
How Pronatalism Feeds The Economy | Nandita Bajaj
Population is Political
“Who benefits from shaming people who do not have children, or glorifying large families? Pushing marriage, pushing children, keeps corporations, the baby industry, the car industry, the housing industry, the property development industry, in business.
“All lines, for the most part, lead to growth: Growth in your own kind, growth in GDP, growth in consumerism, growth of religion, growth of a certain ethnic tribe. And all of those things undermine not just reproductive autonomy, they undermine the rights of the children that are simply seen as commodities to continue on that growth.”
We’re in planetary overshoot. So why are governments coercing women into having children?
Nandita Bajaj is the Executive Director of Population Balance, an organisation offering education and solutions to address the intersectional impacts of human overpopulation and over consumption on the planet, people and animals. Nandita also co-hosts The Overpopulation Podcast, and teaches at the Institute for Humane Education at Antioch University, where she researches prenatal ism and human supremacy and their impacts on reproductive ecological and intergenerational justice.
This episode is about the dangers of pronatalism. Nandita reveals how the coercive pronatalist policies around the world coupled with cultural mechanisms are causing a devastating impact on the planet. She also explains how existing power structures benefit from a growing population, illustrating how our economic obsession with growth demands exponential population growth. Nandita also explores the elevation of rights—human, species and natural—as a cornerstone climate policy to tackle population and create a sustainable world for everyone, and everything.
How Pronatalism Feeds The Economy | Nandita Bajaj
I have a couple of questions after listening to this episode.
A while back I listened to the Nate Hagens podcast with Dr. Shanna Swann, where she talked about the proliferation of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals and their effect on male and female reproductivity, particularly sperm count. I'd be interested to hear Nandita's opinion on how this could effect the predictions of 10-16 billion humans. Is there an impending population decline that we're just not seeing yet.
Also, I've just started reading 'The Good Ancestor', which urges the reader to think in a more long term, multi-generational way, which I tend to have sympathies with. Is this wrong? Can it lead to the twisted thinking of the 'effective altruists'.
Why did Elon Musk say humanity has an under-population problem in an interview last year?