Childless of this world

What is childfree ideology, how did it appear in America and Russia? Two opinions of literary observers - from the USA and from Russia

First of all, let's understand the term: we must distinguish between antinatalism - a philosophy that considers life and reproduction to be evil - and a banal reluctance to burden oneself with education or childbirth. Ideological antinatalists are a motley bunch, ranging from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to Wittgenstein and Cioran. They are not against the continuation of the human race - but, as the Gospel says (Matthew 19:12), he who is able to contain, let him contain, but you cannot force anyone.

The Bible, by the way, is generally a dangerous book from the point of view of modern prohibitionists. It has been said that a man’s enemies are his own household, and if you remember that the author of this thesis grew up in a poor and large family, and was even raised by his stepfather, he can be quite understood.

There are people - of a misanthropic or, say, anxious and suspicious nature - for whom any communication is painful, and family is an unbearable burden; It is the right of such people not to have a family that is defended by lonely pessimists like Andersen. There are never many of these.

The rest, according to the classification of Jeen E Veevers (1980, Childless by Choice, “consciously childless”), are divided into “rejectors” and moderates, who simply want to live for themselves. In fiction, by the way, the childfree movement is reflected very modestly: more was written about it at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, as will be shown below. In modern times, this theme is present in the novels of the Bengali feminist Taslima Nasreen, especially in autobiographical prose. By the way, she is a laureate of the Sakharov Prize.

…Dog friendly, child free: wandering the streets of New York, you will probably find at least one bar with a similar phrase chalked on the sign. And you might even roll your eyes in hypocritical horror. For Generation Z and Generation Alpha, this is a classic millennial faux pas, nothing more, but for Baby Boomers and Generation X, it is the end of the world, a threat to the very existence of society.

Meanwhile, as of 2020, only 30% of millennials lived with a spouse and child (for Generation X, as Copeland calls them, that is, for people born between 1965 and 1980, this figure reaches 40%).

Since the 1950s, the birth rate in the United States has been falling steadily, and it is increasingly common to hear that America is no longer a “family-oriented country.”

The recent surge in the “pronatalist” movement has remained, so to speak, in theory. The United States has been unable to maintain its population levels without immigration since 1971. There are many explanations put forward: an increase in infertility, a decrease in Christian religiosity, misogynistic cliches - they say that modern women prefer promiscuity rather than “accepting the duty” of becoming a mother.

There are also American reasons for this: women who are focused on professional growth fear that children may become an obstacle to their career. Over the past few decades, news channels have regularly reported on women being fired due to pregnancy. And in general, it is more difficult for happy owners of children to find work - regardless of gender. Children get sick, act up...

Most childfree people are just fans of professional growth. If a working woman decides to give birth to a child, no one frees her from the hardships of domestic work: from nine to five she works hard at outside work, and from five to nine at home. The husband (if there is one) can share this burden, but never get rid of it. In the 1950s, women could stay home for at least a few years after giving birth, and overall, about forty percent remained housewives. Feminism has changed this situation, but has it improved it?

One of the main paradoxes of social progress is that people are ready to fight for their rights, but are not at all eager to use them. We can work equally with men, but, as experience shows, we don’t want this at all. We would risk saying something completely unpleasant, but if there has been progress in any area of ​​the spirit in the last hundred years, it is in selfishness, that is, in the spread of the slogan “After all, we deserve it.”

A person demands more and more for himself - he is ready to force himself only to do what increases his salary or self-esteem, and the childfree ideology is quite in the spirit of this trend. In this regard, neither America nor Russia are exceptions.

There is another very American reason: in many conservative societies, couples raise children in the hope that they will take care of their aging parents in return. But aging parents in America are cared for primarily by professionals. Children fly out of the nest as early as adolescence, living with parents during the student period is not accepted, and after twenty-five it is simply shameful - peers, the press and popular culture simultaneously convince us of this.

If you live with your parents at 25, you are probably a maniac, like in Psycho. And if a parent lives with you after 80, you probably simply do not have the money to hire him an assistant or send him to a modern analogue of a nursing home - comfortable and even cozy. So the selfish motive “I feed him so that he feeds me” fades into the background in a developed society. And then why? To have someone to love? But, as sociology and good cinema show, emotions weaken in a modernist society. They become a relic of conservative environments.

Of course, America does not live in a vacuum. In South Korea, active protests by the female population have been going on for several years in response to the patriarchal demands of the government and the pro-natalist sentiments of conservatives. No benefits for children, no federal maternity leave, no prenatal benefits alleviate fears for women’s bodily autonomy. The pro-childbirth movement views women as broodmares rather than as equal human beings. And if, in addition, there is a great risk that your child will be used as cannon fodder, no fight against childfree with carrots or sticks will force a citizen of such a state to give birth to new slaves for him. This is not to mention the humiliation of such an approach to a woman.

This is where we would have stopped if we were writing this review for any other publication. But I am writing it for a Russian newspaper, and therefore I cannot help but quote from the most radical, but also the most famous Russian prose writer:

FROM LEO TOLSTOY'S STORY "KREUTZER'S SONATA"
“You say: naturally! Naturally there is. And eating is joyful, easy, pleasant and not ashamed from the very beginning; here it’s disgusting, and shameful, and painful. No, it's unnatural! And an unspoiled girl, I am convinced, always hates it.

“How,” I said, “how would the human race continue?”

- Yes, so that the human race does not perish! - he said with malicious irony, as if expecting this familiar and unscrupulous objection. - Preach abstinence from childbearing so that the English lords can always overeat - this is possible. Preach abstinence from childbearing in order to have more pleasure - this is possible; and even mention only about abstaining from childbearing in the name of morality - fathers, what a cry: the human race does not seem to have stopped because a dozen or so want to stop being pigs. Why does it need to continue, the human race? The highest breed of animals, the human, in order to survive in the fight against other animals, must close together like a swarm of bees, and not multiply endlessly; must, just like bees, educate asexuals, that is, we must again strive for abstinence, and in no way to incite lust, which is what the entire structure of our life is aimed at. Will the human race end? Can anyone, no matter how they look at the world, doubt this? After all, this is as certain as death. After all, according to all church teachings the end of the world will come, and according to all scientific teachings the same thing is inevitable. So is it strange that according to moral teaching the same thing comes out?”

However, this author, with whom childfree began in Russia, according to modern Russian legislation can already be taken so many times that the prohibitors would not have gotten around to the later prose.

• Nikolina Stahl, USA, for Novaya Gazeta

***

In Russia, the reasons for the fashion for childfree ideology are much simpler and much less humanistic than in America. Although, of course, there is room for progressive American fears like the possibility that a child might interfere with self-fulfillment or a pregnancy might go wrong, mostly, as far as I can tell, our fears are much more conservative.

The first one is that no one knows what will happen tomorrow. Neither I nor those younger than me - that is, girls of the age at which giving birth is highly recommended - do not remember the nineties, but our cultural code contains the knowledge of what it means to raise a child when there is no minus forty in winter heating, when stores have empty shelves, when windows without bars don’t last long, etc. Now all this is not there - but who knows if this will happen in three years or five years?

The stability that was preached all my life from all the screens and posters turned out to be stable in only one thing: we consistently do not know whether the bottom has already been broken, or whether there may still be knocking from below.

The second fear is the one that has already been mentioned: few people want to give birth to slaves of the state. My mother told me how incredibly lucky it was that she was born a girl - otherwise she almost certainly would have been sent to fight in Afghanistan. She told me this ten years ago - and suddenly I discover that I can say the same about myself. Such spontaneous family traditions do not exactly motivate people to pass on the baton further.

And the third fear is related to the conditions in which this child will have to grow up. As you might guess, I personally have great stylistic disagreements with the pedagogy that our public schools and universities are building. How long this pedagogical system will develop is unknown, and so far the only alternative remains, apparently, home schooling, for which many do not have the strength or time. And in conditions when I cannot promise a child not only stable payment for his classes, clubs and tutoring, but also cannot promise myself that I will not lose my job tomorrow - under these conditions the desire to build nests also somehow fades.

And if a miracle does happen, and despite all the “talk about important things,” the child grows up able to build logical chains and draw sound conclusions, and besides, manages to learn once again not to lie and not be afraid, the possible consequences are also clear: This year, the whole country watched as a mother had to fight for the right to simply bury her son, a political prisoner who died in prison, in a human manner. I'm talking about Navalny, of course. It is clear that not all the fates of fathers, mothers and children are so tragic, but in our country there are now too many families in which the child is somehow not free. And while this is so, it is difficult to force yourself not to prepare for the worst.

In general, as you can see, in Russia the childfree ideology is largely produced by the state - and at the same time it is prohibited by the state itself. It’s a paradox, but what can you do: paradoxicality is generally very Russian.

And since we have a literary column after all, I apparently don’t have the right to leave my answer without a quote. Therefore, I will quote Gorky’s novel “Mother” - I don’t know if it is read in America, but if you want to get an even more comprehensive answer to the question of why childlessness has become popular in Russia, read it. Everything is described there in much more detail than in my short letter.

FROM MAXIM GORKY’S NOVEL “MOTHER”
“The mother’s eyes became hot, and her mouth felt unpleasantly dry.

He took her hand and stroked it.

- This is necessary, understand!

- I'm not saying anything! - she said, slowly raising her head. And when her eyes met the stubborn shine of his eyes, she bent her neck again.

He released her hand, sighed and spoke reproachfully:

“You shouldn’t grieve, but you should rejoice.” When will there be mothers who will send their children to death with joy?..

- Am I saying anything? - repeated the mother. - I'm not bothering you. And if I feel sorry for you, that’s maternal!..

He stepped away from her, and she heard harsh, sharp words:

- There is love that prevents a person from living...

The mother wanted to cry. Not wanting her son to see her tears, she suddenly muttered:

“Oh, fathers,” I forgot...

And she went out into the hallway. There, leaning her head into the corner, she gave way to the tears of her resentment and cried silently, soundlessly, weakened by the tears, as if the blood was flowing out of her heart along with them.

Pavel slowly came out to her. He looked from under his brows, with a smile trembling guiltily on his lips.

- Forgive me, mother! - he said quietly. - I’m still a boy, a fool...

- Don't touch me! — she cried sadly, pressing his head to her chest. - Don't say anything! The Lord is with you, your life is your business! But don’t hurt your heart! How can a mother not feel sorry? He can’t... I feel sorry for everyone! You are all family, you are all worthy! And who will take pity on you, except me?.. You are coming, others are following you, they have abandoned everything, let’s go... Pasha!

• Victoria Artemyeva, Russia