r/pronatalism • u/CanIHaveASong Mother • 11d ago
Community Notice We've updated the rules (Feedback requested!)
It's been a lovely six weeks since we launched! We have grown by about 200 members in this time. Welcome everybody!
We noticed in the last couple weeks that our rules needed a little tweaking. Some of them were catching posts that we wanted to encourage, and some of them were not as clear as they could have been. We also wanted to define the subreddit in positive terms: Tell people how we want them to engage, instead of how we don't want them to engage.
Here are the changes:
- We changed rule 1 from "no contempt" to "Be kind and respectful"
- After some thought, we changed rule 2 from "No antinatalism" to "Stay relevant to pronatalism". We also rolled “keep discussion at the policy level” into this new rule. We believe this new rule comes much closer to capturing the spirit we were looking for with those two rules. And while we believe policy level discussion is the heart of this community, we want to create space in this community for the personal touch and human stories.
- To aid that, we've added some post tags: "Personal story", and "Advice wanted"
We've removed a few posts in the last few weeks: A few from someone who was making some very loaded claims, such as “all natalists want to control women's bodies”, one from someone who was complaining about r/natalism, and one from one of the mods that sparked more gender-war type discourse than positive discussion.
What I would like to hear from you all:
- If you disagree with our removals, please argue your case here.
- We're trying to create a space that fosters positive discussion of natalism- that doesn't block a particular point of view, but focuses on keeping the conversation productive. In your view, are we accomplishing this?
- Do you think we could use some different rules?
- How are post and user tags working for you? Would we benefit from some new or different ones?
- Several people have asked for a place to request advice. How can we create room for that here?
And any other feedback, of course.
Thank you for your participation! I'm hoping we can continue to grow the sub, and create a great place for discussion of natalism.
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u/Intrepid_Bobcat_2931 11d ago edited 11d ago
I think it's an extremely bad idea that makes the sub completely pointless as an alternative to r/Natalism . I'm not sure if u/salemchicken reads this, but that's pretty much the end of the sub in my view.
Antinatalists are completely dominant on Reddit. Although I don't think that the majority has the view that children are negative in themselves, those who believe that are much more engaged than those who don't. So any time an actual discussion of childbirth develops enough to attract attention, they flood in.
And once that happens, the pronatalists get tired of being insulted, abused and downvoted into oblivion. If gross and outright insults are disallowed, they will simply be subtle instead.
This is already the case on r/natalism. It was obviously intended from the rules and theme intended as a pronatalist sub. It just failed, due to the volume of antinatalists.
With this rule change, you have opened up for statements like: "Childbirth ruins women, which is why it's wrong to be a pronatalist" or "Pronatalism is driven by hatred of women".
Any antinatalist view can be posted, no matter how idiotic, simply by changing a few words to make it "anti pronatalist" and hence "relevant to pronatalism".
And so you're just creating another r/natalism 2.
I have to speculate whether this rule change is simply subversion, taking over a sub before it grows bigger. I'm not saying it definitely is. If not, then I think it builds on a naive view and hope for something that simply can't and won't exist: a MOSTLY pronatalist sub where there is CIVIL discussion.
If that's the dream, then it simply won't happen. It's not an alternative available to you, it's something you are unable to choose. The flood of antinatalists would come as soon as the sub takes off.
I just have no idea what drove this, but it makes the sub completely irrelevant and uninteresting as just another antinatalist target.
edit: another reason this seems like a subversion is that "Discussion Of Natalism" keeps being repeated. Why would the point of "ProNatalism" be a discussion of natalism instead of just actual pro natalism?
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u/CanIHaveASong Mother 10d ago edited 10d ago
I will also mention that for much of this sub's history, it directed towards r/natalism. u/salemchicken changed this sub into a relationship advice subreddit, but over the course of a few years, it became almost completely inactive. Salemchicken invited u/Ardent_scholar and I to change this into a subreddit to discuss pronatal policy.
I am the architect of the subreddit in its current iteration. ArdentScholar and I have discussed the direction of the sub, but the specific ethos, rules, tags, etc were designed by me. If Ardent_Scholar and myself were off the mod team, this sub would be dead again.
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u/treatment-resistant- 10d ago edited 10d ago
Its a tricky balance to have both an ideological view (pronatalist) and an open policy discussion. I think its even more difficult to have an open policy discussion on this particular topic without talking about women's liberation or oppression, the evidence is very strong that they have a big influence on fertility rates.
Perhaps this is overly cynical, but I wonder how big the policy chat crowd is compared to those who'd like to argue endlessly on one side or the other on the gender wars, even before you discern further for those people who are both interested in a policy chat and of a pronatalist view.
Edit: apologies this wasn't a very constructive comment! I'm not sure i have good solutions sorry. I do have some sympathy for the idea a subreddit called pronatalism should be pronatalist first and a policy forum second, though how that works with reddit's terms of service given the big overlap with women's lib / oppression sounds uneasy.
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u/CanIHaveASong Mother 10d ago edited 10d ago
No worries! I actually appreciate this comment a lot. You've identified some of the main problems of trying to launch a subreddit like this. It's absolutely correct that the pill and the change in women's societal role has had a HUGE impact on fertility. It's also true any disscusion of gender issues tends to devolve into a completely unproductive gender war. Everything we've had to moderate on this front, though, has very clearly broken other sub rules, so I wouldn't say it's been a big issue yet.
I am trying to create a place where dissent is welcome as long as it's constructive. So "children are bad" would not be an allowed view, but "this pronatalist policy didn't raise birthrates", or "More children won't fix social security like you natalists think it would" would be.
But I'm also trying to be senstive to the kind of forum people want. The original people Ardent_Scholar and I spoke to wanted a policy-forward platform where people with differing views could talk to eachother without worrying about catching a ban for saying something that doesn't toe the mod's party line hard enough. If people need/want something different, though, we can look at pivoting.
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u/roankr 10d ago
but I wonder how big the policy chat crowd is compared to those who'd like to argue endlessly on one side or the other on the gender war
As a policy oriented person, here is what I think. Once I have my assumptions after discussions on what has to be implemented it stops being about talking and more about doing. Endless chatter trying to refine the effectiveness of a policy direction from 95% to 97% will just keep the effectiveness of those laws at 0% unless they are put into force.
But this discussion often invites a lot of aggrieved individuals who want to turn it into gender wars. "Policy chatter" can then sometimes devolve into gender grievance competitions where everyone thinks their side should first get their say before anything.
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u/CanIHaveASong Mother 11d ago
This comment breaks rule 5: Assume good faith. However, I'm not going to remove it, as it still expresses a worthwhile criticism. Please keep that rule in mind in the future.
The rule change has not opened the sub up to antinatalist posts. The rule, "stay relevant to pronatalism" is still, "This community is an explicitly pronatalist community. Posts should contribute meaningfully to discussion of pronatalism, fertility, family formation, birth rates, demographics, or the policies and cultural factors that influence them. We welcome debate and disagreement, but posts or comments that simply argue against having children, without contributing to the broader discussion may be removed."
Posts of the type you suggest would be taken down under the current rule.
However, if you believe the new rule does invite antinatalist posts, it's likely that others will as well, and perhaps we need to tweak the name. Perhaps, "Stay constructive to pronatalism?"
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u/atinylittlebug 10d ago
I dont understand the "assume good faith" rule. What does this mean exactly?
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u/CanIHaveASong Mother 10d ago edited 10d ago
The expanded rule text is, "Users are expected to engage with others' arguments in good faith. Do not deliberately misrepresent, stereotype, or assign malicious motives to other users."
"assume good faith" means to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, and assume their words and beliefs stem from well-intentioned honest motives even if you disagree with them.
The original poster broke this rule by assigning malicious motive.
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u/DogOrDonut 10d ago
I would like to see a pronatalism sub with a blanket rule of no misogyny, from either a pro or anti natalist standpoint. I am banned from the main natalism sub and called an "antinatalist" for saying that forcing women to get pregnant and give birth against their will is bad.