Some More News - SMN: Should You Have A Baby?

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

Hi. Conservatives sure want Americans to have more children, but they don't seem to like children at all or want to support them in society! In today's episode, we look at the many challenges Americans face if they want to become parents, and the questions one has to answer to make such a decision. Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oWbzcC9FeFvid1UiwsOfmzDssVcewgkFNywuHAx6674/edit?usp=sharing Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/some... SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqego... Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews Slow down the news ticker in your mind. Upgrade to better Natural Solutions from NextEvo Naturals. Go to https://NextEvo.com and use promo code MORENEWS to get 25% off. Get 50% off your first DoorDash order up to a $20 value on your first order when you download the DoorDash app in the App Store and use code MORENEWS at checkout. Limited time offer, terms apply. Get your business ready for the holiday rush. Get started with https://stamps.com today. Sign up with promo code MORENEWS for a special offer that includes a 4-week trial, plus free postage, and a free digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps dot com, click the microphone at the top of the page, and enter code MORENEWS. Shopify is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Sign up for a $1/month trial period at https://shopify.com/morenews (all lowercase) to take your retail business to the next level today.

Hi, hello, and welcome to the news. I'm your news mommy, Katie Stoll. Wait, news aunt? It's weird either way. Anyway, Cody's fine. He's alive for now. And here's some more news. Babies! Oh, look at them. They're just like little adults, except small, new. Their skulls are soft and squishy, and it's socially acceptable for them to poop themselves. Not fair, in my opinion. But hey, here's a question. A question many people in their reproductive years are struggling with. Should you have one of these cute, tiny jerks? Kind of a loaded question,

filled with lots of sub-questions and no clear answers. And as someone in their late 30s, it's something I feel like I get asked about almost every week. Everyone I know who is staring down the barrel of a dusty womb is feeling the pressure to make up their damn minds and decide if we want to close up shop or welcome in a new tenant.

So let's dig into that. Are you expected to have a child? Are you obligated to have a child for the good of society? Or are you obligated not to have a child also for the good of society? We're often given conflicting messages and guilt over either needing to have children for the public good or needing to not have children for the public good or needing to not have children for the public good. That alone can get pretty confusing. And we're not even done asking questions yet. There's also the financial aspect to your decision. Can you afford to have a child? But counterpoint, in your old age, can you afford not to have a child taking care of you? You might want to delay the question

until you feel financially stable and or you found a reliable partner, but whoopsie, uh-oh, then it might be too late. And of course, your health should be considered. Is it safe for you to have children? Would it put your health at risk? Are these medical decisions even up to you and your doctor or rather up to a shadowy council of non-doctor men and to a lesser extent ladies who wear ceremonial robes and carry special hammers that they use to crap, cope, and walnuts to feed upon the delicious flesh within? Why don't we all get these hammers? Wow. Boy, that's a lot of questions. So let's just take a deep breath and delve into this extremely personal topic in a calm, non-judgmental way with limited references to how unfair it is that adults can't just poop their pants. I mean, honestly, it would just save so much time.

Also, I kind of want a soft school. I'm always getting this thing stuck in things. Should you have a baby? Hey there, ladies and womb havers. Are you a washed up husk if you don't have babies? After all, us beuterist peoples are constantly being told that we gotta get some baby batter up in these easy bake ovens before our womb shrivels. There are some real concerns about running out of time to have children, such as fertility, increased chance of miscarriage, and increased risk of pregnancy complications. If you want fertility treatment or IVF or egg freezing, it's quite costly.

Egg freezing is over $7,000 and IVF is in the tens of thousands of dollars, a cost that is, quite simply, absurd, especially when you consider that the best time to do an effective egg retrieval is during our 20s, when most people can't afford their college loans, let alone something elective. Also, the average age of first-time mothers in the US has increased over time from 21 in 1972 to 26 in 2016. In dense cities, the average age is skewed even later to the early 30s. Much of this can be explained by things like access to birth control, abortion, careers for

women, but also less financial stability, meaning people need to wait longer to be able to support a child. In fact, when the New York Times polled 1,800 people about why they weren't having kids, the number one answer was that child care was too expensive. Mind you, answer number two was that they simply wanted to spend more effort and money on the child they did have. So it's not that people aren't having children at all, but rather having fewer kids. The average family size, as in adults and children in a single household, has gone from four in 1960 to three today. Which is all to say that kids are still a thing that people want, but are simply limiting due to various factors. But despite these factors, women are still cautioned that time's a-tickin' and there is an endless bombardment of think pieces about whether you should or shouldn't have kids.

One of the main questions, of course, is if having children will make you happy. Or sad? Or some other emotion that happens when you clean baby poop from under your fingernails? Too bad we can't just hook them up to the Hello Tushy bidet, huh? So, let's start there. Will having children make you happy? Unfortunately, the answer to that might depend on where you live. There are some studies that show having children can make people less happy, but there are also studies that show having children increases people's happiness, especially fathers. Here's a Princeton economic study that found that

kids will both give you more joy and more stress than if you don't have kids. So apparently, surprise, parenthood's complicated. But complicating things even further is that the happiness of parents seems significantly impacted by which country they live in and the social policies of those countries. In one study comparing 22 wealthy countries, parents are happier in countries that provide more paid parental leave and child care subsidies. And the happiness between parents and non-parents becomes higher and relatively equal with increases in paid parental leave and paid sick and vacation leave and more work flexibility. Giving more to parents also didn't take away from the happiness of non-parents,

but actually increased it if the country had more worker-friendly policies. According to this study, the United States has the largest happiness gap in terms of parenthood, meaning that it was the country with the most miserable parents compared to non-parents. In fact, the average parent in the U.S. is less happy than the average non-parent. Meanwhile, the study found that in countries other than the U.S., such as Norway, Hungary, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Spain, most parents were actually happier than non-parents. The study's lead author, Jennifer Glass, explained this by saying, unlike its economically developed counterparts, the U.S. has done little to offset the costs of raising children and ameliorate the incompatibility

between employment and child care. Hmm, seems like an America problem. Like, like we're doing something wrong that other countries aren't? Is it the spray cheese? Who can say? But happiness isn't the only factor in the decision to have kids. People might genuinely want kids, or they might do it because it's the next milestone they want to hit, or simply because they think kids are cute, or to continue their legacy, or I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they need like an extra organ or something. Of course, there's also the argument that you should have kids because no one else will look after you when you get old. According to one survey,

55% of parents expect their kids to support them in their elder years. It's a grimly practical reason, but it is a valid reason. After all, if you're not super wealthy, you may worry that you won't be taken care of as you age. I sure do. Think about it all the time. While it's true that you shouldn't have children just to make sure someone's there to take care of you when you're old, after all, that's a lot of pressure to put on a theoretical child who would theoretically have a life of their own at that point. It's also true that we live in a society that does not guarantee quality elder care. Two-thirds of elders in U.S. nursing homes rely on Medicaid to pay for their stay.

This means that their Social Security, pension, and any remaining income goes towards paying for the care facility. Any remaining income goes towards paying for the care facility. And then they're left with a small stipend as low as $30 a month to pay for anything not provided by the nursing home. Having personal autonomy is incredibly important for the physical and mental health of older adults. So not having the dignity to be able to buy decent clothes for yourself and rely on hospital gowns or not even being able to buy a pair of shoes is a humiliating and unnecessarily cruel treatment of our elders. Pretty fucked up and unhealthy for people to feel pressured to have kids because they're terrified of ending up languishing in a nursing home. Seems like another America problem. Damn you cheese.

Maybe we should instead, as a country, make sure that our elderly are taken care of in their old age with like, I don't know, tax dollars or something. Or I guess we could just use that money and a few more F-22 Raptor jets at $140 million a pop. After all, Raptors are millions of years older than our oldest old. They should be first in line for our money. Or we could kill two birds with one stone and have our senior citizens fly the F-22 Raptor jets. Hey, did I just solve a problem? I'm gonna go ahead and assume I did. Nothing like a few G's for the old arthritis. Ultimately, what these studies and variables are actually saying is that having kids isn't an automatic way to make you happy or sad.

Nor will it be an automatic success or failure. Sorry. Really wish I could have just told you a solid answer, but that would have defeated the purpose of the video. Because the answer depends on who you are and what your life and environment is. Having an environment that makes it easier to have kids will obviously make people happier on average, but it's still not guaranteed. It is subjective and personal. There's a logical and emotional component to this decision, and it's not the same process for everyone. And it's always been like

that. In the past, being childless was seen as a moral failing. And while that's still often the case today, we're now getting to the flip side where it's seen as morally questionable to bring a child into this world. Going back to that New York Times poll, 36 percent of respondents said they aren't having more children due to domestic politics. due to domestic politics. 33% noted climate change as well. And I think these concerns have created a certain false dichotomy over the years. The idea is that there are some people overthinking their decision to have kids

versus other people who aren't thinking about it hard enough. The movie Idiocracy, of course, is based completely on this idea. Warning of a future where only, quote, stupid people are willing to mass produce while so-called smart people overthink it. Just a teeny bit of eugenics in that film. Then there's, of course,

generational and religious pressures. Boomers who procreated without a second thought are now wondering why younger generations aren't doing the same. This is all to say that having kids has now become extremely political in the US. And I don't mean political in the sense of, hey, we should vote for more money for schools, but in terms of a perceived culture war between kid-hating leftists and family-loving conservatives.

Apparently the left doesn't want to have any kids and the right wants to have 20 kids per family. And that is strange and feels made up. And it's doing some weird stuff to our brains. Talking about babies as a political topic seems to remove some fundamental aspects from the conversation. For example, a lot of vocal conservatives seem to really like the idea of having babies but don't actually seem to really like the idea of having babies, but don't actually seem to like children themselves. Dennis Prager, founder of Prager University, which is not accredited or a university or should be taken seriously unless you live in Florida and I think also Texas and Oklahoma, I guess.

Well, he writes Screeds, complaining that Americans are having so few children that the fertility rate fell to a record low 62.9 births per 1,000 women in 2013, which is presumably bad? But then he also said stuff like this. What has any fifth grader done to have made the world better because he or she is in it? He or she is in it. Boy, again, as I pointed out, it's the opposite of the way many of us were raised. If my father had said to me, you know, Dennis, the world is better because you are in it.

I would have believed that even though he was never drunk, that he was actually drunk. Wow, Dennis, that sounds kind of sad. Like maybe your father wasn't a great dad, should have made you feel loved and special, at least to him. Maybe fifth graders do make the world a better place, you know, for their parents and the people who love them. It's a weird position to take that you need to have children for the good of society, but also society does not and should not give a shit about your child and that your child does not improve the world in any way. Unless, of course, we indoctrinate them young and send those adorable little leeches to work by loosening child labor laws and turning a blind eye when migrant children

are working dangerous jobs. It's almost like they see kids as a commodity and ideological prey rather than actual humans. But maybe if you want to have kids because you want them as a resource or a status symbol but don't actually like kids, I don't know, maybe you shouldn't have kids. but don't actually like kids, I don't know. Maybe you shouldn't have kids. Seems that liking kids should be a factor in your decision. And on the flip side, maybe it's bad to not have kids simply because you're paralyzed about what the future will hold.

I understand the dread of bringing a kid into a scorched wasteland. And while that's a valid concern in that the wasteland is a definite possibility, valid concerns have never stopped us before. What with all the nukes and the black plague, the world has always been bad and scary in one way or another. And raising a child has always come with great risk. It's why we're still here, because we still made babies despite the many dangers in the world. Not so long ago, your adorable baby boy

might get carried off by a velociraptor and there would be nothing that you could do about it. Do not fact check that, please. Point is that climate change aside, maybe politics shouldn't factor much into this specific decision at all. But unfortunately, this is a show about politics and boars and puppets and some kind of hellish demon lore, it seems. But a lot of it is still politics. And so we're going to take a break and break dance and then break from that and come back from the original break and talk about all the popular and often political pros and cons around this decision. And by the end of the video, despite everything I just said about it being subjective, we are going to objectively tell you, specifically you, Sarah, we're gonna tell you if you should have a baby. And I guess, who to have it with? In what

position to use? A little high stakes game of Mesh? Sure. Let's pretend we'll do that. Mistakes game of Mesh. Sure. Let's pretend we'll do that. Ah shuckers! Shuckers and corn! The summer is almost over! Gotta pack up the slip and slide, stow the old AC unit, and take all those child mannequins off your lawn!

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We were just talking about the very personal decision around whether or not to have kids and how it has, for some silly reason, become everyone's business. But having babies shouldn't be something the world decides for you. Unless you're Al Pacino, in which case, stop it, Al. Just stop it. Jesus Christ, stop having kids. You're ancient, man. Ancient, primordial sperm. Anywho, we were talking about the larger political and ideological reasons for which people seem to have kids, despite not necessarily liking kids. And speaking of our elderlies, one reason you should apparently feel obligated to have kids is for the sake of the economy as the nation's olds die out. For you see, it is the sacred duty of motherhood to create the labor force of the future, one nine-month pregnancy at a time.

Oh, look at his little life, his vest. Aww, that'll keep you safe from an accidental mangling little guy. You see, we are now apparently at a population emergency. The opposite of a baby boom. A baby whimper. A whimper snapper. A catastrophic baby implosion. I don't know, we're running out of babies to supply the future's workforce. Like baby chimney sweep, baby retail worker, nurse baby.

Birth rates are declining in the United States, so this Bloomberg article says it's a population emergency. Quote, there will be ever fewer workers to pay the benefits of an ever larger pool of retirees. And without a growing supply of new workers, new private investment has a harder time generating consistent, positive, real returns. When I look at the face of a smiling, innocent child, I first consider how they will someday generate consistent, positive, real returns. Because I'm fucked up. This NBC article warns that we're not making enough babies to replace ourselves, so when we're old and feeble, there will be a labor shortage. And unless we invent some robot to gain consciousness and revolt,

we'll be fucked. This actually brings us to something called the old bulge. Don't let erectile dysfunction get in the way. Leave all my agro- Oh no, no, no, no, sorry. Not that kind of old bulge. Although I'll never pass up on a reminder that old people fuck.

Looking at you Pacino. Cause she got a great ass. So actually the old bulge is the concern that old people will have to work longer because there's not a younger workforce to replace them. 17% of the US population is 65 or older, which is predicted to increase to 23% by 2060, meaning that a growing proportion of the population will need programs like social security or elder care. As we already noted, taking care of our elders is something the U.S. already struggles with compared to other countries. So how do we fight the old bulge rather than cutting off Cialis supply lines?

It's true that births are on the decline and a growing number of adults are deciding not to have children. As I said before, a lot of that has to do with affordability. Okay then, if we're so worried about future labor, we could make having children more affordable. But even if this doesn't make up for a future population shortage, how else could we get more people into a country? Hmm, like, is there some system for people to move from some outside source to be inside a different country to migrate into? Oh, right. Immigration. That's the word I was

pretending not to remember. The obvious alternative to both future labor shortage and social security shortage is opening up your country to more immigrants. But that's not typically mentioned in these sorts of articles that are worried about birth rates falling. Very weird, isn't it? That the people who are really concerned about population decline aren't scrambling to open up our country to immigration?

It's almost like there's another component to this that we're missing. So it's hilarious if you think about the amount of energy they spend shouting at anyone who notices the numbers. The great replacement theory, that's racist. Again, I would argue race has nothing to do with this. The numbers tell a very clear story. Americans are not replacing themselves naturally by having children in a country that's increasingly hostile to children and immigration is making up the difference. Why don't we have a right to be mad about that?

Oh, right. Racism. That's the other thing I was pretending not to remember. The Great Replacement is a white supremacist ideology that claims that white people are being replaced by foreigners. It was first popularized by French weirdo, Raynaud Camus, who claimed that there was a globalist conspiracy to replace white French people with non-white immigrants. He's also a creepy old man who literally lives isolated in a French castle. But because

of thinkers like Raynaud Camus, falling birth rates being compensated by immigration is seen as a national threat. Fox News spells it out blatantly. They say American women, or rather middle class and wealthy American women, need to have more children so we aren't replaced by mass immigration. The author of that article, Jeremy Carl, writes, The notion that we can simply import foreigners to make up for the child-rearing job we have refused to do ourselves completely ignores the cultural, civic, and economic impacts of immigration as well as the impacts to ourselves when we bring in foreign adults as a substitute for raising our own children. Using immigration as a substitute for having enough of our own children leads us down an

easy and comfortable, but ultimately perilous route. Jeremy never quite explains what this peril is, other than it means the demographic shift would be less likely to lean Republican and vague cultural collapse. This is the sanitized version of the Great Replacement Theory, which, as a reminder, has been used as a justification for multiple mass shootings targeting minorities. While it feels weird to have to debunk an ideology that is cited by murderous racists, uh, hey, let's do that. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, countries with low birth rates didn't actually experience larger rates of immigration in the following

20 years. What this means is that immigration didn't end up filling the holes left by low fertility rates. So there you go. White supremacist ideology, fact-checked. I'm sure white supremacists are simply misinformed and will change their minds when presented with actual data. And not to dwell on this, but when you think about what the perceived threat is, Not to dwell on this, but when you think about what the perceived threat is, it's literally just cultures slowly intermingling, a thing that America has been doing for its entire existence, that's literally what they're scared of. That over time so-called white or Christian culture will be replaced with other scary cultures. Not through a violent overthrow,

but just cultures naturally befriending and having sex with each other combined with demographic shifts. It's not the location of the geography that I identify with. Yeah, I like the Rolling Hills and I like the Purple Mountains Majesty and all that, too. But what I like most is the is the culture philosophy that was distinctly Western Anglo-Saxon. And that's what it was. And so when these other groups come and uh and and you say well as long as they don't bring their what do they have brought their culture with them so you can say as long as they don't but they have and they will continue to so let's forget about that

because that's exactly what they're doing and of course why wouldn't they when the original inhabitors habit well the original habitants of course for native americans but forget about them for a second everyone else has um when the original habitants of at least the united states of america are dying off because we've decided we're too cool to have kids, then why wouldn't they bring their culture? Because there is, there's a cultural void. What I'm saying is that when we die off, as we have been, we have left a cultural void and that void will be filled with this other hodgepodge of cultures.

Thanks, Matt, you unquestionably racist man. So that's the big threat, otherwise known as natural progression. It's like trying to fist fight the ocean. And it's a fear purely based on racism with zero logic behind it. And so there might come a day where opening our borders will simply be something we have to do, or dare I say, get to do, no matter what a group of racists says. Professor Christopher Murray, health economist and global health researcher, believes that having lower fertility rates means we will go from the period where it's a choice to open borders or not to frank competition for migrants as there won't

be enough. In other words, our population will dwindle so much that we will want more immigrants in the United States. This would likely be both a social and economic conservative's worst nightmare because if immigrants are actually in demand and competed for, they can then demand higher wages and better treatment. In a global labor shortage, those living the global South

or those migrating for economic opportunities have more leverage for higher pay and more dignity in labor. This would mean a redistribution of wealth from the most wealthy, and is probably why people like Elon Musk are so concerned about population decline and ravenous for automation. As Musk wrote on Twitter, population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming. Why?

He doesn't explain. He just says, mark these words. So I am marking them. Consider them marked. But I do have a few concerns. For starters, maybe we shouldn't base policy around ultra rich people who fear they can't exploit workers. for rich people who fear they can't exploit workers. But also, for someone who makes a lot of them, Elon Musk isn't exactly an expert in raising kids. He is personally repopulating the earth by using IVF with one of his employees. You know, just the classic American family unit.

His opinion of fathering a newborn was, quote, there's not much I can do. And even his grown children don't like him because he doesn't support them emotionally and is a gigantic asshole. So much like Dennis Prager, it seems like he doesn't actually like children, but just wants to make a bunch of them

for vague ideological reasons. Also, here's a self-driving Tesla performing a late, late, late, late term abortion on a child-sized mannequin. Well, it sort of hit the brakes after the impact, so that's something. Seems like the population crash isn't the kind of crash Elon should be focused on, huh? Anyway, fun clip. Absolutely going to be showing that one again in an upcoming episode. By the way, population collapse doesn't actually seem imminent.

Despite a decline of births, right now the population isn't declining and is set to peak at 2064 at over 9.5 billion and decline to just under 9 billion in 2100, which is not a cataclysmic population crash. Some projections show the rate of population growth slowing but not turning negative, and think we're actually looking at a population increase to a little over 10 billion in 2100. Heck, maybe at that point we'll have too many people and can do a Hunger Game or two. I would host the shit out of a Hunger Game. You know I would. Hunger Games Related Bumper So it seems like we don't actually have to worry about this, no matter what a rich weirdo going through an insufferable midlife crisis claims. However, there is one very important person we forgot to talk to

whose opinion matters the most on whether you procreate, and that person's name is Dr. Jesus H. Christ. Generally speaking, religions encourage their members to have children, usually by saying it's God's will in order to increase the number of that religion's members. Basically birthing them an army. As an aside, if you are a fan of this show, you do actually need to pop out some babies immediately and then make those babies watch this show and also learn karate. Wormbo onesies are available in our shop. Anyway, this is the philosophy of the more extreme quiverful movement, a Christian ideology that started in the 20th century that is against all forms of birth control, including natural forms like planning your sex based on the monthly fertility cycle to try to avoid pregnancy, which as an aside is not a super reliable birth control method. So we're all clear. They're all about having as many children as possible,

as blessings from God. They use that line from a psalm that says, the fruit of the womb is his reward, as arrows are in the hand of a mighty man. I guess, strictly speaking, children could be arrows, you know, if you put like a really sharp and pointy hat on them and fired him from a crossbow. This idea of children as an army gets pretty creepy the more you read into it. Nancy Campbell, a contemporary leader of the Quiverful movement, says, The womb is such a powerful weapon. It's a weapon against the enemy. Can I just say, kind of fucked up to see a womb and children as weapons against the

enemy? Who is the enemy, you may ask? Well, according to Campbell, it's Muslims. Because of course, fucking of course, she claims, we look across the Islamic world and we see that they are outnumbering us in their family size, and they are in many places and many countries taking over those nations without a jihad, just by multiplication. So yeah, we're back to the racist and xenophobic great replacement thing, where somehow children are pawns in some kind of ethno-nationalist chess game, which seems to be a feature of many natalist philosophies. They're almost always racists. Weird pattern there.

Why can't it ever be people wanting a cool personal army of children to rob banks with and fight mutant turtles? But no matter what kind of baby army you're trying to create, either in the name of whiteness or Christianity or boss babies or a gaggle of liberal cucks, the effect is the same. Women are pressured to have children, as if we were born with the moral duty to create children for some kind of eternal war against fill in the blank. We of course see this philosophy represented in the anti-abortion movement that views the woman's duty to bear children as more important than her own bodily autonomy. In fact,

the duty to have children is so paramount, the idea of women being able to enjoy sex without the consequence of bearing children is often seen as immoral. If you see women as fleshy 3D printers for your white baby army, then abortion is sabotage against your baby munitions factories. This is not speculation. Conservatives literally talk about how abortion is undermining the great population war

between our babies and their babies. Former Iowa House Republican Steve King said, you cannot rebuild your civilization with somebody else's babies. Former Iowa House Republican Steve King said, you cannot rebuild your civilization with somebody else's babies. You've got to keep your birth rate up and that you need to teach your children your values. It's a weird sentiment given that the U.S. is a country of immigrants and babies born here are U.S. citizens by birthright. So who is this somebody else's babies? Well, it all comes back to that racist great replacement idea. Head of CPAC, Matt Schlapp, directly referenced the great replacement conspiracy theory, saying,

If you say there's a population problem in a country, but you're killing millions of your own people every year through legalized abortion every year, if that were to be reduced, some of that problem is solved. If you're worried about this quote-unquote replacement, why don't we start there? Start with allowing our own people to live. When head Republicans are explicitly saying that they're anti-abortion because it means fewer soldiers in their weird natalist war against foreigners, it makes me question whether GOP Congresswoman Mary Miller saying this was really a gaffe or more of a Freudian slip. I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday.

Her campaign manager says she meant to say a historic victory for the right to life, which, sure, maybe she did, but also it didn't stop everyone from clapping. campaign manager says she meant to say a historic victory for the right to life, which, sure, maybe she did. But also it didn't stop everyone from clapping, because for the far right, the question of if you should have a baby depends on who you are and where you are from. It's not a question of love, but a deeply ideological decision rooted in racism, which ironically for the so-called party of families doesn't seem like a very good recipe for happy children or parents.

And when you take into account that this is a country of immigrants, it's also highly confusing who they are really talking about when they worry about birth declines. There's this idea of a true American linked to white supremacy versus the others. But what's a true American? Someone here for a few generations? Certainly not too far back because then you get to Native Americans and genocide and we're not allowed to talk about that because that makes white people

feel sad. But this is why these people think an embryo or a fetus or even a hypothetical child is more preferable than an immigrant because that fetus, by belonging to this superior group, is more worthy and deserving of opportunities in the U.S. than an immigrant. And that embryo or fetus or hypothetical child is also more important than the desires of women because women's purpose in this framework is to reinforce the supremacy of the superior group, which, hey, it's fucked up. It's fucked up to think of having babies as a utilitarian act rather than one from love. It's a sad frame of mind leading to a weird and sad existence that would lead to sad children. So maybe that's not a good idea or reason to have a baby. Okay, just cross that one off the list.

You know what's not fucked up? The things we are about to very passionately talk about in these ads, that they're kind of like a baby, you know? And that they're small and they're cute and sometimes annoying and made from sperm and eggs. Be right back. Well, well, well, look who it is. Pretty bold of you to show up.

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Okay, cool. We're back and even cooler than last time. So before the break, we talked about the arguments people, specifically the right wing, make to pressure you to have babies. But what about the opposite? What about people who are all for sucking that baby right back up in you because maybe babies are a menace to society? There are plenty of discussions and articles about how maybe you shouldn't have children, specifically because of climate change, both in terms of the personal hardships

these future people will have and the carbon emissions per capita. So hey, climate change. It's definitely something we should each take personal responsibility for and not view as a systemic problem at all. Recycle your cans and wear enough condoms to stop global warming, folks.

Just make sure they're sustainable condoms and cut your condoms up before throwing them out so sea turtles don't choke on them during weird sea turtle sex. Don't kink-shame the turtles! If you decide to have children, perhaps your spawn shall wreak havoc upon the earth, supping too greedily off of Mother Nature's teat till it's dry and chapped. Do we have a picture of Mother Nature's dry, chapped teat?

Hot. So babies, are they the planet killers? Often the idea behind this is that too many births will exacerbate climate change through overpopulation. There's often this hypocrisy when it comes to worrying about overpopulation. We focus on poor countries who are overpopulated, and we see them as a burden on the rest of the world. People who just need to stop having so many babies because they're

causing overpopulation. Interestingly though, the countries that are the worst contributors to climate change also have some of the lowest birth rates. Compare this map, where countries with the lowest birth rates are depicted in green, with this map, where countries with the lowest birth rates are depicted in green, with this map, where countries with the highest emissions are depicted in dark red. Christmas colors! Festive! Tis the season! The erratic, gradually warmer season. So apparently, it's actually the wealthier countries who are the problem. Obviously. it's actually the wealthier countries who are the problem. Obviously.

In wealthier countries, average consumption of goods and energy is higher, thus people have larger carbon impacts. So if you live in one of these wealthier countries, your baby is going to have a larger carbon footprint than a baby from a poorer country. So one could argue that people from wealthier countries should have fewer children, which they already are. But also none of this really matters when it comes to climate change. It is of course a good thing to give people

reproductive choice wherever they live because reproductive freedom is healthy and can help people who are suffering from poverty or lack of resources. But in terms of overpopulation being the cause of global warming, environmental engineers aren't so certain. While it is true that the planet couldn't sustain continual exponential growth, currently this is not the trend. You know, because of everything we've talked about with fertility rates that are declining globally, mainly due to greater access to contraception,

the U.S. fertility rate has been dropping because women and teenagers have more autonomy and are able to choose when or if they want to have children. And since 2008, there's been a decline in unintended pregnancy due to access to abortion and family planning services. decline in unintended pregnancy due to access to abortion and family planning services. Now, obviously, there's been some recent changes to the whole allowing women access to health services and control over their bodies, so we've yet to see how that affects the number of unintended pregnancies in the U.S. I'm no scientist, but I'm gonna say it'll make that number go up. Who elected you queen of numbers? I did. This is all to say that if you want kids but are worried about overpopulation or climate change, maybe don't worry. Your future child isn't going to be the problem, unless your child becomes the CEO of ExxonMobil, in which case, way to go, asshole. What were you doing all those years? You get my point, though. Climate change

is much more hinged on sweeping reforms and regulations than what your genitals do, unless you jizz out smog, Al Pacino. Another aspect affecting birth rate is that millennials are struggling in the having enough money to make a living industry. More millennials are putting off having children because it's simply too expensive, especially given the economic disruption of the pandemic. Millennials, who honestly were just too busy playing Minecraft or whatever to avert the two recessions and a pandemic, have experienced a lot of instability when it comes to the housing market, job market, cost of living, and education. So adding a baby to the equation obviously brings more instability and stress. Despite the pressure

we put on women to have children be the main caretaker for them, we sure don't make it easy to be a mother. When it comes to actually funding children, especially children born into low-income families, our government seems to think that it's not their problem. The average cost of childbirth in the U.S. is over $13,000. And with insurance, you still owe $1,000 to $2,500. That's a lot of money. For many people, the high price tag might drive them to opt for a home birth. But home births come with higher risks of both infant and maternal mortality. Also, you need to own a home for that to happen.

Millennials have, very rudely, collectively decided to have less net worth than baby boomers or Generation X had at the same age, despite millennials being more well-educated. Childcare costs more than $10,000 a year, which represents a chunk of over 10% of the median couple's income, or over 35% for a single parent. And those are just for older children. It can be more than $16,000 a year in child care for infants. For more information on how we screw over families in terms of child care, there's some kind of strange disheveled man on YouTube that rambled about it. No affiliation. And it's about to get worse! During the pandemic, Congress made a record investment in child care, setting aside $24 billion to help keep the industry afloat. This money went to assisting parents with costs, training workers and boosting salaries to offset the loss of child care workers during COVID. However, that money is expiring this month, and as a result, quote,

an estimated 70,000 child care programs, or about one in three, could close as a result of lost funding, causing 3.2 million children to lose care, forcing even more parents to make the impossible choice between staying home with their children or going to work so they can afford to pay for their children. Normally, this is the point at which I go about debunking the argument that this is a reason not to have kids. But for a lot of people, this honestly seems like a very valid dilemma. It's just a grim financial reality, especially in America. And the lack of social safety nets, as well as universal health care, then only presents financial risks, but health risks as well. The U.S. ranks the worst in maternal mortality when compared with 10 other wealthy countries.

Our maternal death rate averages over 17 deaths per 100,000 people versus less than 3 out of 100,000 in countries like Norway, the Netherlands, or New Zealand. three out of 100,000 in countries like Norway, the Netherlands, or New Zealand. And this is likely to only get worse with anti-abortion laws in the U.S. that make childbirth riskier, like forcing people to carry dead fetuses, which is both psychologically horrifying and medically dangerous. In terms of postpartum care, the U.S. philosophy seems to be that it's your problem, and you and your newborn need to bootstrap yourselves. Tiny, cute little newborn bootstraps. We make them out of the ribbons from the Storks bundle. Adorable. Baby bootstraps for sale, never worn. One in four women have to return to work just 10

days after giving birth. And a report by UNICEF ranks the U.S. last in terms of family-friendly policies out of over 40 other OECD countries. OECD stands for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and represents relatively high-income economies that, theoretically, have the resources to give people things like paid leave and health care, which the United States doesn't do. Could, but doesn't. Even postpartum depression might not be covered under American insurance, as there are plans

that don't include mental health care. And even if it does, you can still be penalized with higher rates by insurance companies for having PPD. Hey, man, you can still be penalized with higher rates by insurance companies for having PPD. Hey, man, you didn't want to go broke? Maybe you should have thought about that before having a mental health reaction to your entire body and brain changing during pregnancy and birth. Should have thought of that. Pull yourself up by your birthing stirrups.

It's like that popular saying, go have a baby in America, go broke. With zero weeks of mandated paid parental leave, the U.S. is dead last when it comes to all other OECD nations. Though the U.S. doesn't guarantee paid parental leave, we do have the Family Medical Leave Act, which offers eligible employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year and requires

employers to keep health benefits going. As long as the person has worked at a location for at least 12 months and where the employer has 50 or more employees within 75 miles. And you must ask your employer if you can take advantage of FMLA and they have to agree to give it to you. And if you've ever had to ask your employer for stuff, you might know it doesn't always go so well. Cody's been asking for years to go home, which is adorable. Never going to happen. So if birth is too expensive and you want to have a child, maybe you could just adopt? Well, no. It's getting harder and harder to adopt. Adoption can cost from $15,000 to $45,000, mostly due to legal fees.

Obviously it's important to make sure that children are being adopted out to people who won't harm them, but that's prohibitively expensive for most people. Plus, and I'm certainly not saying adoption is bad, but there is a history of white supremacy that courses through much of our culture of adoption, which can absolutely have adverse impacts on those children. Okay, so having a baby is going to cost you no matter how you do it. But what of keeping a baby alive and junk? Surely that is cheap here in America, I ask, knowing the answer is no.

Yeah, so of course, conservatives tend to vote against or cut programs that benefit children. After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Republicans pretended to care about pro-family policy by proposing things like a parental leave through Social Security that the parents would have to pay back either with money or by retiring later. Because Lord knows they can't get the thing for free. We don't even guarantee children food security, and conservatives try to cut food programs for babies, children, and adults, such as the Republican proposed cuts to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children.

And if you recall, this is the same group that fights against abortion rights and wants everyone to have scores of kids. There's no universal pre-K in the US, as in free preschool, despite the many benefits to children in terms of graduation rates, emotional and social intelligence, and income gains as adults. What's more, conservative groups are vehemently against universal pre-K, saying that it's not something we can afford. I think it's immoral to make all these promises when you know at the end of the day, you can't afford it. We can't afford it to say preschool for everybody. Are you kidding me? We don't have the money for that. You heard it here. Kids are not worth it. What are they? 32

million dollar reaper drones? Come on. Too much money on kids. The things that conservatives claim we need to make more of but not pay for. There have at least been some improvements to how well we take care of children and families in the U.S., though. Between 2020 and 2021, child tax credits cut child poverty by over 30%, which is a remarkable testament to the effectiveness of social assistance programs. But wait, whoops, okay. It says here we have let it expire. And by we, I mainly mean Joe Manchin, who blocked the bill, which I can only assume is

because Joe Manchin hates millions of children. Joe Mean Man. That's what the kids call him. Also, Republicans want to keep school lunches from being free so we can do fun things like mark children's arms with an I'm poor stamp that says they need lunch money. This way, schoolyard bullying can be streamlined into a brutally efficient Adolf Eichmann-approved manner. But at least kids also have to worry about gun violence. So that's fun. Maybe the fear of being in a school shooting will help distract them from the fact that they can't afford a school lunch. And if you make it through the school day without being shot or shoved into a

toilet because of your poor arm stamp, you can go outside where you may or may not find an actual park that you can safely play in, which parents may or may not be able to reach with their strollers, depending on whether their local sidewalk cuts off right before the freeway on-ramp. Well, okay, maybe kids can just play in their backyards, as long as their millennial parents can afford it, or even find a home. Truly, we should have spent less time reading Harry Potter and more time inheriting wealth and buying up mass amounts of property. That one's on us, fellow millennials. That's on us. Accio wealth. But in what magical land could parents be

guaranteed time with their vulnerable newborns and support for their children? If America, land of the grimace shake, can't do it, who can? Well, apparently, plenty of other wealthy countries. Over 120 countries provide paid maternity leave by law, and in Finland, it's only about $300 to have a baby. You are guaranteed a midwife to help with the birthing process and they give out a box of items for newborns to everyone for free. That box has over 60 items including clothing, blankies, toys, books, thermometer, warm winter items and more. The baby box is apparently such a cherished Finnish tradition that Finnish journalist Anu Partanen describes it as a way for parents to feel like the whole country is providing for a child. Other countries have also discovered this

incredible thing called paternity leave, which increases life satisfaction for mothers, something that America hates. Researchers looked at the impact of earmarked paternity leave in Europe, meaning paternity leave in Europe, meaning paternity leave that must be used by the father and can't be transferred to the mother. Their study found that life satisfaction for both mothers and fathers increased by over 10 percentage points. And that, while fathers also benefited in terms of life satisfaction, mothers reported a greater increase than fathers.

But if we start giving people crap like parental leave, isn't that taking precious resources from the rest of us? Um, no, no, no, no. Turns out that this helps everyone. In fact, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities makes the claim that generous leave programs, in addition to helping workers, actually ends up helping businesses. Quote, paid leave policies benefit businesses by improving worker retention and productivity

without increasing operating costs and can even produce cost savings. In studies of California's paid leave program, about 90% of businesses reported either a positive or neutral effect on productivity and almost all businesses, 99%, identified positive or neutral effects on employee morale. So parents and non-parents don't have to duke it out in some kind of money tornado, tossing kids and grabbing dollars in a no-holds-barred contest for who gets to have the meager crumbs left to us by corporations? We could all live better and be happier, and whether or not you have children could be a decision of personal fulfillment. Some people may know that they never want children, but those who

are on the fence would be freed up to truly and freely decide whether they want to become parents without the looming threat of financial insecurity? That's neat. Sorry to be a disgusting hippie for a moment, but I do think that childless people and parents are not at odds with one another. If we built a society friendlier for parents, it would also be better for people without children and vice versa. Imagine, if you normalize parental leave, you can also normalize more personal time for non-parents. More vacation time would give parents time with their children and people without children time with their PS5s and pornography and weed, or, you know, enriching and improving the world in other ways.

Allowing people to have full lives outside of work makes it easier to raise a family and better for single people to just live their lives and enjoy things. City planning that would be friendlier to children would also be friendlier for everyone. Saver residential streets for children to play in would be more public space for adults to bike or walk. Child-friendly sidewalk infrastructure

would be better for non-child pedestrians and people with disabilities alike. A society that offers free health care would make having children less financially difficult and would make medical care for everyone more affordable. The only people who wouldn't benefit from free healthcare would be super rich people with live-in doctors and freezers full of their sperm. Having a less atomized nuclear family society means that people with children will be less isolated

and would have more help. And people without children would have the support of the community as they age without needing to have children to avoid being alone and neglected. Free and compassionate care for the elderly would prevent people from feeling like they have to have a family to avoid isolation

or dying alone. It would also mean parents and grandparents would have more money and time to invest in their children and grandchildren and also their PS5 and pornography and weed. More autonomy of choice on whether to have children or not would also be good for children. If you force people to have children they don't want

or guilt them into it, it's not always gonna lead to a happy home for the child. It might lead to having this guy as your parent. If my father had said to me, you know, Dennis, the world is better because you are in it. I would have believed that even though he was never drunk, that he was actually drunk. Whoops.

Maybe you should have given that kid a little more love and he wouldn't have founded a sham university. So, should you have a baby? The thing is, I can't answer this question for you. I can't even answer it for myself. I always thought that I'd be a mom someday. And not just your news mommy and or aunt. Maybe I still will have actual children,

but for all the reasons laid out here today, honestly, it's looking less and less likely. The decision to have children shouldn't be a polarizing political choice. But that said, the way in which we structure our society to be friendly or unfriendly to parents or non-parents is certainly political. And so while we shouldn't demand who can and can't have kids, we should demand our country be a place where people who want to have and raise kids can. And if less people feel like they can have kids, then perhaps there's a problem in that country. And perhaps the people obsessed with birth rates and population numbers are either trying to distract people or just missing the point entirely. I know this is weird, bordering on perverted, but we might be able to improve

society in a way that one can freely choose whether you want to become a parent without life sucking. Maybe, just maybe, life could suck a little bit less for everyone, hmm? Or, you know, alternatively, baby coal miners, eh? They can get in all those little coal crevices really good. No, look at that little guy. Oh, who's got the black wong? Is it you? Do you have the black wong? Yes, you do, little cutie. Adorable.

Yeah, let's go with the mind babies. Everyone have mind babies from now on. I decree it! Oh god, wait a minute. Is Warmbo technically my child? Yes! Oh my god! What have I done? Mom! Get him in the coal mine quick! Hello, hello! We've reached the end of the video. Thank you for watching all the way to the end of

this video. Okay, what are the things I'm supposed to say? Uh, Patreon. We have a Patreon. Patreon.com slash Some More News. We have a podcast called Even More News, which I'm on every week. So is Cody. It's fun. It's cute. We have a good time. Also, this episode you can listen to in the audio feed like a podcast, if that's your vibe.

Merch store. We got that baby Warmbo onesies, right? Speaking of Warmbo, I've thought about this and I didn't actually birth him. I, you know, I would have remembered that. He just, he's not, my point is, is that I don't think that I have to take any sort of responsibility over what he does or does not do. Mom, I killed a guy. Shut the fuck up.