I think we need to get serious about nuclear family abolition instead of the childfree meme culture of "we don't want your snot-nosed gremlins." I love kids. I love their joy, the insight of not yet being acclimated to capitalism and social norms. I had a certain naive wisdom as a kid, making crowns out of dandelions without knowing they were weeds. When my mom tried to explain gender reassignment surgery to me, expecting me to be repulsed, I instead blurted out "cool!".
But despite my love for children and sentimentality for my own childhood, I don't want to "have kids," as it's conventionally understood to mean, nor do most of my age peers. The expectation of children to be the property and sole responsibility of two parents (or as patriarchy would insist, one mother) is a cruel and unrealistic in any historical moment but especially the present. It is cruel, not just to people who don't want to be parents or shoehorned into heterosexual norms, but traumatic to the child. Surely we should know this better than anyone, and come up with a more mature response than just hating kids. There is a stark difference between this response and the queer legacy of mutual aid to support kids neglected by the nuclear family (the House Mothers of the ballroom community come to mind).
My issue with the childfree movement, as it exists online, is that it centers individual choice rather than a structural reevaluation of the family as we know it. We are told that queer life is purposeless and lonely, and that's without a genetic lineage we have no future. These arguments are in fact indictments of a system that has failed to produce collective visions of purpose, social fulfillment and futurity. None of us should be obligated to "have kids," nor tone down our culture or activism in their entirety to be "family friendly." But we should be driven by a desire to support those most disenfranchised by family norms instead of just hating them.
Prev tags: #i also incidentally think that #no criticism of the 'childfree' movement #is complete without acknowledging #the rampant misogyny in those circles
Seconding this because it's so true. I don't know where these people get off telling mothers or pregnant people "I'm not going to give you special treatment just because you let a man [sexual harassment]," or make fun of mothers for how hard it is to raise kids without adequate safety nets, parental leave, community support, or even their own husbands' support. They have a "sucks to suck" attitude towards parents almost similar to how pro forced birthers talk to pregnant people about the "consequences of sex." Legitimate feminist/queer critiques of the nuclear family are sympathetic to these struggles, and that to me is the difference between a political tendency and a meme.
