The future is family

Chapter 5 opens the final part of the book on future-building practices by considering how trad futurism deepens the gender traditional presumptions of mainstream reproductive futurism. Analyzing the temporal imaginary at play in trad women’s understanding of tradition, it demonstrates how trad future-building practices cite aspects of past periods to realize an alternate modernity, rather than advocating a nostalgic return to an idealized past. Building off critical conceptualizations of temporal convergences between evangelical Christianity and neoliberal capitalism, which similarly prioritize the long run over the short-term future, it argues that trad future-building practices might serve as stopgaps to bridge the evacuation of the near future. The second part of the chapter excavates the deepening collusion between social conservatism and neoliberalism, which relies on traditional family configurations to keep things afloat as the state continues to withdraw from social welfare. Exploring the tension between indirect future-building practices associated with mothering future generations and more direct, hands-on future-building practices of public outreach trad women frame as an “almost unnatural” matter of duty, it shows how, in addition to tempering the putative overreaches of feminism, they also endeavor to balance out the more hardline racist and misogynist incursions of neofascism.