I’ve observed a phenomenon occurring in “This Thing We Call” the Dissident Right.
A literary colleague and fellow traveller recently opined about the dismal state of many thinkers and theorycels on the right while making a broader, underlying point (which I do believe is correct). Long story short,
points out a problem. The problem is that many public intellectuals aren’t capable of, or seem to be struggling with, practicing the philosophy they preach to others. This, I believe, is especially egregious if people make a living producing content. Why should anyone listen to you tell others to get their life in order if you can’t even do it yourself? He also suggests that many people overthink it, which I also agree with.Fair points. Sounds reasonable. The issue is the context in which the point was made.
Kurtz is not the first person to tell people to have kids, and he won’t be the last. There is a known global fertility crisis. In the Western world, this is compounded by innumerable environmental, sociological, and socioeconomic factors. You all know them: microplastics in the blood, lower testosterone, garbage diet, lack of exercise. You know all of them, and you’ve heard it a thousand times, so I won’t break those down. There is a bigger issue here, which is tying immediate reproductive success to the notion of practicing what you preach, and then the implication that those who don’t have children, or are struggling to have children, shouldn’t be leading others.
I beg to differ.
Just a basic, real world step
Firstly, I am biased because I’m Canadian. The “Canadian Situation,” which I will explore later in this essay, is unique in that it is bad. Really bad. Far worse than you can possibly understand if you don’t live here. If you do live here, the only way to not understand is to be wealthy enough that your life is not impacted. People in this cohort are usually (but not always) the rich and the managerial class.
Let’s start with this notion that having kids is a basic real world step. I’m not saying the following to be deliberately crass or vulgar;
I can download Tinder, Bumble, or Hinge tonight, after I write this, and deliberately have unprotected sex with as many women—ugly or pretty, smart or dumb, Western or non-Western—as my heart desires, in the eventual hope that one of them will keep the baby when they find out they’re pregnant. I could start a fake fertility service where I offer my precious, handsome genetics to some lesbian couple or East-Indian woman desperate to escape her caste. If I really wanted to, I could max out my credit cards, personal lines of credit, rack up multiple unsecured loans, sell all my possessions, and take off to a non-extradition country as a relatively rich person and start a beautiful harem where my children will lord over all the indigenous people like an ancient Hibernian God-King whose physical traits are preserved for millennia in the degenerated dynasty. In the purely physical sense, yes, Kurtz is correct that the act of reproduction is incredibly easy. Look at India. Look at Africa. That’s not really the point. First of all, the fact that the bar is so low actually takes away from it being a standard for relative authority. Yes, having kids is easy. Precisely. So what? You, and a billion others. Westerners are not going to 'outbreed' foreigners, nor should you want to.
Many great people who’ve accomplished incredible feats have done more than Kurtz or I (likely) ever will, and they didn’t have children. Whether myself or Kurtz have children or not, there are nameless, faceless millions who’ve lived and died over millennia who, on a local level, contributed immensely to their communities. Certainly, if not all of them, some of them could share wisdom. Ludwig van Beethoven didn’t have children. Nor did Henry David Thoreau. Leonardo da Vinci was a polymath and probably a genius. He didn’t have kids, nor did Isaac Newton, another similar genius. It was a tremendous shame that their genetics weren’t passed on. Their contributions to humanity are incalculable. If they had written about fertility and family-building, would their opinions on fertility be totally worthless? I don’t think so, and I don’t believe it’s fair to say so.
For most, the issue is not desire
If you ask most people whether or not they’d like to have kids, most will answer yes. This is a healthy, normal response. When pressed as to why they’re not trying, they will give various legitimate answers: not enough economic opportunity, not enough education, not enough opportunity to make the money for that education, to give them more opportunities to make more money. Historically, the majority of women reproduced. A majority of men do as well, but a significant chunk, estimated to be 40-50%, do not. Historically, it was war, disease, famine, and so forth that culled many men’s numbers. Quite a few of them also simply did not find a mate, even with all of the social capital they enjoyed, such as coming from large families or participating in local religious communities.
Contrary to a lot of rhetoric about hookup culture and orgiastic degeneracy among the top 20% of men hoarding 80% of the women, a majority of young men are not even in relationships or having sex at all. Sixty percent of young men in America are currently single. According to the same article...
Young men are, in fact, watching a lot of porn. Data from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Italy suggest between 76-87 percent of 18- to 29-year-old men are consuming porn regularly.
Young men across the Anglosphere are brimming with profound sexual urges, enough that the majority regularly consume porn as a substitute for their inability to obtain a girlfriend who shares their socioeconomic status and is their “looks match.” Data from 2022 shows that the average number of children desired among people aged 15 to 49 is 1.5. About 36% of people in this age group want two children, while 34% do not intend to have any children. The remaining percentages are split between those desiring one child (12%), three children (14%), and four or more children (6%) (Statistics Canada).
Combining the data from Canada and the United States, approximately 72% of people either have children or want to have children. This calculation takes into account the percentage of people in Canada who have biological children and the percentage of people in both countries who desire to have children.
In Canada, marriages that occurred in the early 2010s contribute significantly to the current population of married couples. For instance, the crude marriage rate (CMR) in Canada has shown long-term trends with marriage rates declining steadily. By 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this rate dropped significantly to 2.6 marriages per 1,000 people (Statistics Canada).
In the United States, data from the National Center for Health Statistics shows a similar trend. The marriage rate in the early 2010s averaged about 6.8 per 1,000 people, which is higher than in more recent years. By 2019, the marriage rate had declined to 6.1 per 1,000 people (CDC, Census.gov).
This is literally a 40% decrease in married couples from 2010 to 2020 in Canada.
The decline in marriage rates from 2010 to 2021 in the U.S. is around 25%
These already low numbers that don’t lead to replacement-level birthrates or family formation were struck a catastrophic blow over the last 15 years, pushing them further down. In response to my notes, many men in their late 30s and early 40s, usually older millennials, are telling me they feel they’ve caught the “last flight out.” I had a drink at the bar with
who felt this was his experience. They met their spouses under more stable socioeconomic circumstances, with slightly better opportunities and a more favorable dating market. Many say that if they had to do it again 10 years later, they wouldn’t make the cut. It’s easy to shout “BOOTSTRAPS” every time a young man laments circumstances outside his control, but it does nobody any favors.“Just make the sacrifice”
The right-wing version of “you will own nothing and be happy” is telling people to “make the sacrifice.” This is usually under the presumption that these young men and women want a perfectly middle-class home, with all the bells, whistles, and other amenities. That they want a suburban McMansion with a snowmobile in the garage that they never touch, a family dog, and a white picket fence. Nothing could be further from the truth. These young men and women don’t want this; they want the bare minimum, which is still not possible for most. Most would be content with a one or two-bedroom condo. Telling people to move to a rural, economic dead zone, where they’ll be a stranger, and where they don’t have the professional skill set (such as a work-from-home job or a government job), with no means of income for a “starter home” that needs more work than it’s worth and has black mold in the basement, is not an appealing offer to anybody. In fact, it is sacrificing substantially more than their ancestors, who may have traversed vast distances with nothing, braved negative 45-degree winters with five feet of snow, but possessed more social capital, family, friends, and community than is imaginable by most Westerners over the last three generations. The juice is not worth the squeeze. This is not motivating anybody. As Megha at
implies, why should people make this sacrifice that so many even ten years ago did not have to, for a lesser quality of life? It takes an obscene level of audacity to callously suggest this to young men in the 16-35 cohort. Kurtz may say that those without children have no right to speak about families. I pose a question in reverse to Wife Havers: why should you get to speak when you objectively had it easier? If only slightly. Get the hell out of here.Lastly, for those who recommend moving to a rural area temporarily for a starter home they can fix up and resell on the market for more money, is this not exacerbating the housing issues? Is it fair to the locals of other states or provinces when you, with the money you made outside of their locale, gentrify their historic villages, towns, or cities and buy up all the property? You are barely different from the foreigners speculating on the market who were sold five-figure homes for seven figures.
“Just go to church bro”
This is one you hear from “TradCons,” short for traditionalist conservatives, who are currently popular predominantly in North America through some circles. Ignoring the fact that you shouldn’t be trying to cultivate faith for the material gain of finding a wife, there doesn’t seem to be good or reliable data for the attendance of young people in churches across North America. However, there are statistics for overall church attendance, which has steadily declined. Anecdotally, at the very least, many Christians will tell you that the churches are dead. What few young people remain are usually already married at a young age and/or already have families. We know this because people who marry sooner and have fewer sexual partners tend to have lower divorce rates. In the U.S., overall, 33% of all couples get divorced. One-third of all American married couples get divorced. Among those identifying as Christians but not actively practicing, the divorce rate is approximately 60%. Women in both the United States and Canada initiate 69% and 70% of divorces, respectively.
Church attendance among young Canadians has been steadily declining over the past few decades. Only about 22% of native-born Canadians attend religious services at least once a month, with higher rates among immigrants (43%). Your “based” Christians, sir! The decline is more pronounced among younger generations compared to older ones. Regional variations show that Quebec and Atlantic Canada have seen some of the steepest declines (Pew Research Center).
In the United States, church attendance among young adults has also declined, though less sharply than in Canada. About one-third of U.S. adults attend religious services weekly, higher than Canada's 20%. For young adults aged 18-34, attendance dropped from 36% in 2019 to about 26% in recent years. Among those who regularly attended church as teenagers, two-thirds stopped attending for at least a year between ages 18 and 22, with about 31% eventually returning to attend church at least twice a month (Pew Research Center, Lifeway Research). These trends reflect broader cultural and societal shifts influencing religious observance among younger populations in both countries.
The current levels of church attendance include openly blasphemous and heretical establishments to the Christian faith. I am not a Christian, but if you fly pride flags, have female pastors, or allow Muslims to preach the Qur'an during sermons, you’re probably a heretic.
What do we learn from the Christian situation?
Churches are dying, and or dead
Church attendance among the youth is low
Young people who go to church are already married
Church attendance among foreigners is highest
“Just go to church” is not much different from trying to find a needle in a haystack or a unicorn. It is dated, stupid advice that doesn’t help most church-going young people, never mind secular, atheistic, or agnostic young men (who are the majority) who want to pursue this avenue to find a wife (which they shouldn’t do anyway, because this is insincere and dishonest to that church community).
All in all, as of 2022, 46% of American households are married. This figure is curiously the same in Canada, at 46%. The majority of the populace in the Anglo part of North America is not married. (Sources: Statistics Canada, U.S. Census Bureau).
What the hell is going on in Canada?
One of Canada’s intelligence agencies, a couple of months ago, sent a memo to the Liberal federal government informing them that, in the near-future years to come, they are worried about revolutionary activity. I believe Canada is a good case study because it seems the country has been a sociological testing ground for the powers that be to see what happens. Canada is a surreal twilight zone where it feels like every psyop known to man is hurled its way. Canada unquestionably has the worst demographic and immigration issues, the worst housing issues, the worst social stability, and upwards mobility issues, all adjusted and proportional to its population and size, of course. For our purposes, I believe Canada serves as the worst-case scenario of how bad the dating market can be, and how bad it will continue to get.
Canada has some of the lowest upward social mobility among developed nations, especially for young people, particularly within the OECD and G8. This means that young people in Canada find it relatively difficult to move up the economic ladder compared to their parents.
In 2022, Canada's population growth was significantly driven by immigration. According to Statistics Canada, approximately 95% of the population growth in that year was attributed to immigration. This includes both permanent and temporary residents, with a notable influx of international students, temporary workers, and permanent residents. Only a meagre 5% of Canada’s population growth, including recent immigrants, was from organic growth and childbirth. Below are the national origins of immigrants over the last twenty-four years. The combined total number of people entering Canada per year, including international students, temporary foreign workers, legal immigrants, and refugee claimants, is approximately 1,133,770 individuals officially. In reality, the government over the last four years has lost count.
As of April 2024, the average home price in Canada is approximately CAD $703,446. This is €477,121.93 and USD $511,466.93. Would you like to see what $703k CAD can get you in France? Hint: a lot more than in Canada.
This has been noticed so much by Canadians that it is now a meme, with Conservative Party and opposition leader Pierre Poilievre pointing it out in the House of Commons. You can compare the price of homes and the cost of living with Canadian wages. You can also compare how far those meagre wages would go in other first-world countries like France, Germany, or Sweden. The answer is much farther. Much, much farther. There is currently no hope, short of radical action by the government unheard of in Canadian history, for this situation to be rectified. The only other option is best left unsaid.
“Educated” Women Lead
In Canada, among ethnic Canadians, a significant portion of the female population is more educated and makes more money than Canadian men. Canadian men make, on average, CAD $48,500, while women make CAD $42,000. However, only 56% of men have post-secondary education, while 68% of women do. Men have completed higher levels of high school, and women have completed higher levels of college or university. This has led to a massive gap in socioeconomic status between men and women. It gets worse when you include non-ethnic Canadians. Completed levels of post-secondary education for men remain at 56%, while women’s rise to 73%.
We know that in our post-industrial world, resources translate to money. Money and completed levels of education translate to status. Women are 50% more likely to divorce men when they make more money. When women are already the initiators of divorce 70% of the time, it starts looking pretty ugly, fast.
A Feminine Perspective
I decided to reach out to some women I know. Some are right-leaning, others are not, for their perspective on why they don’t have children. They gave me many different answers. To attempt to ensure honesty, I spoke with them in encrypted secret chats that were self-deleting, with their names or usernames cropped out. I assured them their opinions would be anonymous, and they were under no obligation to lie. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Don’t trust what women say, watch what they do,” and I agree, but I think we can agree they have some agency. I also believe that this applies to both sexes, even if it might apply to women more. This is obviously a small sample study, but I think it’s useful anyway.
Girl #1 confided this to me. She is a person in America who has done everything “right.” She was baptized Catholic at birth and has attempted to find a suitable husband for most of her life. She is quite good looking and also managed to maintain zero sexual partners until her late 20s. I’ve known her for some years. This story is not only tragic but surprisingly common.
Girl #2 wants kids but has not been able to find a man with the right qualities for fatherhood. She comes from a traditionalist, Catholic household.
Girl #3 simply confided in me that she wasn’t interested in having children and contemplated the various reasons why. She is also attractive, has a low number of sexual partners, and surprisingly, has all the means for it. She finished with this:
Something that isn’t discussed is that there are a lot of women who plainly aren’t into having kids—way more than you think. Many do want children but refuse to try until they feel secure. They don’t feel like they’re financially or socially secure. There seem to be concerns about not having other family members assisting or being part of their lives. Others have body horror issues, while some are maladjusted hyper-independent types who, for better or for worse, are more unwilling to have kids.
“Something is going on out there”
Suffice it to say, times are not easy. Arguably, with all the unique challenges of our age, it has never been harder for young men and women to work, marry, and have children. The desire to do so is there—the numbers prove it. Men and women are being handicapped by socioeconomic status, a bloated labour pool, suppressed wages by foreign slave labour, and a lack of housing. We shouldn’t alienate them by shouting “BOOTSTRAPS.” We should instead say “figure it out.” One is working harder. Working harder for quickly diminishing returns in a collapsing system is a waste of time, energy, resources, and youth. The other is working smarter, finding loopholes, forging networks, and collaborating with one another. Survivorship bias is incredibly powerful. People attribute their successes to their sole endeavours and their failures to solely external circumstances. Nothing could be further from the truth. External factors apply to both victories and defeats.
At the end of the day, there is no force in the universe more powerful than young, single men with nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Many is the time my wife and I have talked about these matters. We never got to have kids; we met too late in the game for kids. I could not find a suitable wife, and that was in the 1990s. Women were bad enough then. Now they are downright obnoxious. Young men aren't much better. However it got this way, it has put us on the verge of violent revolution. These young men are going to hit rock bottom and out comes their killers. God help us all.
I'm a married father of five. Got married at 30, more than ten years ago. And I am exquisitely, painfully conscious of the fact that the way things worked out for me is not a viable option for almost anyone. I identify strongly with younger men struggling to make a go of it, as I know the only thing separating me from them are factors entirely out of my control. Some of those factors are at least partially responsible for the abortion that is my "career." Others have given me a house, wife, and family.
So despite my seeming "success" on the marriage-and-kids front, my sympathies lie with the young men trying desperately to make their way.
My conclusion? "Success" here has at least as much, if not more, to do with others paving the way for us as it does with paving our own way. Telling the next generation how it's done is never the thing to do. Each generation is responsible for setting up the next one. What we're seeing now are the consequences of an unnaturally high percentage of going on three generations of people whose parents and communities have more-or-less abandoned their responsibilities. And yes: mine did better than most. But that's not something I can recommend to others.