"We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children"
About this Quote
Greer’s line is designed to offend the polite explanations and force a less flattering diagnosis: Western fertility decline isn’t just economics or enlightened eco-anxiety, it’s culture - a cultivated aversion to the dependency, noise, and bodily disruption children represent. The provocation is the point. By stripping away “responsible” rationales, she treats them as alibis, a way a prosperous society narrates its choices as moral restraint rather than preference.
The subtext is a feminist ambush. For decades, motherhood was framed as women’s destiny; by the late 20th century, especially among the educated middle classes, the pendulum swung toward self-realization, mobility, and adult-centered intimacy. Greer is poking at that swing: not to re-sacralize motherhood, but to expose how easily liberation can mutate into disdain for caretaking. “We do not like children” lands like an accusation of emotional poverty, suggesting that a society that prizes autonomy will inevitably resent the most autonomy-erasing relationship there is.
Context matters: Greer emerged from second-wave feminism, when debates over contraception, abortion, childcare, and women’s labor were also debates about what kind of life modernity was building. Her sentence collapses policy talk into a character critique. It’s rhetorically effective because it’s uncomfortably plausible: you can support parental leave and still organize your life to avoid the mess of parenting; you can praise “family values” and still treat children as lifestyle accessories or public nuisances.
It’s also strategically unfair. Plenty of people do want children and can’t afford them, or are stalled by housing, precarious work, and weak social supports. Greer’s bluntness risks mistaking structural constraints for personal contempt - but that overreach is what makes the quote stick.
The subtext is a feminist ambush. For decades, motherhood was framed as women’s destiny; by the late 20th century, especially among the educated middle classes, the pendulum swung toward self-realization, mobility, and adult-centered intimacy. Greer is poking at that swing: not to re-sacralize motherhood, but to expose how easily liberation can mutate into disdain for caretaking. “We do not like children” lands like an accusation of emotional poverty, suggesting that a society that prizes autonomy will inevitably resent the most autonomy-erasing relationship there is.
Context matters: Greer emerged from second-wave feminism, when debates over contraception, abortion, childcare, and women’s labor were also debates about what kind of life modernity was building. Her sentence collapses policy talk into a character critique. It’s rhetorically effective because it’s uncomfortably plausible: you can support parental leave and still organize your life to avoid the mess of parenting; you can praise “family values” and still treat children as lifestyle accessories or public nuisances.
It’s also strategically unfair. Plenty of people do want children and can’t afford them, or are stalled by housing, precarious work, and weak social supports. Greer’s bluntness risks mistaking structural constraints for personal contempt - but that overreach is what makes the quote stick.
Quote Details
| Topic | Parenting |
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