Several steaders are here at the Natalism conference this Friday and Saturday, including the primary writer of these transmissions. Come chat with us.
For folks from the conference checking out the Steader for the first time, here is what you might be interested in. For those who have something to share, here is what we are interested in.
What We Can Do For You (jump)
Get you grandchildren (jump)
Natalist kid’s books and literature (jump)
Natalist policy ideas (jump)
money upfront
Start on 2nd base
Financialize
What You Can Do For Us (jump)
Introduce us to natalist literature and cinema you may know about it (jump)
Talk to us about natural methods for middle-aged folks to have even more kids (jump)
Let us know about books and articles on historical fertility swings (jump)
Suggest improvements, pitch projects (jump)
But first an aside:
We are doing important work here and we need your support. Please consider subscribing or sponsoring. As more and more of the self-made and forward-looking among the elite wake up to our dire national and world fertility crisis, we also seek to make a patronage arrangement. For example, subventions towards the cost of printing natalist literature.
That said, the greatest support you can offer comes from your own efforts to spread truth and form and strengthen your own family. None of us can do this on an island. Thank you for fighting the good fight.
WHAT WE CAN DO FOR YOU
Natalist Children
Have grandchildren
If we have a specialty, it’s showing you how to have grandchildren. Natalism begins at home. Applied natalism is marriage, children, and raising your children to do the same. Too many people think childrearing is a mysterious and a lost art. It isn’t. Raising natalist children is simple once you know how.
The Steaderstack ranges pretty wide. The Manifesto is a great read and will give you an idea. What we favor are things that are healthy, things that grow, and things that last. Preferably all three.
The family should be the textbook healthy, growing, lasting thing, but in the modern environment it often isn’t. These are objectively harsh conditions for family formation and perpetuation
For that reason we have put together common sense but also fairly unique sets of applied natalist advice and theory on how to make your own family solidly multigenerational. How do you raise children who are ready and willing to raise children who are ready and willing to raise children and so on. More than half of our content is on that question.
Here are a few key and a few representative pieces. Feel free to read, share, and comment.
Beaches and Slopes — maximizing vacations
Billionaires don’t hedge against risk — but you can
Do What You Want Them to Value — why your kids love work but hate chores
Be Wholesome but don’t be Disney — don’t outsource wholesomeness
Rebundling — insource
Claim the Year — borrow insights from liturgical calendars
And much, much more.
Natalist Literature
One of our key insights is that you need to hang a lantern on your family’s positive, identify-forming experiences and spell out the implications: our family is great, you should have one of your own some day. The more ways and avenues you can do this, the better. Even better when someone or something with outside authority and cultural cachet reinforces the message.
Natalist literature and cinema would therefore be fantastic for you. If it existed. Mostly, it doesn’t.
We are trying to fix that. We will be rolling out the first ever natalist kid’s book in December. Blatantly over the top, absurdly fun message fiction.
A lot more on why we are doing this if you are interested:
link
We are also creating a series of family stories like Little House on the Prairie or Cheaper by the Dozen but in modern America, in the spare scraps of time we have between raising a family, earning an income, attending to church and extended family and animals, and so on. Watch this space.
Natalist Policy
We have three small policy ideas.
1. Money upfront.
We believe that financial incentives can work on a large enough scale and that they can work even better if the financial incentives are front-loaded. $50,000 now will have a much more dramatic effect than $100,000 spread out over the child’s years until adulthood. That is partly because young families in particular are sensitive to money needs to accelerate their fertility life history, and partly because the psychology of a big lump payment appeals to everyone more, even to those who pride themselves on being low time preference abstract thinkers. It’s why the lottery advertises the top-line figure, not the yearly payout.
2. Begin on 2nd Base.
Instead of a mere cash payment for having children, make it a cash payment for “citizenship,” the culminating requirement of which is having children, but with other requirements like graduating high school or equivalent, voting, making your first tax payment, getting married, and so on. The psychology is that average person is already part way there and will be encouraged to just do the last few things required, i.e., have children.
3. Financialize it
Politically speaking, policies work best when they have highly interested beneficiaries. Parents are obviously beneficiaries of child subsidies, but are too diverse and unorganized to be a special interest group. Making child subsidies have a financial instrument component such that there is a defined interest group of the providers of the financial instruments who have a stake in the policy continuing gives the policy the lobbying and donation support it needs to continue on.
OUR INTERESTS
Natalist literature and cinema
If there are good books, poems, films, doggerel, stories, etc. with a pro-natalist message, we want to hear it. Drop a line below or tell us in person.
Having more children
We are in our 40s and for a long time accepted the conventional wisdom that our childbearing days were past us. However, conventional medical wisdom is not always right. Though we have lots of kids, we really want more. What are the best sources on trying to have more children in your 40s using natural methods?
Historical demographic booms and busts
Is our current low-birth trap unique? Are there precedents? We are looking for good books and articles and sources on historical swings in birth rates. In particular, we are interested in
classical antiquity
the birth rate recovery in Nationalist Spain (Charles Haywood, this means you)
Maximizing our time and talent. Being of use.
If you have a suggestion on how we can better use our talents and our times, let us have it. We are open to being pitched projects and ideas that we can help with.