Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman work for an opinion magazine called The Point and have written a book for the liberal masses: “What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice.”
The two writers have also penned an op-ed in the New York Times: "The Success Narratives of Liberal Life Leave Little Room for Having Children."
You and I may know exactly what children are for and don't need a book to tell us, but liberals are apparently confused about the subject. Liberals are different. They need to be stroked and their feelings assuaged before making a commitment like deciding to have a kid. They need to be assured that they're not violating some unwritten rule of feminism or male allyship.
Am I exaggerating?
"For young, secular, politically progressive men and women, having children has become something of an afterthought. Liberal conventional wisdom encourages people to spend their 20s on journeys of personal and professional self-discovery and self-fulfillment. Children are treated as a bonus round," the writers say in The Times.
No wonder the right can't talk to the left. They live on different planets.
"For progressives, waiting to have children has also become a kind of ethical imperative. Gender equality and female empowerment demand that women’s self-advancement not be sacrificed on the altar of motherhood," they write. And don't forget a kid's "carbon footprint" and contributing to overpopulation.
But don't these buffoons know that having a child is the definition of self-sacrifice? No more lazy Sundays going for long romantic walks with a little afternoon delight afterward. The commitment to having a child and raising it supersedes all personal goals and all individual happiness.
There is no sacrificing on the "altar of motherhood." There is love and commitment to a partner and the family. If that demands sacrificing a career or "personal fulfillment" so be it.
But in time, liberals and progressives came to shy away from publicly embracing the American family as a symbol and an ideal. After Mr. Clinton was impeached in the wake of his own family-values hypocrisy and George W. Bush was elected with the help of energized evangelical voters, family-friendly rhetoric became anathema to liberals — perceived as phony, intrusive and toxic. (The notable exception was gay marriage, whose legalization was won with the help of arguments that promoted the virtues of families.) Today, the left proudly defends the sacrosanct right to abortion and reproductive justice while almost entirely sidestepping the question of whether having children is a worthy project to begin with.
Evidently, because the right values children and families, this is suspect in the eyes of leftists. God forbid they agree on anything with the right. And despite the universal desire to propagate the species and build strong, loving families, there are ways to put off children or even refuse to have them at all.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) summed up the liberal hesitancy to have children in the face of climate change hysteria and bogus worries about overpopulation: “It does lead young people to have a legitimate question: Is it OK to still have children?”
For some left-wing women, the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision on abortion convinced them that they should not have children. Apparently, if they can't change their mind about pregnancy and abort their kid, they don't want to have any.
“I have never been sure that I desire to be a mom, let alone that I desire it enough to assume the risks. These days, however, that door is shut. I choose myself," wrote "reproductive-rights" journalist Andrea González-Ramírez a year after Dobbs.
Some lucky unborn kid dodged a bullet by not being born to this harridan.
Committing oneself to long-term leftist causes like economic, environmental, racial and social justice is more than just compatible with embracing children and family life. It presupposes a willingness to take personal and collective responsibility for the next generation — raising, nurturing and educating those who will decide the fates of our country and our planet.
Surely, progressives and conservatives will give as vastly different answers to the question of what raising children ought to look like as they will to the question of how American society ought to be governed. But progressives must not let partisan loyalties stop them from thinking about the ways in which having children does or does not express their values, and what shape they really want their lives to take. Children are too important to allow them to fall victim to the culture wars.
One very happy outcome of this attitude on the part of liberals is eventually, no more liberals. If they can't sacrifice their personal and professional goals for children, they're not going to have any children at all.
Thank the Lord for that.
