“ . . [Jameela Jamil] embodies a certain late-2010s voice that doesn’t resonate on Substack the way it might resonate on, say, Threads or Bluesky. Almost everything she says and writes would be a slam-dunk universally loved hot take in 2015. Just as an example, she responded to a recent critic on Substack by accusing her of being “embarrassingly white,” which would have killed on Tumblr ten years ago.”

This is really the only thing to say about that piece and Cartoons Hate Her nails it, as she always does.

Semi-relatedy:

I’ve been (mostly) staying out of the pro-natalist/anti-natalist discourse for, oh . . the last 10 years. (In 2015, I edited a book about choosing childlessness, though my refusal to embrace the term “childfree” made me a complicated figure within that “movement.”)

In recent years, I’ve half-jokingly called myself “personally anti-natalist but culturally pro-natalist.” (Babies for thee, but not for me.) When it comes to this issue, as with so many issues, many things are true. Population collapse in the west is a real thing, and those who want kids (which, despite trendy protestations, is most people) should be encouraged and supported in that project. Data shows that most people with one or two kids would actually like to have more, so we should find ways to help them do that.

Also true: not everyone should have kids. Namely, those who don’t want them. And here’s what sticks in my craw: this choice (and I’m talking about people who actively choose it) is rarely about shirking responsibility, having loads of leisure time and, despite what 21-year-old aspiring trads seem to think, wanting some kind of party lifestyle. Anecdotally, most of the non-parents I know take on extra responsibilities in their families and communities and take fewer vacations than nuclear family types.

For my part (not that it matters, since I’m an outlier in multiple directions), I never take vacations and pretty much work all the time to keep a roof over my head. The idea that not having kids has freed me up to buy Manolo Blahniks and jet off to Europe At The Drop Of A Hat™ is laughable.

But, ironically, that’s the kind of lazy rhetoric the “childfree” tend to resort to when explaining themselves (they seem to love the “drop of a hat” idiom). So they kind of bring this criticism on themselves. My main reason for publishing the book in 2015 was to show how limiting and wrong that kind of stuff is.

My advice: stop explaining yourself. Some say you’re not really an adult until you have kids. I say you’re not really an adult until you realize that no one actually cares that much about anything you do.