Empty playgrounds in an aging Italy — A rather sad and creepy picture is emerging from Europe regarding declining birth rates and the apparent hedonism of the women there who seem to despise the idea of having children. A chilling article.
Most Genovese today have only one child or none and are unapologetic about the choice. The birthrate (7.7 births per 1,000 people) was about half the death rate (13.7 per 1,000) in Liguria last year, a frightening ratio even by European standards…
“Some of the kids in school with my teenager don’t even speak Italian,” said Maria Termini, who lives in the old town. “It’s really very difficult.”
In the Fiumara Mall, the rare mother pushing a stroller is generally speaking a foreign language: Spanish, Arabic or Albanian.
“In Italy they don’t have children,” said Flor Ribera, a 42-year-old house cleaner from Ecuador, who plans to enroll her two children in middle school next year. “They have dogs and cats.”
The crux of the article is that the middle-class women of Italy say they cannot afford to have children as it is too much of a burden. Yet the poorest immigrants manage it. So what’s wrong with this picture? The story worsens when you type “Europe population decline” into Google. Much creepier tales emerge especially in Sweden and Norway. Although there are these elements all over Europe.
One of the most chilling reports on the topic appears here. — This is one of the most interesting essays I have seen for a while on how the tough guys in Scandanavian countries have been essentially de-balled. While much of this side of the debate stems from right-wingers, the facts described are the facts. Some of the things in this article border on insanity. As a result of running this link I will get comments from the other side defending all this nonsense. You watch.
In the year 2000, Swedish feminist Joanna Rytel and the action group Unf**ked Pussy entered the stage during the live broadcast of the Miss Sweden contest. She also wrote an article called “I Will Never Give Birth to a White Man,” for a major Swedish daily, Aftonbladet, in 2004. Rytel explained why she hates white men — they are selfish, exploitative, vain, and sex-crazed — and just to make things clear, she added, “no white men, please… I just puke on them, thank you very much.”
Misandry, the hatred of men, isn’t necessarily less prevalent than misogyny, the hatred of women. The difference is that the former is much more socially acceptable. “All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman,” according to Catherine MacKinnon, prominent feminist scholar at the University of Michigan and Yale. “All men are rapists and that’s all they are,” said Marilyn French, author and advisor to Al Gore’s Presidential Campaign. “I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them,” stated Robin Morgan, Ms. Magazine Editor.
If all oppression comes from Western men, it becomes logical to try weakening them as much as possible. If you do, a paradise of peace and equality awaits us at the other side of the rainbow. Well congratulations to Western European women. You’ve succeeded in harassing and ridiculing your own sons into suppressing many of their masculine instincts. To your surprise, you didn’t enter a feminist Nirvana, but paved the way for an unfolding Islamic hell.
America’s future
What’s with the last sentence? I know it’s not the whole article, but how does man-hating lead to Islamic hell?
Yourallcrazy!
Hey..You have to read the whole piece to get the drift of that comment…did you?? That was an excerpt. Please familiarize yourself with how to read a blog.
This is a start: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/primer/blogprimer1.htm
#1 if only islamic people are having babys they will inherite the world. I have noted most third world people have figured this out. We in the first are clueless on this.
So how does the white American birthrate stack up?
But isn’t this what always happens, backlash against those in power? Once upon a time, we had a nation or state to focus on, Rome, Britain, America, whoever was dominant, but in today’s global world, there’s no one great country you can focus on. Even America is surprisely weak for being a “superpower”.
So instead of hating Romans, Brits, Americans, hatred is now much more generic, hate all white men. The thing is it’s the stupid white men at the bottom, who don’t make any difference and don’t have any power, who are getting shafted because they THINK they should be treated like they rule the world.
Of course, they could always just go out with these foreign girls who like having kids. I mean, I saw Braveheart. Prima nocte. Evolution rules; if you’re too stupid to spread your seed around, expect to disappear from the planet.
Are you serious or just trolling for comments?
Giving credence to fjordman who wrote the last article mentioned is like giving credence to a writer supporting the kkk. It’s nice to see fjordman has got himself a new gig to spread his message but no one familiar with could take hime seriously.
And I suspect any empty playgrounds have more to do with the fact that both women and men work in Europe in a much higher degree that elsewhere. Homemaker is simply not a word here.
Many young Italians work on temporary contracts without benefits, making it unthinkable to take time off for babies; it is a work arrangement the Prodi government has vowed to change. But after so many years, childlessness has become socially acceptable here, even the norm among well-educated women.
Ilaira Magno, 37, who manages her own business, grew up with four siblings but is resolutely childless herself. She is content to visit her nephew, the family’s one child in the next generation.
“In my generation I know very few people with kids – there is no social pressure,” said Magno, toting a motorcycle helmet while shopping with her boyfriend in the winding streets near Christopher Columbus’s former house. “Even if I wanted one, which I don’t, I could not afford it.”
Mediterranean countries like Spain, Italy and Greece now have the lowest birthrates in Western Europe, in part because women in these cultures still bear the lion’s share of family duties, Del Boca said.
Wow, goes to show that a good rumor keeps going on and on even in the press.
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/mackinno.htm
That’s a link showing that Catharine MacKinnon never said “all sex is rape” or “all men are rapists”. So I would take that article that John links to with a grain of salt if the writer can’t even do a little research on the matter.
There was a fairly interesting piece on BBC4 recently about the balance of the sexes asserting: Women today have been brought up to seek independence and a career, and they are good at it as knowledge work suits women better than men. Result women attempting to fill both roles and treat men as casual amusements.
It sure is going to be interesting to see what the next generation will look like.
Like many couples in the US, both work because they want more. There are lower wage earners that need dual incomes, but many work because they want the cars, a home with a 1000 square feet they don’t really need, and junk to fill it. Sometimes life requires choices and sacrifices. Many women believe they can have it all by waiting until later in life to have children I admit having children isn’t easy, but postponing the choice into your 40’s has it own set of perils.
John, the exact same thing is happening in Japan too.
Even though you’re, once again, stirring and taking the pulse of your European blog reading masses, you touch a very sensitive issue.
I would very much like this blog thread to be discussed in the forums. Sure I can launch one, but I think that the JCD brand would mean much more.
That is if you’re serious, if your trolling for blog wars, ok. keep it here…
Hey, when you’re poor, there’s nothing much to do but fuck your wife or someone elses… Add to it that it’s the only entertainment you can get cheaply, and condoms are generally too expensive or are outlawed, what do you think would happen? The poor aren’t stupid, nor are they trying to take over the world… They just have to maximize their entertainment dollars…
A lot of good responses while I was pondering my own.
I’ll second Joao, though. This might have made a better forum post; there’s no way a proper response will fit into a couple of paragraphs.
If it didn’t work with the Catholics, though, I suspect we’re probably not going to succeed in breeding Islam out of existence, either. Maybe we should start selling them cheap whiskey and teach them to play bingo.
I don’t think that people with higher incomes take any less pleasure in making love to their spouses. They just have better access to birth control and healthcare. This access gives then the choice not to have children and often they’re making that choice. There is no wonder that fertility rates are dropping. Look at how child bearing is vilified in this country as a way to discourage young people from having sex. How many look down their noses at families with “too many” children. Many young people look on parenthood as an end tofreedom. This idea is reinforced by popular media. How many non-sitcom TV and movies heros have functioning marriages, much less are active parents? Some reality shows like “The Simple Life”, are openly hostile toward the family life. The media isn’t to blame. The media is just feeding a hunger that isn’t interested in parenthood. Affluence often requires working long hours. Afterall, we’re not all trust-fund babies. For working people, having children is a often a pain. Materinity leave for Mom’s are minimal. Paternity leaves for Dad’s are non-existent. When is the last time you saw a co-worker with a new-born child express breast milk publically? How would you feel if you saw this in the work place? What does your employer do to accomodate people with young children? Think about these things with respect to this issue.
Man, I learned a lot from this post and comments!
But wouldn’t a better solution be, instead of increasing birthrates in so-called developed countries, DECREASING them in lesser developed ones? It should be easy once you introduce consumer economies there – consumerism is the real reason behind the drop in births. Then maybe we could get the world population to start slowly decreasing, maybe give the planet a break?
OK, I’m dreaming… Just woke up, actually…
One of the rules of management is that you always face the facts no matter how brutal they are… and then act upon them.
I’ve done some research myself by downloading the European population birth rates out of the CIA World Factbook and arranging them according to Standard Deviation, Maximum Deviation, …
However you fiddle with the numbers, the outcome is still that the 4 best countries to live in in Europe if you want someone to take care of you when you’re old are:
1/ Ireland (Not surprisingly: very warm-hearted, family-oriented, catholic country)
2/ Iceland (Not surprisingly: very long, dark nights and you can’t watch TV all of the time… 🙂 )
3/ France (Not surprisingly: with a 35-hour work week parents have time to take care of their children and each other…)
3/ Cyprus (I have no clue: let’s have some comments)
(Yeah, France and Cyprus are similar, so both share 3rd place )
If you compare to the US of A, those “cowboys” aren’t doing too badly: still in the top of the first world and doing better then 90% of European countries…
Let’s face the facts, stop acting like pussies and [Joke alert] put our women back into the kitchen where they belong!
Hold on! I actually adore cooking! OK, I’ll cook and she can do the dishes… ;)[/Joke Alert]
Fabrizio
It’s the population growth that matters more than the birth rate. Countries with high birth rates also tend to have high death rates (generally speaking). Still, even factoring the higher death rate, the poor tend to reproduce quicker than the wealthy.
It used to be that a very successful man could gain access to more women thus distributing his good genes to the population. Modern culture seems now to have a negative evolutionary effect – wealthy successful people have fewer children.
“…peace and equality awaits us at the other side of the rainbow. ”
Yup, the ‘peace’ of the grave because everyone is ‘equally’ dead.
I guess if the women hate their society that much they can bring it to an end; though their hatred is obviously misguided.
Trouble in Europe? Nosense, I thought it was the great utopia over there. Everytime someone wants to bash America, they quote Europe as the shining example of perfection and how us barbaric Americans should learn a thing or two from them.
Would declining birth rates be such a bad thing? I don’t want a rising death rate, but perhaps the world would be a better place int he long run if we naturally had fewer people. (By naturally I mean a normal decline in population to a lower but stable level. I don’t wish plague or massive slaughter of people to accomplish that.)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…
Damn white people.
Would declining birth rates be such a bad thing?
No, if it was happening in the poverty ridden 3rd world.
19 Doug,
You seem to imply that successful men are better for breeding. I find most successful white men boring and self centered. Myself included.
Death rates? Are you high? Last time I checked, the death rate is 100%. Everyone dies. There is a huge difference if you die at 75 and leave one offspring, than if you die at 50 and leave four. The shorter lifespan of the less industrial countries doesn’t compensate for the high birthrate since most people reach child bearing age anyway. The fact that people burn through a generation faster only makes the problem worse.
25 Random
Not any more. Genetic success is determined by the number of offspring you bear that survive to have children. At the moment the most genetic success seems to go to more impoverished peoples.
In the past if you could afford to have many female lovers, due to success in politics, war, business, etc. then you were more likely be a genetic success too. How many children does Bill Gates have?
But I, like you, am not going to rival Ghengis Khan, Niall of the Nine Hostages, or Wilt Chamberlain either.
26 Death Rates:
Are you high? 100% everyone is born too! I am not saying that populations are not increasing, just that population growth = birth rate – death rate, and that populations are not exploding because of poor health.
Doug
Here’s my point. I don’t find white European males or white American males to have more value than a man from an impoverished nation. Why not let the 3rd world nations populate the world? They have the same inherent moral value that we do. That is my humble Christian successful white male opinion.
Why should I populate the world? I’m a bore and make bad self centered decisions with the weatlh I have aquired. Maybe somebody else should take over.
Just a thought. Pass me my latte…..
This article explains what lies behind the phrase “get lucky”.
Narrow perceptions make for narrow thought processes; the human species will propagate until it’s habitat is either used up or destroyed, most likely by humans. There may be some sorrow amongst certain ethnic divisons that their particular ethnicity is losing ground against others, especially in geographic areas considered “their” territory, but one way or the other, one color or the other, one culture or the other, humanity will survive until the species goes extinct.
Great civilizations come and go, none are permanent, including the ones that currently hold rather high opinions of themselves.
Omar, what about the nation of Isreal? They seem rather permanent.
Not that theres anything wrong but the third world seems less moral than the first with all their child sex slaving ang rampant crimei would rather not have them populate the world keep things as it is