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red_pepper wrote

One thing antinatalism misses is how our material conditions influence our decision to have children. As you said, the working class is pressured to not have children - but that's only in post-industrial nations. In industrializing nations which have yet to implement safety nets, children are people's only retirement plan. What is someone supposed to do if they get injured or sick or too old to work, and they don't have children to take care of them?

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DaisyDisaster OP wrote

I think it depends on what you mean by "misses" because many antinatalists realize people have children for that reason, they just don't agree that that's a good justification for having them. I'm not sure most of them would understand what being in that position is like, though.

One of the things that I've noticed about the conversations between antinatalists I've witnessed is that they don't really discuss what should happen to the sick, injured, and those that can't work who don't have children. There's a lot of energy put towards defending their position as antinatalists but not much on how we take care of people who can't be 100% independent. I think it's acknowledged that if their position won out, that there would be more suffering as humanity dwindled out, but there's not much discussion on how to lessen that suffering, ironically. It's just assumed that suffering would be less overall than the suffering that would continue if humanity lived on.

After some thought about this, I feel like I am moving away from the idea.

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