What Doomsday Parenting Is

This site reflects the great paradox of rearing children in our age — we want kids to know the most important facts about the world, but the truth is increasingly bleak. How do we find a frame that is honest but also humane and hopeful? Is that even possible?

We offer honest reporting and analysis from the intersecting realities of human reproduction and societal decline. Sometimes this means serious exploration of the ideas driving today’s most challenging thinkers, and sometimes it means having a laugh or offering tips on how to cope — not just with the day-to-day of parenting but also with systemic challenges unique to our era that are often not immediately visible.

Sometimes we aim to engage minds in hopes of addressing a destructive trend and sometimes we seek simply to look through a lens for a different view. It is a place both for adults who have children and those deciding whether to have them, and who want to participate in a fuller understanding of all the forces that affect how we engage with kids about living in this imperiled world.

What Doomsday Parenting Is Not

This is not a site for children. We are brutally frank and don’t shy away from mature subject matter or harsh language when it’s sincerely felt by our contributors. It’s a place for you, as a parent or would-be parent, to be treated as an intelligent adult who can handle the truth and who deserves to be entertained.

It is not a place for bias-reinforcing, feel-good chatter. There are key taboos around many facets of the choice to become a parent today and how it’s practiced, and we are trying to face them effectively, defuse them when possible, but at the very least, never punish anyone for expressing a thought or opinion. (We will likely fail at this on occasion when faced with “bad actors,” whatever that is.)

We, the publishers, are a husband and wife living with their first child (born October 2018) in San Francisco but exploring the idea of uprooting and re-rooting. It is currently an idea without a plan. To a large degree, this project is meant to aid in forming that plan. It could be seen as a container for collecting valuable insights, and a place where perhaps such insights can emerge spontaneously through person-to-person dialogue. The possibilities for media creation are as open as this paragraph is vague. If any of these words so far excite you or feel alive for you, please reach out. We’re always looking for fearless collaborators.

Some of you reading this may think we are off-base and unduly pessimistic. That things might seem to be going in the wrong direction but it’s nothing that cannot be corrected with tweaks to existing institutions. We respect that. And we’re okay with the possibility that this site is not for you.

But please also consider that the very act of having children is a choice made to forge a future, so regardless of how slim the odds might be for the survival of the species, those of us who are parents are already beyond pessimism.

So, in spite of all that would make us fearful or reclusive or grumpy:

Enjoy!

—The Publishers