Comment by tokioyoyo
6 months ago
But why now, and not like 5 years ago? That’s the weirdness I don’t understand. Is it just very loud people had a bunch of kids and trying to push the same on others? Trying to change the culture from the start? “Meaning of life” is like the oldest question that has ever existed. Both people with and without children have pondered about it for eternity. It just looks funny when you see a sudden shift in the discourse.
I think there's two shifts that play a major role in explaining the timing that you're referencing:
- The 2010s represented a progressivist left-ward shift in America and the excesses of that movement are provoking a reactionary conservative shift in the populace in the 2020s: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/seven-reasons-america-is-heade.... This is cyclical is the same thing happened from 1960s to 1970s.
- The concept of population collapse entered mainstream discourse in the early 2020s and is now being accepted as the major concern for humanity moving forward, a 180-degree turn from the previous concern of overpopulation. This is something unprecedented in human history as no human has ever existed in an economy or society where the population was decreasing so all the "rules" we know about life are suddenly subject to change unless birth patterns change significantly.
> But why now, and not like 5 years ago?
It’s a product of the rise in white nationalist/supremacist movements and white replacement theory. Pro-natalism with the explicitly racial content omitted (though even their often tied to overt appeals to eugenics and/or framing it as intra-societal/cultural competition, which is itself only a shade different from racial/ethnic competition, but for some reason doesn’t produce nearly as strong a negative reaction) is a face that can be shown to audiences that aren’t ready for the full-strength message.
I’m not saying every vocal pro-natalist is a white supremacist (most of the high profile ones are, though), but that the rise in white supremacy and the prominence of white replacement theory within the rising white supremacy is a big part of the explanation of why pro-natalism is a lot more prominent right now than in the recent past.
Maybe the demographics of HN are such that a bunch of people just had kids.
I've seen the sentiment building over the last several years. Though I think part of why it's such a prevalent sentiment now as opposed to a few years ago, is very obvious signs of cultural breakdown started to show strongly in maybe 2017 or so, and people started questioning the prominent messages in our culture and seeking answers, and for many, finding those answers takes time.
There are probably other related factors too, like increased awareness of population decline, but I think both reasons are intertwined.
2017 is actually a great reference point wrt cultural changes! I think that is the year when bubble and echo-chamber creations accelerated to the T, so people who ponder about the same things just talk to each other. And they never really get to talk to the outsider groups or hear their opinions as often. 2020s was probably the only couple of years when everyone got to talk about the same topic, but that was for unfortunate reasons. I think “have lots of kids!” idea pushers are just screaming into the void right now, because they offer no solutions to people in other chambers.
There may be some screaming into the void, but at least some of it breaks through. I was someone who, for years, bought into the idea that being idiosyncratic and self-expressive and following my passions and self-interested dreams would lead to fulfillment. I was the last person you would have expected to have been receptive to the idea that starting a family could be a means to a meaningful life. Nonetheless, I started to see the cracks in my worldview, and that made me more open to listen, and here we are.
Also there is a biological urge, so it's probably not that much of an uphill battle. Though unfortunately people also contend with biological clocks and realize that they want kids when it's already too late. I feel very bad for those people, and so if you can re-normalize the idea of starting a family, then maybe you can reach those sorts of people while they still have time.
By far most likely is that the loudest cohort of HN users (or people in your social circle) has aged to the point where they want families. Younger people are on other social networks.