The Unexplored Case Against Adultism

Originally published on May 7, 2014. Last updated on September 8, 2017.


Many readers are likely to stumble across this because they already oppose Adultism and presumably search for fresh content tackling it. If you are one of those, odds are that your proposed remedies to this overlooked malady never target the initiation of biological parenthood. A common theme I've noticed with critics of adultism is the tacit belief that good and bad parenthoods are a thing, in a categorical sense, and that the main driving force behind generically bad parenting (or stewarding) is the substandard levels of respect adults show for the personhood of non-adults. Aside from this, opposition to adultism for these critics is not to be confused with anything that remotely resembles an opposition to biological parenthood itself. The anti-adultist aims to improve parenthood, not to question it on a foundational level.

I on the other hand believe that any solution to adultism that relies on nonjudgmental overviews of parenthood is no solution at all. All such solutions are supplementary at best and nickel-and-dime tweaks at worst. Patchwork. I settled on this view some time ago, after coming to the conclusion that there are no finely grained good and bad parents. There are only more/less imperfect parents. Now that I am well acquainted with a topic as niche as adultism/anti-adultism, I'll try to merge some of what anti-adultists are after with some of what I'm after.

AntiNatalism And Dissection

Seeing as this post delves into the (defamation-magnetized) area of Natalism vs. AntiNatalism, I’ll just mention right off the bat that disingenuous remarks alluding to anti-natal driven genocide, cultism, eugenics, crypto-fascism, death-worship, hedonism, cowardice, emotional frailty, depression-blurring-perspective, “mommy didn’t love them enough” and so on will be ignored in the interest of sidestepping all too familiar time-sinks. This is intended to put proponents of AntiNatalism on the immediate defensive. The diversion works only when discussants and onlookers ignore how the brisk aggressor never earned possession of offense. Guilty of redundancy enablement are fellow objectors to Natalism who still see purpose in explaining themselves, as mere messengers, to the dullards eagerly regurgitating such charges.

I typically wouldn’t even mind this, but the long-refuted character assassination ploys –– coupled with philosophy/psychology entanglement –– are being milked for all they're worth. Spirited counterpoints of this sort have, for me, been impossible to sit through for a long time now, yet they still manage to find new ways in which to get more egregious by the week; over four years later. Any gasbag that chimes in with their 2 cents by evaluating the psychology and personal life of the messenger lambasting Natalism unapologetically seems to attract enough bait-bitters who'll fruitlessly engage –– as if the accusations dished out against the lazily posited "Quintessential AntiNatalist" are worthy of being debunked, on account of some ingenuous misunderstanding on the part of the gasbag.

Such noise hardly differs from any other armchair psychoanalyses permeating the internet. The difference here is that far more DNAtheists seem to uprate the efforts of the pseudo analyses as long as the objective is the maligning of AntiNatalists' credibility. Public dissenters of Natalism who bother with this tripe or accept sketchy aphorisms about the "Archetypal AntiNatalist" emissary carry a share of the blame for AntiNatalism's current lack of intrigue and the formulaic, painfully cyclical debates so pervasive on YouTube.

At some point you have to put your foot down and quit humoring perennial straw. If it hasn’t gone away the first 500 times it's been refuted, it's unlikely to go away once you refute it for the 501st time. Or the 5001st time. Of course, I’m unable to confirm that the psychology of every dissenter of Natalism is impervious to the psychobabble charges regularly levied by Natalists and their sympathisers, but since none of it applies to my cogent understanding of what the AN position entails, this factor suffices as the disqualifier of any such hullabaloo. The more overblown the charge, the less apposite.