Breeder (slang)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of Papists, with whom we are yearly over-run, being the principal breeders of the nation, as well as our most dangerous enemies, and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country, than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate." --"A Modest Proposal", Jonathan Swift |
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"Breeder" is a derogative term for people that have children (or heterosexuals in general).
"Breeder" may also be used as a derogatory term by childfree people of any sexual orientation, to refer to parents who focus on their children and abandon their previous friends and lifestyle, or to women who give birth to many children. The phrases "breeder, not parent" (BNP) or "parent, not breeder" (PNB) are used by some childfree communities to differentiate between what they regard as positive and negative parenting.
The use of "breeder" in this way is not new. It appears, for example, in Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, in which Swift repeatedly uses "breeder" to refer to human breeding:
- The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders.
Swift's piece was meant as black humor, and refers to the breeding of children for cannibalism. Some parents resent being referred to as "breeders", and feel that the word unduly reduces the process of child-raising to animal husbandry.
The term was part of a 2006 controversy in the heavily gay resort town of Provincetown, Massachusetts, when petitioners against same-sex marriage whose identity was published complained of having been called "breeders". SFGate described the term as "a joking or derogatory slur used by gays to describe heterosexuals".
Similarly, the term "welfare breeder" is colloquially and pejoratively used to refer to a person who is suspected of having children in order to obtain government resources, similar to the term welfare queen.
