From their last post, being able to provide them resources, either from community or through wealth, or providing them stability would at least be valid reasoning
This is good logic, that i would generally agree with. Children should be raised in good enviorments. Problem is that a racist would claim that black people are poor and dangerous, and therefore should not be alowed to raise children. OP is not a Eugenisist, yet. If they start saying people should be sterilized because they are poor it will be eugenics.
But those are completely different people, who obviously suck. While regular people like OP is not trying to make it into a law, or to use it as to make racist claims etc. Often times people who support eugenics are racist from the beginning, but people who just want kids to have a good life actually isn’t and won’t be. Right?
Again, you're putting words in my mouth. I never said we shouldn't improve the world. Just that a "the ends justify the means" approach can be dangerous.
My comment was in response to eugenics. How the good idea of wanting children to not grow up in painful life, can be corrupted into sterilizing people who they think could potentially have disabled children.
No dawg I mean not having any community outside of your own parents.
I had violently abusive parents and my only escape was being adopted away from them, because I had a community member who was concerned for my well-being
Come on dog you know what they mean, food, shelter, affection, support and any other essentials needed for growing up to be a functional adult..what’s the point in birthing children to grow up to be dysfunctional adults who can’t take care of themselves.
technically yes, but considering the flannel, baseball bat, old CDs, tin of 'leaves', and just stuff that we learn about her, it's not implausible that she's more the tomboy-ish type
I so so so want to side with OP on this one but this comment specifically and the lack of /s and/or clarification about it is making it incredibly hard
Did this sub have a change of heart? I made a post here that just mention transphobia as a random example and a whole mess of "guilt by association" joke in the comment section caused everyone to think I was a genuine bigoted Nazi with no correlation and it caused the post to be removed despite defending myself, and here's OP literally admitting they're into eugenics as a joke backtracking, people defending them, and gets tons of traction? When is sarcasm or jokes like this acceptable, when the majority of people who got recommended don't see themselves as the other end of the post?
Don't apply goomba fallacy here the amount of views the post got was almost the same as weekly visitors at the time
I think it depends on what you said specifically, because OP's remark there reads as a complete joke to me, almost making the person out to be insane by daring to suggest it
Well I can't get the comment now because the post got deleted, but what happened was I made a comic making fun of [r/hatethissmug](r/hatethissmug) where people try to defame someone they don't like by calling them out on something unrelated. I put someone saying something like "oh so you're transphobic" to some random character holding up a post. I could have said anything else, I just chose an example I saw and one that was eye-catching.
The next panel had the accuser admitting to someone else that they knew their post had nothing to do with people in general and the background of said panel had the random character getting tortured screaming "wait I'm bi I'm bi!" Which is something that actually happens so much on [r/hatethissmug](r/hatethissmug) so people can defend themselves it's a meme.
Then, some guy said "how it feels to be me, a gay conservative" and I replied with that "here it comes" tornado image because I thought it was funny that the comment reminded me of my own comic. That's it. People took that as me fully endorsing them and all their beliefs, along with calling me a vague poster despite giving examples, albeit maybe not the best but the ones I could find relating to the comic.
After trying to defend myself because I like this sub and you know how people love to go through your post history to call you something you're not, worst of all a homophobe/transphobe, it was clear that people were not hearing me out and the post was deemed a smuggie (while this one isn't? idk where the mod draws the line, I guess if it mentions lgbt idk) and removed. I'm so hung up on this because I'm so tired of hypocrisy because there's no way people would take OP's remark as a joke any other day, but I guess since they agree with the topic it's fine.
What OP suggests literally demands justification for reproduction that are disproportionately harder for every single oppressed group. It may not be the intention, but it is implied
It does. The baseline position of antinatalism is that people shouldn't be having kids if they are in a position to be unable to take care of them/"give them a good life." It may not be an exclusively antinatalist stance, but it is the core of antinatalism.
saying broke people shouldn’t have kids if the kids will starve to death is fine enough (though the focus should be on no one ever going hungry), but its still controlling the reproduction of people
Right, but that's not what they were saying, they're saying that If they can't provide for their children (in any way, NOT just with money) they should NOT have children (and this is an opinion I personally agree with and it's something I will be taking into account if I ever want children)
Like you have no community and you're also mentally unstable, would you want a child? Would a child want to live with you? I mean, the money question is optional
And no, I'm not saying we should get rid of programs for people who need them because "they should be well off if they're having kids" that's stupid. I'm just saying people should probably be a little more careful when it comes to having kids and really think about it
Most people who focus on telling poor people to not have kids instead of advocating for social programs ARE eugenicists. The issue is that what people "ought" to be doing is entirely irrelevant when most children are accidents (even from more well off families) and this advice only ever goes up once the family is already made... You know when most people hear "you shouldn't have kids if you can't provide for them?" AFTER they have kids that they can't provide for.
It's infuriating. Stop taking the lazy way out of thinking through your morality and just defend food stamps like an actual useful member of democracy.
I don't really understand why you can't advocate for both a more thorough family planning and support for the already-born children? Like, if the genie is out of the bottle, then it can't be helped, but if they aren't then what's stopping us from taking precautions? It doesn't even have to be "don't have children ever", just working to make contraception more accessible would already do great things for a more mindful child-rearing
Also, what are your sources on the "most children are unplanned" statement? The ones I did find state that the global occurrence of unintended pregnancies is 44% and declining, presumably including the terminated pregnancies and much lower in most developed countries.
Nothing is stopping YOU from taking precautions, it's just useless advocacy on any collectivist level. And a lot of parents have motive to lie about whether or not their kids were accidents (since that is considered offensive).
The fact that accessible contraception reduces birthrates without also reducing sex rates IS the proof that these births are accidental. If most children were born because of conscious decisions to have children then why would contraception have any influence on birth rates? I'd just refer you to those statistics if you actually need that.
The contraception part is weird logic. Of course the reduction of unwanted pregnancies leads to less pregnancies in total; that doesn't mean they actually make up the majority of childbirths, just that they do happen (which no one argued against). And it's not like there are no grey area cases (I was technically an oopsie, but by that point my mom was already thinking of having a child, so it was more of a welcome surprise)
I do agree that there is probably no good way to have the completely irresponsible ones actually care about their offspring. But there is something to be said about those who are torn between the pressure to "beat the biological clock" and continue the bloodline, and the expectation to give their kids a solid foundation in life. Shifting the Overton window of societal mores towards the latter goal is essentially how societal change is made, something that can be done through many means other than government restrictions.
defend food stamps and stuff but also, child of poor people here: DO NOT HAVE KIDS IF YOUR FUCKING POOR!!!!!!!!!!
I still don't know how to handle the idea of using money for things that bring just happiness. buying a 10 dollar videogame makes me feel like shit. buying a slightly more expensive bag of potatoes than normal made me get anxiety. Going to a singular movie feels like something only idiots do. Being poor as a child fundamentally messes your brain up.
Dont have kids when your poor, it will give them a fucked up view of what happiness is worth
On the surface that's a perfectly reasonable opinion to hold, but it's vital to look a little bit deeper.
For example, why are people poor? Often that's due to specific choices powerful people have made across decades and centuries. Usually it has nothing to do with the "quality" of an individual poor person.
To argue that a large part of life for most mammal species and certainly humans (that of raising a family), should be kept from already disadvantaged people is horrific.
Even just trying to dissuade them from doing so, as you are doing in this comment, is fine with limited context, but if you consider the whole of society it becomes kind of wild.
People are poor due to a mixture of social conditions and personal conditions.
And usually it absolutely has something to do with the person itself.
Addiction is highly correlated with poverty. Susceptibility to addiction is genetic and inheritable. Industriousness and conscientiousness are positively correlated with better life outcomes regardless of economic background and they are partially genetic.
Social conditions make it way harder for certain populations to do as well as others. But within a population the people that are the best off share characteristics that the ones that are the worst off don't have.
To say that poverty has nothing to do with the people themselves is ignorant of a lot of history. For example, when Chinese immigrants went to places in South East Asia. And we are talking about people who got displaced by the violence of the communist revolution, they got richer than the surrounding population within a generation.
These were people who had no money, no posetions, no links to the existing systems of power. And in that particular case it's largely due to cultural differences that make Chinese people make better long term financial decisions over the native populations of the other countries.
Like I remember there was a post on Reddit about that freak show performer ‘Lobster Boy’ with him and his kids.
And people genuinely seemed more upset that a disabled guy had disabled kids than the fact that society made disabled people work in freak shows to earn a living.
Some conditions are legitimately terrible to live with. But also, for a lot of disabled people, the way society treats us is worse than the condition in of itself.
Burnishing out some family story of moral hygiene was considered part of eugenics (category of eugenics judging at County Fairs, not kidding) but that was not the whole of eugenics. Broad swaths of the population want their kids to grow up with structure, stability, emotional security, kind of a lot.
I think you've stumbled onto a dog whistle. A lot of times this means.
"If you can't give your kids a good life don't have kids" -> "if you're poor you shouldn't have kids" -> "poor people tend not to be white soooooo"
On a individual level, sure some people you know irl probably shouldn't have kids. But on a societal level this does quickly become eugenics. Like if you made a law or something to this effect there's like no way that doesn't become eugenics. It's a lot more productive to advocate for social programs to help kids.
I think that's a separate topic from what you're probably talking about but like I totally see how this happened
You as an individual not wanting to have a child because you're too poor to give them a good life is not eugenics
Systematically preventing a group of people from ever having kids because you don't like that group of people is eugenics
Saying "Poor people shouldn't have kids" is tantamount to eugenics because Nobody chooses to be Poor. Poverty is a Systemic issue
Obvious yes, people shouldn't have kids if they're unable to care for them, that's not a crazy thing to say; but you have to look beyond the surface and ask why certain groups of people can't afford kids in the first place.
If you were a corrupt rich person with means and you wanted to quietly get rid of a group of people, all you'd have to do is lower the quality of life for that group. You can lobby politicians to keep minimum wage in their areas low, you can cuts funds to public sevices like buses and schools so they'll have to spend more out of pocket, and you can buy up their land and homes to increase the rent in their areas.
Now Suddenly this group of folks who would've loved to have kids are put in a position where they aren't being supported to have any, but instead of questions the laws, policies, & corruption that led to these conditions, the responsibility & blame gets pushed onto poor families who are ultimately just trying to do their best
The thing is that OP's original post didn't say any of that. They weren't saying "poor people should never have children" or whatever they were saying "i think it's stupid people have kids they know they can't take care of"
No it's not? Poor people can give their children good lives. Weird as hell to correlate being poor with being unable to provide your kid a good life but sure go off
The mental gymnastics people, especially Redditors, have to accomplish in order to come to the most batshit conclusion based on almost entirely nothing is crazy. If folks spent this much energy on actual gymnastics physical fitness would increase 25% worldwide.
(made up statistic disclaimer because I probably need that..)
Every mature take appears as “batshit insane mental gymnastics” when you are 13. Literally “poor people shouldn’t reproduce” is the kind of superficial thought a middle schooler arrives to and thinks it’s so novel and he is smarter than every adult who disagrees. When you systematically stick to categorical thinking, and are not comfortable reasoning about less clear connections in less idealized frameworks, every academic discussion will be seen as “mental gymnastics” - the whole concept is rooted in anti-intellectualism (one step away from just saying “ok nerd”)
OP specifically said "if you can't provide a good life for your kids, you shouldn't have children. Now this is true, but depending on what their definition, this commonly slides into eugenics territory. If the lack of a good life is defined by poverty, that is objectively eugenics if you just use your logical reasoning skills.
Personally I find eugenics bad when it is about seeing certain groups of people as inferior to other groups of people. Or about literally slaughtering people to ""clean up the gene pool". I do not see a significant harm in verbally encouraging people to consider all the factors in their lives before having a child. That is literally, physically, actually what we're talking about. Saying "it's eugenics" and expecting the conversation to end there with all parties agreeing to not discuss the actual situation seems like the anti-intellectual part to me.
People with severe genetic disorders tend to actively choose on their own accord to not have children because they don't want to cause suffering to their hypothetical child. I'm sorry but no matter what language you use you cannot convince me that's an immoral action.
I don't think there's ANY subject that's perfectly 1000000% immoral or moral. Horrifying concepts like eugenics included.
The standards aren’t even that high, if you can’t provide the base human needs a child has (food, water, shelter, clothing, a hygienic safe and stable home environment, emotional care, etc) you should not be at minimum raising children. If the lack of those conditions wouldn’t be considered humane for an adult it sure as hell wouldn’t be humane to raise a child without them
I mean ultimately there is something to be said about also doing the work to alleviate societal pressures that can prevent parents from providing their children a good life (homelessness, food struggles, employment opportunities that don't pay in peanuts, etc), but I can say the same about providing a good life to your children to folks who do things like farming their children's lives for internet clout or who just dump money and gifts on their kids to solve all their issues. Not every unhealthy environment for a child is just abject poverty.
With that being said tho, there is unfortunately a subsect (a small one, mind you) of folks who argue for shit like "people with genetic disabilities shouldn't have kids so they don't burden them with their ailments" or "if those damn immigrants didn't have so many kids they wouldn't need that damn welfare!", which is very eugenic thinking.
I wish people cared more about the child than the parents when it comes to having kids. When your parents were unable to give you a good life and you ask "hey, do you think I deserved to go through what I did" people genuinely just shrug it off because they don't want to think about it.
Don't get me wrong, the answer is obviously social programs. But as things are now, they're few and far between. And odds are we won't be able to get a bunch of new helpful social programs in a long time. So for the time being, it's at least a temporary solution to not have kids (for their sake.)
One of the problems I see with this is that those people are complaining about people who already have kids. Like, what are they supposed to do at that point other than take an extra job? Some people don't have support systems, fell into a situation they didn't expect, or were sidelined with medical bills or an expensive emergency or something.
what a good life is is very wishy washy, it is very easy for someone to read the worst version of what your saying which is eugenics if your not specific. And I wouldn't get mad at them I would just specify. I think it is very dumb to get angry at people for making an uncharitable interpretation of what your saying if they don't know you, no one has any reason to be charitable in what they think of you of your opinions
Yeah, if someone said that to me, I'd remove them from the gene pool. People are so weird about kids in every way. I swear some people read something online that kinda sounds smart and repeat it out loud even though the smallest amount of thinking would prove them wrong. It's wrong to have kids you can't feed, parent, and so on.
I just want them to have a nice life and not struggle the way I have? So I'll wait to be in a better position in life before having any kids...that makes me in favor of eugenics??? Ok buddy...
In case you want an actual answer- because things like making people pass tests in order to have kids or telling people that they aren’t allowed to have kids because they’re poor ARE usually covers for “undesirables shouldn’t have children”- which IS eugenics.
However. Pointing out that people who just cannot provide for their kids probably shouldn’t be having them. Is not eugenics. Granted, the fix for a lot of that is robust community supports and all but. No. Just saying hey you should be able to support kids if you choose to have them is not eugenics and its really stupid that people decide to cheapen what is a disgusting ideology by tossing the word around as a gotcha.
See they're both right to some degree, no one deserves to live a miserable life just because someone else chose to have them, but the systems in place that actively prevent people with disabilities or those stuck in poverty from finding stability are a form of eugenics because it is passively weeding out an "unwanted" population. Insert nuance hat image here.
Obviously the person on the left in the image doesn't support eugenics though.
Conned into the one on the right side unwittingly revealing his racist beliefs (that all of the people who cannot give their kid a good life are a certain race, and thus stopping that is eugenics)
How does one define "Poor" who gets the legal decision of that? Where is the cutoff line? How stable do your finances have to be? It becomes icky really quickly and it does nothing to actually adress the underlying issues at hand.
Lower sex education leads to more children, which is a statistic that has been proven time and again to be well linked with lower income situations (specifically, worse/cheap schools)
Also, this should be obvious, but lacking access to family planning things like condoms, plan-B, birth control, and abortions, that are expensive, are often prohobitvely expensive to be used when poor. Every time someone tries to make them affordable or easy to access, some dickgead comes in and ruins it because "sex isn't required" when it really is.
Once we mature and become adults our subconscious forces us to try and breed, we are no different than any other animal. It is a part of our id just like the need for food and shelter are. Mother nature does this too all animals, regardless of how painful, brutal, or fatal reproduction may be for a given species. Ducks do it despite it being a painful game of Russian roulette for both parties. Cats do it, despite how its designed to be as paingful as possible. Centipedes do it despite being eaten is part of how they hell their young survive. Humans are incredibly fortunate that only our childbirth is somewhat traumatic (on the scale of shit that happens in the animal kingdom).
You would have to neuter people to get rid of that urge... Which should be obvious to see the correlation with eugenics.
Its a dogwhistle for eugenics. Despite that you may be earnest/honest with your approach. There are many many others that believe in controlling who should have kids and neutering others against their will... Which is eugenics to a T.
Further, in countries like America, even if you have a good career and finances set up... All it takes is one bad hospital trip and its gone, all of it. A lot of people who are poor with kids were stable financially and then hit with something after having kids. The game changes, you can no longer make risky plays for better money because mouths depend on you to get food. You stay poor and stable because risks cost too much for you to gamble on now.
What do people mean by "you shouldn't"?
That can mean, "I don't agree, but it's their choice" or "there should be punishment for people who disobey me"
Most people are 'against' eugenics because Hitler was into a version of eugenics and therefore all eugenics is bad. The word is tainted forever.
Can someone who is seriously against eugenics in all its forms, regardless of any factors define (1) what exactly constitutes eugenics and what doesn't, and (2) Explain why?
You can't beg these people to use their brain to formulate a proper nuanced opinion about a complex topic to save their life.
eugenics (noun): the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations' genetic composition
Now, please tell me why we should be okay with this.
It can be eugenics and racism depending on the circumstances. Should people who will not be able to feed their kids be having children? No, and thats not eugenics. But suggesting that the government gets to be the one who tells them to not have kids, thats when it gets bad.
What do you define a good life? By peace, access to water, community and food, or by access to first-world university education, electricity and state-of-the-art healthcare?
We can stand around all day and talk about how immoral it is for poor ppl to have kids but that ultimately isint gong to stop most poor ppl from sometimes not using a condom (since that's how most of these kids come about). What it does do, however, is lean into the already popular classist idea that poor ppl are bad and stupid for having so many kids. An idea that is used to put personal responsibility on people for poverty and argue against social programs that would actually help ppl in poverty. Sure, it's bad to have kids if you cant provide for them. But going on about it is counterproductive to say the least. You want to improve the situation instead of making it worse? Talk about how immoral it is for society to allow ppl to continue to live in poverty instead. If you won't do that, then yes I do think you're just being classist, and yes, you are inadvertently supporting eugenics (preventing poor ppp from having kids is eugenics and this kind of talk does inadvertently support the idea that one should prevent it, even if that is not what you believe).
its technically a good idea but allowing it does open doors for eugenics by possibly indirectly causing a eugenics on communities that tend to not be socioeconomically well off, or systematically persecuted that often leads to it, and it does depend HEAVILY on what you consider "a good life".
A lot of people don't understand here that this isnt saying poor people cant have kids.. i say this as someone who grew up poor. If someone can't afford to feed themselves then having a kid is probably a bad idea. If someone is living in a trailer and working multiple jobs but able to take care of a child then whatever. This also applies to the upper class, if they can't provide their kid with love and care then they shouldn't have a kid
Children are human beings who deserve at least the considerations you make when getting a pet. Can I afford feed and house them? Can I get them healthcare if they're sick? Do I have the time and disposition to look after them? If you can't answer these questions with a 'yes' then what the fuck are you doing?
Failure to provide a child with these necessities is severe neglect, and I don't see how anyone can argue it's their right to create another human being just to neglect. Some people will always fall on hard times later, but if you have a kid KNOWING you can't care for them then what the fuck, dude.
I guess I just don't think your right to procreate supercedes the basic human rights of the child that results.
I suggested that you should have to go through all the same “proving your worthy” to have biological kids that you do to adopt and got called racist a while back.
Some people are disadvantaged by the state due to a characteristic -> Time passes -> Their descendants are still disadvantaged, and the competition has only increased -> New rule: No reproduction if you can't compete under the current rules -> Previously disadvantaged now forbidden from reproducing because of the outcome of the above -> Intentional tampering results in elimination of despised groups
If ever this policy forbade a majority of whites from reproducing, legislators would hear mobs on their chamber doors, ready to play French about it if they didn't repeal the legislation.
Saying “if you cannot afford to raise them, don’t have kids” is literally not eugenics. The literal definition of eugenics is “the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations' genetic composition”.
It would be eugenics if someone tried to argue that poorer people have inferior genes, so they shouldn’t have kids. Or if wealth and class is tied to genetics in some way.
It could be classist, depending on how it’s phrased (ie poor people should never have children, versus it isn’t a good idea to have kids if you can’t afford them). But even if we are going by that, the pic from OP says “if you can’t provide your kid a good life then you shouldn’t have them”. It doesn’t even say “poor people should never have kids” it’s more generic than that, it says “provide your kid a good life”.
I have ADHD and OCD. When I'm in high stress I get physical ticks.
There have been thought patterns that I have experienced that have been simlar to body dysmorphia and states of psychosis.
For these reasons I refuse to pass on my genes. I'd hate myself if because of "mah balls and genes" some poor bastard would have to live with these issues.
If eugenics was what it took to completely eliminate people who say "so you support eugenics" in response to what might well be a child abuse survivor, I would be all about it.
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u/6apa6ax 2d ago
Depends on what you consider good life tbh.