all they would not give me. Was I really supposed to marry the next best guy and go through the ordeal of pregnancy, the trauma of childbirth and the exhaustion of the first years of having to look after small children, only so they could finally have the “perfect little plaything” they always wanted? Why, thank you.

I lived the way they wanted, tried my best to be a good girl, to have good marks, not get sick, do nothing that would cause worries or disappointments to them, I have the job they wanted for me. I hardly ever dared ask anything for myself because I knew they would ridicule me. They always called me dumb or selfish if I wanted something that was contrary to their plans.

And then it was like, “When will you FINALLY do your duty to us? We want grandchildren, because YOU never were good enough for our expectations.”

When I annoyed her, my mother sometimes said things like, “I hope you will soon have children of your own, so you will see how I’ve sufferd because of you.” When I was over twenty and single, she sometimes practically forced dates on me and then said I couldn’t cry off because it would be impolite towards the guy. She never spoke with me about birth control. Not once. During one of these “dates” the guy forced a kiss on me; I went home feeling disgusted and that’s what I also answered on mommy dearest’s questioning “How did it go?” I learned about a year later that she had actually thought the guy had seduced me more or less willingly. In other words, some random guy can actually rape her daughter and she won’t comment it with a word. Knowing her manipulative ways, she probably hoped I would get pregnant as soon as possible so she would become a grandmother. If the guy didn’t marry me, the better; I would have become dependent on her and never managed to leave her and that awful place behind.

My father had a similar attitude, except he is more conservative and would have expected me to marry before I began with the long-desired reproduction.

Well excuse me, but they can f*** off.

I understand all of the worries about environmental problems coming from the fact that too many children are born nowadays, and that industrial life is cluttering up the only planet human beings can live on. Those are good enough reasons for not having children. I won’t have any for my own reasons. I hope that point of view is understandable.

Of course, I could have had children with the excuse that I would be a better mother to them. But how was I to ensure that, pray? By doing the opposite of what my parents did? Is that a solution? An uncle of mine raised his daughter on exactly the contrary of his own upbringing: a more selfish, mean, shameless brat I have never met in my life.

I don’t feel up to it. I know that I would not be a good mother with all of the shit I’m still carrying around. Thank God I am married to a man who is not keen on children of his own either.

I am not selfish, shallow and self-absorbed because I don’t want to be a mother. I just am sick of being trod upon and used for other people’s needs, regardless of my own. 

Have a nice day, whether you have children or will have some one day. Or not.

[ukemyworld]

We ARE nature.

Those words from David Attenborough is the only comfort regarding climate change. There have been 5 known mass extinctions in the past. There is no reason to think that somehow humans are “special” and that mass extinction does not apply to us. I will not pass a future to a child to watch them suffer for food and water, mass immigration causing fighting for the drying up of resources and eventual chaos. My wife and I have a lot of friends who recently have had babies. We are not judging them. However I am concerned for their future.

I am a school teacher and I look at my students with fear and concern. I try my best to empower them to take action. The one hope I have is that when humanity has a common enemy or problem (the environment) it has the potential to unite our species. Remember South Africa’s day zero? However, when everything is thrown into chaos from food shortages (bee extinctions, floods, droughts) and water shortages, you can imagine how dangerous the future will be.

You can already see this dark future unfolding: 21 cities in India will run out of water, including the city Chennai, where I currently live. If we pretend nothing is wrong people will perish. With this uncertainty of the direction of humanity (unity or chaos) my wife and I feel it is just unfair and cruel to bring a child into the world where I cannot guarantee food, water, and shelter in 10-15 years.

We are nature. And maybe part of our nature is to run its course to extinction. It’s happened before, and it’s happening again. In a way, we’re kind of lucky to watch how mass extinctions unfold over time.

[mirrorontheworld]

A new movement of women refusing to bring children into a world doomed by climate changed has sprung into the global spotlight.

[keshelj84]

BirthStrike: The people refusing to have kids, because of climate change

BirthStrike: The people refusing to have kids, because of climate change

London, Local weather change is quickly altering the atmosphere we stay in. However how far would you be prepared to go to assist save the planet?

For 33-year-old British musician Blythe Pepino the latter is an actuality. Her fears about local weather change are so sturdy she has determined to not have organic kids. “I actually need a child,” she instructed CNN. “I like my companion and I need a…

[thehushpost]

Brit group goes on ‘birth strike’ due to severity of climate change

Brit group goes on ‘birth strike’ due to severity of climate change

The Hush Post | 8:23 pm | One-minute read |

A group working for prevention of climate change in Britain has decided to go on birth strike. Put simply, the members of the group have decided not to have children because of the severity of the ecological crisis. The women members of the group say climate change is becoming a serious problem and drought, famine and global warming is imminent. Hence,…

[infocircle-blog]

BirthStrike: Refusing to have kids, because of climate change

BirthStrike: Refusing to have kids, because of climate change

[ad_1]

For 33-year-old British musician Blythe Pepino the latter is a reality. Her fears about climate change are so strong she has decided not to have biological children.

“I really want a kid,” she told CNN. “I love my partner and I want a family with him but I don’t feel like this is a time that you can do that.”

So far, over 330 people have joined, of which Pepino estimates 80% are women.