Everyone remembers the bat-crap crazy speech Josh Hawley gave to the National Conservatism Conference lamenting that more young men are playing video games and looking at porn, than marrying and having families.
Completely leaving aside the fact that raising families is, financially, a complete pie-in-the-sky luxury for the majority of people under 30...
All I can say is: America, you believe men and women can't be just friends now? You think young people have a negative opinion of having children now?
Wait till Roe goes away. People, especially those who can get pregnant, will start actively hating children, families, and the men who try to force those on them.
Because people tend to hate things that take away their freedom and options.
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Have our young men gotten to the point where they don't care how they solve their loneliness problem anymore... they're prepared to alleviate it by taking away someone else's happiness and self-determination? Gaining social nourishment by draining someone else of it?
(You already know the answer when it comes to conservatives. They don't even care about their own loved ones, or even their own life; if there are libs to be owned. Thousands of Herman Cain Award winners attest to that.)
But you would think that thinking far enough ahead, someone would see that the "happy" family life they tricked, coerced and manipulated a pregnant person into forming is built on a shaky foundation. You'd think they'd realize, they can't purchase a partner's willing devotion that way.
Oh, they might, through abuse, buy their partner's obedience. You can keep a person bodily with you in your family after you shatter their soul, sometimes for years. But you will never have a real, nourishing relationship. Just a miserable cycle of abuse and subjugation through generations.
What boggles my mind is when people think that is the best that love has to offer. When they actually prefer power-over instead of power-with.
Kind of like rich people in poor countries: why would they enjoy having to budget a large amount for security and guarding their riches, instead of enjoying them? Why would someone prefer a miserable relationship where they have to constantly guard their spouse, rather than enjoy their company?
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There is a deep betrayal at the idea of using something life-affirming-- family, love, sex, social support-- to harm, to trap, to enslave. That's using some of the most beautiful, healing things about humanity in the cruelest way possible.
That's what goes on in any kind of homogeneous community... its love and support is contingent upon you adhering to their culture. A controlling partner's love demands you adhere to their image of their ideal lover. The minute you show a sign of thinking for yourself, that love is yanked away.
Love that requires you submit to a worthiness test, that says you must first be a good culture fit, that says you must pay the price of admission in the form of being the kind of person the other wants... That is not love. It's coercion.
There already are a ton of people who decided they wanted children and social support so badly, they were willing to pay the price of being tethered to a spouse who is benevolently sexist... or even not so benevolently sexist. They know, deep in their bones, that they paid a heavy price. Perhaps too heavy a price to be worth it.
Besides, what does it say to imply that raising families inevitably involves purposefully shattering someone’s dreams-- almost always a mother's? What does it say to imply raising a child requires that someone else make themselves less than they could be?
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If Roe falls, the number of singles choosing porn and video games over relationships will go up, Mr. Hawley, not down. Young men may be more likely to have no romantic relationships now... but miserable, one-sided, non-mutual relationships are NOT better than no relationships. Despite over 20 years of media messaging desperately, uncritically persuading us that relationships are always good and it is always better to be part of a traditional family than not.
Without reproductive rights, without equality, and under a power-over scheme, relationships take joy out of life.
Love and marriage will simply be seen as not worth it to too many people. No one wants to choose between being loved and their fundamental freedoms.
"We're like a family" is already synonymous with toxic workplaces. In a post-Roe world, "We're raising a family" will, more and more, become synonymous with lost potential, lost dignity, and lost self-determination.