Economics

The Baby-Industrial Complex

Get capitalism out of the cradle

Photo by on

Is this about economics or parenting? Both. In the U.S., you really can’t separate the two.

Babies used to be a fact of life.

Giving birth and raising children used to be a near-universal human experience. Almost every woman had children, and how well-off she was had nothing to do with it.

Hunter-gatherer women had babies. Peasant women had babies. Queens had babies. The working poor and the middle class and the wealthy — all of them had babies.

Nobody questioned it.

Now? Anytime parents are struggling to make it, you are sure to hear someone ask why they brought children into the world if they didn’t have plenty of money.

Never mind that contraception can fail and people are human and the biological drive for sex is a normal part of being an adult, or that in the U.S., you can be middle class one day and poor AF the next.

Apparently, only is rich enough to safely procreate, and he takes this responsibility seriously, spilling his seed as indiscriminately as he tweets.

Now that we women can (in some states, anyway) control our fertility, procreating while poor is…