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It's not a great way to win an election, and it's also cruel. But it cuts deep because it's true.
We do a disservice to our young people when we hide the facts of life from them. Many of us will die alone and unloved because of decisions of expediency made when we were young. Parents should teach their children about how to build a full life for themselves, starting with having children of their own.
When I was 10-13, I was not at all interested in the opposite sex, but was positively disposed to the idea of having children. That changed quietly at some point between 13 and 16, as preserved in that novel I wrote at the time where I suddenly questioned halfway through if the blatant self-insert character functionally parenting a couple of space-orphans was really compatible with my sense of identity. It could have been that abstinence-only presentation they put all the 8th-graders through, but I somehow doubt. I'd been surrounded by overpopulation memes forever; I'm really not sure what changed. Maybe the realization that I didn't have a community or social life or any fondness for the increasingly alienating environment around me? Some hormone balance suddenly shifting? Increased self-doubt? The realization that I was not sufficiently attracted to real people for reproduction to be remotely reallistic anyway?
I could go on. Lots of weird teenage crap that could tie into the rapid vibe-shift on the subject. At some point, all of that stuff went from a believable fantasy to something to fear, dread, or dislike. I like to think I was more reflective than average at the time, but clearly not enough to catch the transformation as it was happening.
I'd argue it wasn't so much propaganda as getting older and having a more realistic view of what raising kids actually look like. There's a reason why for instance, a series about a bunch of kids raising themselves in a boxcar was a YA series aimed at basically older elementary school, because as you get any older, even an average intelligence 13 year old starts thinking of some issues and plot holes.
Also, depending on the family the responsibilities you may have at 15 with a baby in the household, whether it's a younger sibling or a visiting cousin are probably different and closer to reality than you would've had at 9.
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"Parents should teach their children about how to build a full life for themselves, starting with having children of their own."
You assume the parents think their children have had a positive effect on their lives, or more importantly, telling your kids at 18 to pop out some babies will overwrite the previous 18 years of complaining they've heard about the cost of raising them or getting in the way of their own lives, and so on.
I don't think that's an assumption.
Absolutely, end the schizophrenic messaging around children.
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Upvoted four million times.
People often opt for short term emotional self-soothing even if that has led to worse and worse long term outcomes for them. The universe isn't cruel, it's ambivalent.
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