Coercive Pronatalism

This is another round of progressive inspired propaganda that utterly ignores and evolving sweep of natal demographics.

As our economy modernizes, child raising has clearly entered serious decline and no public policy even starts to address it.

We will soon enter a phase in public policy in which all women will be neede to produce four babies just to flatten the curve.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Article on “Coercive Pronatalism” Finds Pressure to Have Children Violates Rights, Drives Population Growth and Damages the Environment

https://www.populationbalance.org/

[St. Paul, Minnesota – December 8, 2022] A comprehensive peer-reviewed research article revealing the impacts of “coercive pronatalism” -- i.e. societal and institutional pressures to have children across the globe-- appears today in The Journal of Population and Sustainability.

The article notes the pervasive nature of pronatalism, which it says has driven the world's population to 8 billion and fueled “the abandonment of voluntary, rights-based efforts toward a sustainable population.” It surveys a range of cultural, familial, religious, medical, economic, and political pronatalist pressures, which undermine reproductive autonomy and drive the population growth that is a primary factor in climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and the multitude of mounting ecological challenges threatening the existence of most species on Earth today. It argues that addressing population growth and pronatalism must be central to environmental conservation as well as development efforts to promote reproductive rights. It also argues that the silence on population growth in the international conservation and development community has undermined the attainment of these goals.

The paper’s lead author is Nandita Bajaj, executive director of the NGO Population Balance, who teaches the only graduate-level course on coercive pronatalism, and recently presented on the subject at the International Conference on Family Planning in Thailand. The paper was co-authored by Kirsten Stade, a conservation biologist who has fought the destructive influences of extractive industries on public lands across the western United States.

“Having a child is one of the most important decisions we make in our lives,” said Bajaj. “Just like coercive efforts to limit fertility, pronatalism is a form of reproductive control that we must move beyond to ensure that reproductive decisions are authentic, liberated, and responsible, while also advancing planetary health.”

“Population denialism, like climate denialism, has caused tremendous harm to people and the planet,” said Stade. “In fact, limiting our population size through fighting pronatalism and promoting rights-based contraception are some of the most powerful tools we have for advancing reproductive autonomy while protecting the environment across the globe.”

“Taken together, pronatalist messages and policies, and religious, social and cultural constraints are an enormous force limiting the autonomy of reproductive decisions in the world today,” Bajaj and Stade write in the Journal of Population and Sustainability article. “By silencing discussions about overpopulation, representatives of the international environmental conservation and development community are themselves carrying water for pronatalist and patriarchal forces that insist women’s primary and inarguable function is to bear children…. Frank discussions of the role of population size and growth in causing environmental destruction – along with healthy policy discourse on how best to neutralise the pronatalist forces that undermine reproductive autonomy – are essential to full realisation of reproductive rights as well as environmental sustainability across the globe.”