“Open borders” advocate Nicholas Decker shares his thoughts on totally progressive fatherhood:
I would like to have kids. I’m quite set on this. I feel that I would be very happy raising them. I think that I would find joy and purpose in helping them grow and learn and do great things.
So far, so good. If not exactly newsworthy. Perhaps a twist is coming, some needless contrivance.
There is one thing, though – they will not be genetically mine.
Ah.
This does not mean that I would adopt. Rather, I would have someone else, who I consider to be genetically better than me, be the father of the child.
There we go. Not sure if watching is involved.
I have thought about this a great deal, and not only do I think it is the right thing to do, but it is something which everyone should do.
It seems we’re expected to follow Mr Decker’s lead, into that glorious tomorrow, where cuckoldry is ascendant, an ideal, and where fathers and their children are biologically disconnected and physically estranged. Because that always goes smoothly. No issues there. There follows a rather flattened understanding of genetics, and much convoluted fretting, but the gist is,
If you could choose to do something which would make [your children] better off, at no cost to yourself, you would of course choose to do it… The single biggest way that you can do this is in selecting a high-quality mate. Having someone else take your own place is simply an extension of the same principle.
At which point, readers may be wondering if there’s something wrong with Mr Decker. I mean, some debilitating condition that he would rather not pass on.
You might say that my genes are perfectly adequate. I have heard this a lot. I agree entirely.
I sense a looming but.
However, I am not the best possible.
It strikes me as a little odd, in terms of hypothetical fatherhood, comparing one’s own as-yet-unknown potential in that regard against some entirely abstract ideal, the particulars of which remain unclear. Fatherhood, I’ve been told, more than once, is very much a process of discovery, and indeed self-discovery.
You might also think that I will relate to [my child] better if they are more like me. I disagree with this.
I’m reminded of the boastfully oblivious noises poked at here. From childless progressives who claimed to view any hypothetical parenting on their part, the birth of a child, as some arbitrary occurrence, unmoored from any biological inheritance or preceding events. Childless progressives who were seemingly unfamiliar with the strange pleasure of seeing one’s children develop the features and attributes of oneself, one’s partner, and various relatives.
However,
I do not particularly care about my family.
Bodes well.
I do care quite a lot about other people, including those who I have asked. I would rather my children be more like them than like my family.
He cares quite a lot about other people, you see. Just not his own family. Hence pursuing biological disconnection, the breaking of lineage and ancestry. At which point, any passing psychiatrists are welcome to chip in.
And then, of course, there’s the issue of whether biological connectedness might be statistically optimal in terms of parenting, engagement, avoiding neglect, and so forth. As available data would suggest. And which would seem to have bearing on any child’s odds of flourishing and happiness.
Needless to say, replies to Mr Decker on X have been lively:
Why not have someone better than you raise them?
And,
Just cut out the middlemen and start paying child support to multiple men with superior genetics for their procreation.
Mr Decker tells us he is “presently pursuing a PhD in Economics at George Mason University.” His interests include “reducing poverty… particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
Update, via the comments:
Pst314 points out that Mr Decker has, not too long ago, been in the news.
Update 2:
From Mr Decker’s Substack, a reader’s comment:
I kept making this point on Twitter and Reddit and it was very demoralising because no one would agree with me. People didn’t really have good counterarguments imo – the ones that made sense to me were the evolutionary ones, but I talked to Diana Fleischmann about it and
she didn’t think people are wired to care about whether their children are genetically theirs.
So it makes me very happy to see you making this argument and owning it. But I’m also saddened to see so many people caring so much about their genetics being passed on – it feels selfish and it makes me feel like people don’t really care about the wellbeing of their offspring, despite claiming that they do.
With such levels of unrealism and contrivance, such practised not-noticing, it’s not altogether clear where one might begin.
We have arrived at the assumption that a primal, root-level motivation found across species is somehow absent in human beings – for no clearly stated reason – despite all appearance to the contrary, across continents and centuries, and despite the fact that human offspring are unusually dependent and require an uncommonly prolonged and costly investment by the parents.
Presumably, we should ignore studies confirming the correlation of parental investment and physical resemblance, i.e., relatedness, and the statistical preference among adoptive parents for children who could pass for their own biological offspring. Likewise, the lower aggregate levels of investment by stepfathers, noted many times.
And I’m guessing we’ll have to ignore the entire history of human courtship, a great deal of which has been geared towards ensuring genetic relatedness – and to avoiding cuckoldry. The cuckoldry that Mr Decker claims will somehow improve the world.
Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
Recent Comments