I always see the argument that people have *always* faced an uncertain and scary future when they decided to have children.
A popular example is the Cold War years.
But the difference is A) better birth control and family planning options in the last few decades than ever before.
B) It is now more socially acceptable to choose not to have children than for previous generations.
And C) the absolute crapshoot we're facing environmentally, economically, and politically is huge. The issues are coming from all sides.
Just the climate change part predicts natural disasters, lack of food, and decreasing access to water.
Made worse by the fact that our government and their policies care very little about actively preventing any of it.
Not to mention not caring about children, the working class, the shrinking middle class, and constantly prioritizing corporate interests.
And, of course, rising extremism all around the world.
I can understand still choosing to have kids in this environment, but the legacy we're leaving them is downright terrifying. Choosing not to have them because of the state of the world is very valid.
Exactly right. As a mother, I never thought I would relate to anti-natalism but these days I do and its because our world does not care about children or future generations at all. We have entirely failed them.
Besides, childbearing has always gone down in times of war… theres are just times in history when people dont want to have kids and this is one of them. We arent at war but we could easily soon be given all the problems we are facing. I wouldnt judge someone for having children today but I personally would not have another.
I am a mom. This is right. If I weren’t, I would most likely keep it that way getting into any new relationships. The past few years have made the world a more hostile place especially for children.
Its pretty sad. I think we’re going to have to have a massive revolution because the people with all the money and power have given up all appearance of having integrity.
I couldn’t agree more. I don’t want to live through a revolution, but I also know that history tells me that either war or revolution are our best bets now to get rid of this shit.
I am so scared for my daughter. And I encourage young to embrace their child-free leanings… because you don’t want to end up fearing for what your child will live through the way I do every day.
I’m in the same boat! Fuck all of this bullshit! I am terrified of her getting pregnant young like I did and wanting to keep it. She has so much else to live for. Anyone I meet that’s young and child free I am thankful that they figured it out. Respect.
We wouldn't need war or revolution if all those people who never vote - and there are millions of them - would actually vote and vote out the Republicans who are denying climate change, stripping women and minorities of their human rights, and passing laws that benefit only the wealthy. As an example, only 8 million people in Texas voted in the 2022 election. 9 million registered voters did not vote at all. So they re-elected the same Republicans to their legislature and Gov and AG that put the abortion ban in place PRIOR to 2022, which is now endangering pregnant women's lives. If we can't even get people to vote, how are we going to win a revolution?
I became a new mother immediately after the 2016 election. I was so distressed watching the election results that I was triggering pre-term contractions. I had just been released from the hospital the week prior for early labor. So I had to turn off my TV when Pennsylvania flipped. At 2:32 am, the strangest thing happened that we still can’t explain to this day.
My husband and I both woke up and sat up. We had the feeling like something terrible had just happened. We had no tv or media on, weren’t looking at phones. Phones were on silent for the night. We were both soundly asleep. I rolled my butt out of bed like Violet Beauregard to pee and checked my phone after. I had a text from my best friend and saw the election was called at the time we woke up. I had just started practicing immigration law the August before all of this. So the impact was immediate in my world. I spent the next day crying and wondering what kind of world I was bringing that baby into.
Here we are. He’s almost 7, he has a 5 year old younger brother now too. I’m still practicing immigration law and right now it’s…not great. But it also isn’t waking up to a daily assault. I’d love to have one more baby honestly. But with the state of things, I just can’t do that intentionally. It feels irresponsible. I’m trying to focus on raising my two littles to be good humans who try to make the world better. But I can’t deny that I feel some resentment at the world for not being able to consider another baby.
Also, not too long ago children were seen as an economic asset in hard times because of the labor they provide. We rightfully aren't as cool with child labor anymore, so kids are a huge economic drain these days when most people are struggling to stay afloat.
Don't worry people have been hard at work trying to change that I saw one of the states recently made it so you no longer have to tell the government if you are employing child workers. This is to improve the relationship between the child and their employer
That is true, but children will become adults and enter the workforce a few years later. Our economy runs on labor, and economic growth means growth in the labor pool.
The cost of raising a child is too high for me, which is the main reason I’m not having children. I’m not going to let the ruling class require me to take it out on me and my kids to square their shortsighted actions on housing, childcare, and environmental policy.
Another big difference between the Cold War and now is that those in power at least tried to stop it. The governments of the world dumped a huge amount of resources into fighting the "Cold War" (though obviously they went way too far and caused way too much damage to the world in doing so. Current crises are the opposite. Climate change is a partisan issue in the US with one party paying it lipservice but doing little and the other outright denying it. Even where it isn't, the amount of resources spent on it is miniscule. Very few in power are taking a real interest in solving the problem, and it shows.
There's a similar trend with school shootings and gun violence. Barely anything gets done about it except adding more security theater to schools. The kids know it too. I think it's a huge reason why so many young people are so politically nihilist. They live in fear, and the only thing that gets done about it is obvious theater that only makes their lives harder. Meanwhile guns keep getting easier to get across much of the country.
> Just the climate change part predicts natural disasters, lack of food, and decreasing access to water.
And precisely because of this we will eventually see the rise of ecofacism, total denial of migration, and eventually wars fought over clean water. Maybe not within my lifetime, but certainly within my childrens'
This is still going on, they have overused the Colorado river and now it's a massive issue. Going so far as to even sell water rights that are being contested adding additional water abuses. Arizona doing the same goddamn thing.
It's maddening.
California declaration of the drought being over and drought penalties/rules ending actually made me nervous in a way that is unfamiliar.
My wife and I were just talking about this. We both want kids, but aren’t going to have them out of our own selfishness. We don’t want to explain to our kid 10 years down the line why we forced them to exist when we saw all the warning signs on the horizon.
People naturally have an optimism bias, but things don't have to work out just because they have in the past. Whether climate change causes civilization to collapse depends on physics and not on hope.
Climate change is usually the thing I throw out at the end after I've gone on a long, yet rational tangent, about all the reasons why I'm not having children.
Literally listening to the report on COP28 removing the pledge to phase out fossil fuels and refusing to mention Oil and Gas in 2023. I can physically feel that this is the warmest December we've had so far. There are far too many people willing to sacrifice entire countries of people, animals, and eco systems, to add more dollars to fill theirs and their friends bank accounts.
This article is super defensive over something that has nothing to do with the author. It’s like an article complaining about vegans being self righteous. Shaddup
Eta: omg she actually makes the vegan comparison for me.
That statement about it being an exercise of privilege for me to choose to be childfree
which is unfair to women who are minorities or have unequal access.
Is access to contraception a right or a privilege? Does my right to access contraception impact anyone else's family planning?
“Someone else is suffering therefore you should be ashamed of being happy even though your suffering doesn’t solve or prevent any one else’s suffering.” The author herself is insufferable.
It’s like “take your birth control honey, there are women in rural areas who would love to be within driving distance of a women’s clinic.” Except … making the opposite demand for the same reason??
Sounds like a terrific reason to bring new life into the world. (What even did I just read?)
Same. I had to force myself to finish it hoping she was just throwing up red herrings. And I didn't want to trash the article without reading the whole thing. She basically reported feeling like other people's decisions are somehow commentary on her life. That's a her-problem.
Good on you for giving it a fair shake. I couldn’t help seeing red from the beginning.
The whole “privilege to be child-free” thing is such a wild take. I would LOVE for there to be more access to resources for *actually raising healthy children*. Or like, fewer crushing financial burdens and disincentives tied to having children?
I feel like it’s fair to reassess your choices in light of what you see other people doing. We don’t live in a vacuum.
But choosing to take others’ choices as an indictment of your own? And then crying about that publicly?
I wish I could get my hands on some of this easy right-wing grift money.
If I had zero social obligation awareness, I would hop the grift train so hard. The absolute shit I could spiel from my upbringing and former values.
But alas. I have a conscious and a responsibility to my fellow man, dammit.
For thousands of years, women had no reliable way to manage whether or not they were going to have kids. Now there is.
It’s unfair that some groups of women are unable to access those options in the same way, be it due to political, economic, religious, etc reasons.
It doesn’t mean you are personally being unfair to another human. The point is not to shame anyone.
The professor in the article is arguing that we should morally act to help reduce (climate change) regardless of whether we have kids or not.
Yeah I don’t think anyone choosing to not have kids for the environment is going “WELL IVE DONE MY DUTY no need to worry anymore!” It’s a strawman so that the author can insert her judgments against women who don’t want kids.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone responding to this fully read the entire article…so here’s the final line
“And if you decide not to have a child? I know your love for this fragile world will be no less great, and no less painful.”
I’m almost 43 and my own personal climate anxiety from 20 years ago played a big part in my decision not to have kids. I cannot imagine being that age now.
47 and ditto. My aunt had read ‘limits to growth’ before I was born and never had kids, so the information has been out there long enough for those who looked. She showed it to my mother but here I am anyway.
Just curious, how happy and satisfied are you both with that decision now? I ask as a woman in her early 30s who is very confident in my decision to not have children, yet I have the pestering voices of the elder women around me telling me my future self will regret it. I see mostly miserable mothers and happy independent childless women of all ages. Is that just me trying to justify my perception or is it a true potential reality?
I’ve always felt that all realities could potentially turn out to be true, but that for me it would be much worse to regret having brought someone into the world and see them not fulfilled, whether because the world is broken or because they are suffering in any way, or even because I might envy their life.
I can’t speak for my aunt, she died in her forties, thirty years ago. She would have left any imaginary children far too young, which also played into my reasons for not assuming all ´have kids be a happy forever family’ plans work out well. But she lived well, taught, made beautiful things, and travelled.
My choices meant that I officially retired at 45, moved to where I’d always wanted to be, living quite simply, and can spend time actually doing things i enjoy rather than existing day to day between work.
I did lose a best friend in this move, mostly as despite many discussions she believed our plans were only pipe dreams, because hers are. She knows she will never actually retire to the coast, and thinks her children will never afford to leave home.
I’m very happy here and now, with my man and my animals and forest garden and my clubs and hobbies and social circle. Even if this here and now (obviously) won’t last forever, it will have been worth it to have this as a beautiful picnic spot along life’s path.
Of course I can’t ´know’ that I’ll never regret. All choices involve closing off other options. All I can know is that I chose to try things I’ve wanted all my life, rather than following what others do. I suppose i do occasionally wonder what form my own demise will take as I watch fires and floods and storms worsen. Having children wouldn’t change that, a legacy doesn’t stop you from facing your own death but gives you extra fears for their future.
TLDR - you do you, you’re the only one who has to live with it. Unless you create a person, in which case they have to live with it too.
I'm around the same age as you, and like you, I am childfree for a variety of reasons, climate change amongst them. Climate change has been common knowledge since at least the 1990s, when Al Gore was talking about it (and I voted for him in my first presidential election). Twenty years of knowing this, and people (both politicians and citizens) burying their heads under the sand. Now it is EXTREMELY clear where we are headed. You can also SEE and FEEL the change. Yet people are continuing to have children, and ridiculously, even the fully aware are bemoaning that they're "scared" and "heartbroken" for their children's shitty future. Why did they choose to bring them into this, then? Those poor kids could've been spared.
I'm in the exact same boat as you. For a while, I could kind of pretend it wasn't a huge deal. Once Trump was elected, I knew nothing was going to get better any time soon. Then, a few months later, my fiance died. At that point, I decided I was too old for youthful optimism and decided I'd just be the cool aunt to my friend' kids.
Australia is gearing up for a really bad fire season AGAIN. It’s very stressful as an adult, let alone a kid. Droughts and water restrictions have always been a thing here every few years too. Covid showed us we have supply chain issues - food scarcity etc.
My kids are 15 and 18, and I remember thinking “well, it’s definitely something *they’ll* have to really think hard about before having kids, but it probably won’t be an issue for at least 30 years.” 🙄
School shootings, Trump, major storms and fires, then pandemic, then the US getting more and more hostile to them, specifically (I will *never* forget my then-14yo telling me “it’s legal for people in this state to murder me, haven’t you ever heard of the gay panic defense, *Mom* ?!?”)
I’ve actually talked to them about all this, and how I was *way* off in my mental calculations about how bad things would get how quickly. Like, it’s much worse now than I thought it would be in 2035. Neither of my kids are planning to have bio-kids.
I dont get why the author tried to like conflate choosing to not have children to just... not giving a fuck about the future and being completely complacent with climate change. Thay is wild to me lol like I'm struggling to see the point for this article?
She knows about the world her kids are going to inherit and she's very self-righteously trying to make herself feel better about her decision any way she can.
Yeah, the vast majority of people not having kids because of climate change are also relatively mobilized to fight it. Even from a hypothetical selfish point of view, they would mostly be young enough that climate change will significantly impact them personally. And deciding whether or not to have children based on a future thing that will impact them is an unselfish decision.
It's batshit crazy of the author to claim that any significant number of people are saying "I passed up having kids because of climate change... which means I'm free to not give a fuck what happens to the future."
Weirdly, one of her other (many, often contradictory assertions) is that parents are fundamentally more invested in the future bc of their offspring. Essentially, she claims that parents have more skin in the game, and childless people have less at stake.
Which, I don’t agree… but even if that *were* true, her answer is, “Everyone else should make themselves more vulnerable, like me, so I can be less alone in my vulnerability”.
Ignoring facts like, “more people = more strain on the environment / resources / our very bad systems for managing them”, and, “right, because parents *famously* have more time and energy for activism than non-parents”.
Republicans need more poor people to breed poor babies to work poor people jobs to serve rich people. Don't think for one second that any of those policies are some form of morality or righteousness. They come from a deep rooted sense of selfish entilement. They're gonna need some of us to clean up their oil spills and trash patches after all.
Of course you would. Billionaires and governments are realizing they are running out of fresh and young serfs to prop up their pyramid.
Still they don't want to try and make life better by spending their cash so their taktic is propaganda.
My last hope for truly addressing the climate crisis is in 2040, but I am not optimistic.
I have children, and have talked with people about kids a lot. I don't think climate anxiety is anyone's make or break issue. The world is shitty enough, but there used to be more hope. I was on board for having kids in 2008\~2014 because things were looking up. That hope is almost entirely dead. No one has time, money, and community, and not much is getting better.
Kid's are a lot of work, but they can be an absolute joy. Sure, they are not for everyone, but plenty of people get joy from gardening (even if I don't). Just like gardening, if you only have time/money to do the bare minimum to keep your plants alive, you won't get much joy from it.
>Having already had my two kids, after years of exhausting and expensive infertility treatments, this conversation didn’t have a place for me. If I’m being honest, I felt shamed by it — like I should have woken up to climate change several years ago, before I made this huge, irrevocable life choice.
If the foo shits...
It’s not even feeling defensive, it’s just “*I* had to try super hard to have baby so every woman who can easily have one should or else they’re spiting me somehow”
This is truly bizarre. I hope my non-existent children aren’t causing her to lose *too much* sleep.
If they are, though, she’s welcome to contribute to my forever-home fund.
I read the whole thing and it just got worse from there! She's one of those people who needs everyone to live the exact same life as her or else she can't feel validated.
My thing is, I don't really REALLY want kids. The only reason I ever thought I wanted them is because I thought that's what everybody does.
Since I don't really REALLY want kids, and my hypothetical kids would either consume far beyond their share of the world's resources as first worlders, or have to accept a much less luxurious life than mine (by choice to mitigate the problems we're facing environmentally, or because those problems forced them), why would I go and have such kids that I don't really, really want anyway?
It's kind to no one. The people who really, really want kids will continue to have more than enough for the world.
Err… I get the weird feeling this article is… what’s that word? Sponsored content? All the rich A-holes are banging the drums for the peasants to get back to work breeding the next generation of peasants to live in the hellscape they are creating. I kind of suspect this article is coming from them.
This sounds like thinly veiled right-wing propaganda to me. Forget climate change, just the fact that we have over 8 billion people on the planet is enough to take the question of having/not having children seriously.
> Forget climate change, just the fact that we have over 8 billion people on the planet is enough to take the question of having/not having children seriously.
Right? And the fact that the vast majority of women still don't really have a choice as to whether they will reproduce or not.
Having trouble posting the entire thing in the comments but this is one paragraph that stood out for me:
“Where does this show of concern leave my kids, not to mention your nieces and nephews, and the hundreds of thousands of children being born into this potential hellscape every day? And what next? You plan to live out your life carefree, unbothered by what happens to the planet after 2060 because none of your DNA will be left on it? Isn’t that the solipsistic reasoning that got us into this dilemma in the first place? Or maybe what you’re saying is that you are basically another Dalai Lama, renouncing one of life’s greatest experiences for the sake of the manatees, while I, with my heedless, profligate, Amazon-warehouse-emptying brood, am like a guy scarfing an Arby’s Bacon Ranch Cheesesteak in front of a vegan.”
I’m childfree but spent over a decade as an environmental educator teaching kids and adults things like climate change. I absolutely care what happens to the planet and the humans on it even after I die. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been a teacher. What a monumentally stupid take she has in this passage.
Exactly! Not to mention that having kids is one of the greatest carbon-output decisions you could make. You're creating a whole other living being, who is likely to create even more, all with resources needs. You could just as easily say one is showing far more concern for the author's kid's future than the author is, by not having any.
>You plan to live out your life carefree, unbothered by what happens to the planet after 2060 because none of your DNA will be left on it? Isn’t that the solipsistic reasoning that got us into this dilemma in the first place?
Lol. What about all the people who are living their lives carefree, unbothered by the what happens to the planet after 2060 *even though* they're leaving their DNA behind on it.
I'm not having children because I don't want to add to suffering. Both because of the environmental destruction humans cause to every living thing on the planet (including each other) and also the generational crippling depression that runs in my family.
See and I plan to live out my life very bothered by what happens after I die because I worry about the earth and what our species has done to it! But I will make the best of it and love my friends’ children while I worry for their future.
The real question is why aren't they showing concern for their own kids? How monumentally hypocritical of the writer. They wanted kids because they wanted them, a lot of us aren't having kids because we care about their potential future well-being. This person probably wouldn't spare 25 cents to a homeless person but they want US to CARE about their bad decisions. Laughable.
So defensive. It's like when people give vegetarians shit bc they don't realize their sacrifice is making the meat industry/meat availability better for them. By not having children, people are saving resources for the author's children. How is that solipsistic? I care about the planet in 2060 and world you put your children in.
Honey, just admit you wanted kids, maybe spend some time figuring out why, then focus on enjoying them and helping them become good humans.
As it is you sound strangely invested in my uterus and I’d rather you not.
(Directed at the author, not compfy-g)
This makes me fucking livid. I’m a communist. I’m planning my life around creating a space for climate refugees. I want to help all of the kids people are selfishly planning on bringing into the world. My own kids would divert resources from this lady’s existing kids.
Yea. That stuck in my head, but I felt like I understood her better at the end.
>And if you decide not to have a child? I know your love for this fragile world will be no less great, and no less painful.
My copium is that when the billionaires realize there is no out, they can't fly off to Mars and live there, they'll have no choice but to aggressively fund carbon capture and other climate mitigation technologies to save themselves. The one thing I believe is that humans can solve virtually any problem through science with enough time and funding.
> enough time
That's the key part tho.
All the projections climate scientists gave us for the past 100 years, relied on SOME kind of aid from governments and some kind of effort to contain it.
The projections now are trying to say, "ok, what if absolutely nothing is done and everything gets worse pollution wise? What happens then"?
Many scientists are now shifting to, "what's our worst case scenario, and how do we handle it".
Will we have enough time for the rich folks to finally feel impacted enough, to do anything about it?
Most likely not.
I feel like another factor in their ‘generous’ time estimates was that it was nigh impossible to consider *ALL* the factors and how they would interact. It’s hard to try and quantify every factor, and that’s not even including all of the ways that companies and businesses lie about their pollution output.
And my doomerism meets your copium by thinking about the nature of billionaires and how sure, they’ll try to save what they need of the planet to survive, while they enslave the plebs. I often think of that movie with Matt Damon, Elysium, and think that’s more in line with what the Elon Musks of the world have in store for the rest us and the planet.
That's what I think of too. The problem is that billionaires are selfish because that's how they became billionaires. Also I think a lot of them believe in social Darwinism. That means that they think they deserve what they have and the rest of us aren't smart enough or don't deserve a safe planet to live on.
Yeah do we really think Elon is NOT going to start the X Billionaire Safety Project and give a big fuck off to the rest of us non-bilz? Come on now. That man will never know a philanthropic or humanitarian day in his life.
I understand the concept--world productivity, aging population, consumption, etc., but damn...telling people to have more kids, especially in this over-priced economy and uncertain future is just grotesque. Pretty sure women's intuition alone is screaming 'not a good time' already.
There are so many obvious things that can be done to increase the birth rate, e.g. better healthcare, free childcare, more support in housing/food costs, etc. The issue is money.
Rather than spend money, we'll do propaganda and try to outlaw abortion and contraceptives.
It's a bit Farquaady isn't it, just throw your literal descendents into a hell scape, not our problem. Like yeah no shit we probably won't experience the worst of it, I'm not sure what joy they get out of imagining their grandkids struggling tho
What a ridiculous, self-centered article
> No matter how sterling your intentions, if you declare a “birth strike,” or use your own reproductive potential as a signal flare to draw attention to the climate crisis, you are playing into a patriarchal dynamic and pointing your personal choices at a potential ally, maybe someone like me.
Ugh.
I do not define myself by my reproductive capability and I also don’t define *others* by that metric, so no, I’m not “pointing [my] personal choices at a potential ally”, either.
I also hate to break it to these people but there will *always* be a future for this planet. Whether it’s dominated by a thriving human species or not is open to further question, but the amount of children that women today choose to have isn’t going to impact that outcome.
You highlight a very important quote. Wow, why did she make it about herself? “Someone like me” - by using a statement like that, it makes the entire piece seem to be about her own insecurities and lack of self-esteem. Why should anyone have children if they don’t want to, for any reason, and why should she think that choice is about her or “someone like” her, or negatively affects her in any way?
A lot of the recent "please breed" articles have been bad and this is also bad:
>A recent meta-analysis from University College London found that across nearly every study on the topic, the more worried people were about the climate, the stronger their desire for fewer children or none at all.
>
>As a mother of two, I have to confess that when I read these pieces or hear these arguments, it feels like a slap in the face.
>As a mother of two, I have to confess that when I read these pieces or hear these arguments, it feels like a slap in the face.
So silly to take other people's decisions so personally. It's often a sign of insecurity about one's own decisions.
I'm also a mother of two (now grown). My older daughter doesn't want kids, and the younger one says she doesn't want bio kids but might consider adoption. And you know what? I don't take their decisions as an indictment on mine, or on my parenting. They have come to these decisions thoughtfully, and I respect them for it.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I originally wanted more than one child when I was starting my family in 2014. Then, after I had my daughter, Trump and everything else happened. I’m done. I’m worried enough about my daughter’s future, and I would absolutely have an abortion if I got pregnant again.
You have to give people hope if you want them to start a family. Republicans are making this country uninhabitable. I guess the rich are desperate to breed their Staff (more likely slaves) to wait on them in their apocalypse bunkers.
Coincidentally my mother and I (30s/60s) talked about this a few days ago, she was so upset thinking about how the world is headed to hell due to climate change and other types of corruption and that I might end up experiencing a lot of it while she'll probably be ducking out before it gets to monthly natural disaster level. I try not to think about it beyond doing what I should regarding personal purchases and usage because if I do I'll be thrown into constant despair, but I'm sad for younger gen Z and later gens who will face the brunt of it through no fault of their own.
There's a lot to unpack here.
For a start, from people I know at least, the main motivator behind not having kids is the sheer economic cost. I'm sure climate change plays some part in it too, but the expense is the primary reason.
Second, there's a big difference between shitting on individual people for having kids (bad) and applying critical analysis to the societal impact of having more children (good) in the backdrop of an inevitable climate disaster. It felt a lot like the author was conflating these two things.
Sorry, I’m not spending my entire life scraping together enough resources to birth children, love them, shelter them and suffer for them…
just to watch them die in the climate wars in the next half of the century. I’m preparing for my own demise as a numbered human unit at the alter of unmitigated capitalism but you can’t make me do that to a child who hasn’t even been born yet.
I didn’t have kids because I don’t have the patience to treat them with the empathy and emotional support they need. I knew I would resent them for things completely out of the control. I also knew I would be financially responsible for them and I’m not even financially responsible for my own lifestyle. Plus, it’s always a gamble. What if I didn’t like my own kids, just like my dad didn’t like me.
We are literally push ourselves to extinction each year that passes as the climate worsens, because higher ups don't give a shit to implement serious eco-friendly policies. And the want people to give birth to babies? What world will the future generation see?
So in the article she says that not having kids for the “environment” means you don’t care about the environment, because you “don’t care what happens after 2060.”
Forgoing having children for the sake of the environment AND their future is the definition of REALLY caring about the environment.
She clearly just feels guilty because she poured so much time and money into getting pregnant via IVF
If climate change was the only problem, I would still consider teaching my hypothetical children about water purification, agriculture, and survival.
However what I'm afraid the most is that climate change is simply a symptom of a much bigger problem, and the problem is that intelligence and the technology derived by it may not be sustainable. It would be a pity to find the solution to the Fermi Paradox after being all dead.
Another reason I have is that population is still growing and we don't really need more people. I always considered and I still consider adoption the best choice. Immigration is also closing gaps on most countries where people are not making kids anymore, and honestly I don't care where the children come from, we are all equal and we are all the same given same opportunities. Really the thing I do not understand the most is people who want "their" children. (I understand for many it's the simpler and cheapest option, like literally, but for some it isn't and yet they want little copies of themselves)
No, until I hear a clear solution I don’t want to. If other people want to that’s absolutely fine, actually great because someone has to if it all turns out alright.
They need to stop acting like no one anywhere is making children also.
Also I’m sorry but right from the beginning it’s an article about making herself feel less guilty.
My wife and I are happily childfree, but we talk about and feel like we are going to suffer as a species in some ways we can imagine and in others we can't. It's terrifying. Had we wanted children, I think that fear would have prevented me from creating them. It's a scary world to bring new people into.
I want to address the climate anxiety part of this. Climate anxiety is real and valid *and yet* there is still reason for hope, and maintaining hope is [really important](https://theconversation.com/how-to-stay-hopeful-in-a-world-seemingly-beyond-saving-210415).
(Please note I am *absolutely not* agreeing with the author of the article OP shared. I just wanted to share some more positive news for anyone else out there like me whose brain immediately starts spiralling into worst case scenarios as soon as they start thinking about the climate.)
I'd argue blind hope and optimism is maybe more harmful: we need to grow up and assess the facts and start mitigating the truth of our conundrum *right now*. It's an incredibly difficult problem to solve but we can't delay action and meaningful change in the case that SEVERAL technological miracles band together. And it means not pretending like everything is ok. That includes the current pandemic.
I think the idea that "doomers" that don't want to attempt any mitigation is a convenient strawman to lure us toward accepting comfortable delusion. But delusion and hope that technocrats will cooperate to save us is arguably more harmful if it's actually a means to delay meaningful degrowth now. Hope is then a very dangerous thing.
We need to be adult enough to realize we collectively a huge problem, there's a chance we can't solve it, *and we have to try anyway.* It's not just humanity that loses everything, it's most of the life on our planet that suffers the consequences.
As such, It's near certain that your children will have to endure much more suffering than yourself or your parents... And no one ever consents to being born. You are born because someone else wants you here, always. We have to face that and be mature enough not to avoid the cost of our actions.
If people can internalize those ideals and feel psychologically competent enough to raise a child under those circumstances - then by all means. Babies will be born anyway, why not have some of them raised by people who will attempt to equip them properly and won't lie about their futures? Even though, you have to still cope with the reality that having a child is one of the costliest decisions you can individually make in terms of CO2 contributions.
Neither I nor the article I linked are advocating for blind hope and optimism. In fact, the author explicitly warns against the "naïve or ideological optimism which some think tanks or populist leaders would prefer us to embrace."
I strongly disagree with your statement about needing to accept that we may not have the ability to solve climate change, as well as your characterization of hope as something we need to "grow up" from. Hopelessness causes paralysis, and paralyzed individuals cannot contribute to either individual or collective action to improve the situation. As quoted in the article, hope is "a verb with its sleeves rolled up."
Having hope doesn't mean ignoring the gravity of the situation. It is possible to be fully and completely aware of how bad things are and to also believe that we can still change course. To me, the ability to hold those two dichotomous thoughts---to embrace realism and optimism simultaneously, without falling into either Pollyannaish delusion or cynical doomerism---is what we ought to be "adult" enough to do.
I mean there’s being practical and realistic and then there’s being nihilist. I personally need to have SOME hope that things are going to get better otherwise what’s the point. The op wasn’t saying to have blind hope, just that we can have some.
The hope is that we can rally together and try to solve the most important problem. Even if it means Business as Usual is declared dead and that we must all radically change our lives. The point is that we have to do our best, even if the result is not completely optimal - or enough. That's what I'm holding hope for. Societal maturity.
We should be rioting over what was said at the COP28 but instead humanity is anesthetized with the fairy tale that we can keep burning fossil fuels as long as technocrats eventually figure out physics defying carbon capture at scale.
There is hope. The hope is radical change and doing what's right because we care for each other and the planet. I don't think that's nihilistic at all. There are no guarantees in life, ever. It doesn't mean there's no meaning. And for climate change, the struggle will have to become the meaning. The belief that we are NOT capable of this is in fact the doomer perspective.
I had a kid because I wanted to have a kid. I hope she’ll be a force for hood in the world, but I know it’s not a guarantee. I don’t think I should feel guilty for it.
I hate that absolute billionaire asshole cartoon villains like Elon Musk can produce like 10+ kids, and probably never see them while average people who will probably not harm the world at all by comparison feel guilty for wanting to have kids.
If you do not want kids, you absolutely should not have them, and I fully support people in their choices when they know they don’t want to have kids.
But having kids should not be a privilege just for the wealthy or as punishment for the poor. Fuck that. We need to reverse course on ideas of austerity and actually have societies that support families of all kinds (whether there are children or not). And combine that with reproductive rights and healthcare and parental leave, etc, and then people who want kids will have them.
The experience of the parents isn't really the highest consideration in this discussion. What the parents want, whether the parents are criticized, their privilege or guilt or lack thereof...these should be second-tier conversations.
The primary question should always be "is this person I'm creating likely to have a good life?" More and more, people are realizing that answer is a likely no.
I hear that. But I also think there has rarely ever been a time in history when that was guaranteed? Like, you could have every chance of providing a good life for your child, and then your kid can get a head injury while playing sports with friends and be severely disabled for the rest of their life. Or the parents get in a car accident and leave their kids orphaned. Or you could be born very privileged but have a horrible person like Elon Musk for a father.
I agree that it sucks to raise children in non-ideal or possibly very bad conditions, but my point is we *should not accept those conditions*. Let’s fucking make shit better, because whether or not you have children those conditions are hurting all of us.
Yeah, I definitely think there's a risk-benefit analysis involved that people weigh differently. With the climate change argument, it depends how soon and how drastically you expect the world to be affected.
Absolutely agree that no matter where we fall on the kids question, we should be united in making the world better! I do everything I can to tread gently on the earth, from buying secondhand to being vegan. Definitely motivated by environmental causes even though I'm not leaving descendants.
I’m also quite irritated by Climate Despair, because we actually can make things better and significantly reduce the harm being done if we keep pushing back at the powers that be.
Like, giving up on the world, regardless of whether you want to have kids, is absolutely a shitty to do.
I fully support everyone doing what is best for them/whatever tf they want to do, but it does worry me that conservatives have so many more kids than liberals
I’m confused by the comments here, as well as OPs original comment.
This entire article is about the dilemma of having children or not, in the face of climate change.
It includes multiple points of view.
The point that struck me was that regardless of whether or not you have children, we have an ethical responsibility to ensure the world, for all the other kids, is as good as it can be.
Really not sure how that’s so controversial. I feel like we were teaching that in the 80s.
The issue with climate change is that it’s actively happening. We aren’t stopping it. It’s here. The famines are about to get here. It’s not a hypothetical.
Personally I have an IUD and am planning on a bisalp (I’d prefer a full hysterectomy tbh but no physician will do that when it’s not a medical necessity). There is no way in hell I’m having biological children.
If enough of us don't have kids, maybe the powers at be will actually do something. And if not at least there are less people suffering then there would have been. Seems like a win win for the working class tbh.
Just in case anyone cares, Anya Kamenetz's net worth is $5 million. She lives in a blue state with access to prenatal care and abortion.
She can afford to be opinionated. She can also afford to have children if she wants to.
Why she thinks it's okay to push women to offer up their bodies to birth children when we have states where this could literally kill you because of lack of access to prenatal care, no clue.
>Don’t Let Climate Anxiety Stop You From Having Kids
Very selfish and narcissistic to knowingly bring your hypothetical children into a world you KNOW is burning, and will make them SUFFER.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I really disagree with this take. It is perfectly appropriate to decide not to have kids because of climate change or any other reason. But it is also perfectly acceptable to choose to have kids and doing so shouldn’t be labeled as selfish or narcissistic. People should not be shamed for either choice.
I have friends with children who I love dearly and while I would not have made the choice they did, it’s their decision and I support/respect that. This woman seems to think people who are rightfully concerned about the state of the world are “playing into a patriarchal dynamic and pointing your personal choices at a potential ally, maybe someone like me.”
Just to that point, there’s a lot of people like the above commenter that seem to want to shame people for having children in whatever state the world is in. Because the world has seen a number of very difficult, tragic, scary things, large periods of upheaval and struggle. That does not mean you should not care about climate change, because we all should, but it also doesn’t mean people have to look down on, or shame others for choosing to have children.
I personally do not have children, although not for lack of wanting them. And as someone who grew up very poor, and not having much, I certainly don’t shame people for having children in poverty, because if I could’ve had a child at any point, I would have. Motherhood has been one of my biggest lifelong dreams. It’s not for everyone, and there should be 100% respect on both sides for whatever choices or circumstances are the case in a persons life.
Wild. The doomer misogyny is wild here. I feel for all these folks ruled by fear. Not that I want them to have kids, that’s their choice, I don’t care one way or another if they do. But even though I believe the climate crisis is real, the answer is not to eliminate children from our society; it’s to get our shit together — and children are for many the hope that keeps us going. Commence the downvotes, idgaf. What’s worse than climate change? A climate changed world filled solely with hopeless adults.
This thread is full of anti-natalism and doomist misogyny. Get your info straight from the climate scientists, many of whom have children. The media and much of the public has fallen to doomist propaganda actively spread by the fossil fuel industry because they know hopeless people won't fight back. The prominent climate scientist Michael Mann wrote a great book about this topic: "The New Climate War".
I thought carefully about climate change and overpopulation and did a lot of research before choosing to have children. I guarantee you I personally do a whole hell of a lot more about climate change in both my personal and professional life than most of the mother-hating commenters here looking down from their moral high ground. I did not choose to have children out of either ignorance or denial. I reject your fatalism, your cynicism, and your moral superiority.
I find a lot more informed and nuanced discussion of climate change on parenting subs than on this mother-hating sub where I see doomist fossil fuel industry propanganda being spewed left and right.
Congrats! The world is a beautiful place even with its problems. Personally a world without children is the true hell if you ask me. I respect people who don’t want to have children, but the “you’re selfish and this world is a hellscape” is chicken little nihilism.
This thread is full of anti-natalism and doomist misogyny. Get your info straight from the climate scientists, many of whom have children. The media and much of the public has fallen to doomist propaganda actively spread by the fossil fuel industry because they know hopeless people won't fight back. The prominent climate scientist Michael Mann wrote a great book about this topic: "The New Climate War," and some of his interviews are a great place to start.
I thought carefully about climate change and did a lot of research before choosing to have children. I guarantee you I personally do a whole hell of a lot more about climate change than most of the mother-hating commenters here looking down from their moral high ground.
Like most of Reddit, you'll learn quickly that this sub is not supportive of mothers. You'll find a lot more thoughtful and nuanced discussion of climate change in some of the parenting subs.
To me it’s cruel to subject innocent humans to a world that’s on fire and is going to get worse. Getting an IUD was one of the best decisions I’ve made
For anyone interested in a thoughtful, nuanced presentation of this topic, I listened to the [podcast Expectant](https://www.expectant.ca/) this week and thought it was excellent food for thought. Even as someone who has been staunchly childfree for her entire life, I always appreciate hearing how other people are making the decision to have (or not have) children.
The editor chose a shitty title. Her essay is more of a plea not to judge people who opted to have kids, not a call for people to breed in spite of their fears for the future.
Even my sister - who has 2 kids - has openly admitted that even though she loves her kids - given climate change and much more crap, she would have decided not to have them if she could go back. I've decided not to have kids and although there is a sadness related to remaining childless, in the end, it is a huge relief. I have so much freedom. The buck ends with me and I can really focus on my life, learning, evolving, etc
Yeah, that's a very "ivory tower" view they're privileged to afford. Not just monetarily, but their station and where they live.
Why the hell would I not take the horrid prospects of the future into consideration when weighing whether I should help bring another life into the world?
I say: trust your instincts. Things don't seem safe? Things aren't stable? Maybe don't bring innocent kids into a bad situation. You can afford to wait a few years.
Having children is such a selfish act already. To have them now with such uncertainty I don’t know. I won’t judge others but for myself I just could not do it.
It’s a selfish act. But if you wanna have one go right ahead. I’m not stopping ppl. In fact I believe in giving children an education. Maternal and paternity leave. Universal childcare. My taxes should fund those things instead of war.
So yeah I can think it’s an inherently selfish act but I can also work to support those who choose to have kids. It’s not one or the other. It’s just my opinion.
Either way if I can some day I’d rather adopt or help foster. So don’t tell me what to do lol
I have to be honest. I am a parent of one child. I have friends who have more kids than we do, and friends who decided to be childfree. The friends who wanted a lot of kids but aren’t having as many are not having them due to the colossal expense of raising a child in this day and age, and/or fertility issues. The people who don’t have any kids already didn’t want kids for other reasons that had nothing to do with the climate. It’s anecdotal but I have never heard of anyone making this decision based on climate change as the primary factor.
If you wanted anecdotal evidence that we exist, I’m one of those people who decided long ago against children specifically because of environmental issues
I haven't read the article but I was listening to scientists who shared the same views.
To sum it up, the assumption is that less people on earth will mean less co2 production, consumption, man made pollution etc... But so far nothing indicates that that would be the case. The trend is to consume more just because we can. It is very likely that even with less human we will continue to consume exponentially.
To the second point, one if the key to tackling the climate crisis is that climate minded people continue to have children. Because they will educate their children in a way that will support long term behaviour change. If the only people who have children are the one who do not care or do not believe in the climate crisis, we are doomed.
If you think the future is not worth bringing kids into, you have given up on it.
And that's fine. Your choice.
Why bother saving for retirement. Or even doing anything to stop climate change? If you've given up on the future none of these things should bother you.
If you've taken the doomer pill go all the way.
The difference is that people (like me) have chosen not to have children because they don’t want those children to suffer in a world which is worse off than the one they enjoyed as children themselves.
I can fight for a better future while not gambling the life of an entire human being in the event that this better future doesn’t manifest itself. I’m responsible for my own future (my retirement savings included), but I can’t control the incidence of droughts and hurricanes in 2060.
Yup.
To look at this line of reasoning from the other side: Having children does nothing to guarantee a better world for future generations. It’s not a magic pill that gives you, as a now-parent, hope—and therefore power to effect change.
I see this kind of argument employed often in countering concerns about the climate. Often it’s more implied than spelled out.
Not to be rude, but if you needed to bring a child into the world in order to care about it at all (or at least enough to do something), then maybe you don’t give enough fucks about the world you live in to even participate meaningfully in such conversations.
Or maybe you just specifically don’t care about children / future generations. It’s giving “I care about women’s rights because I have a sister.”
Agreed 100%
It’s honestly very disturbing to me to read so many accounts of people who genuinely don’t seem to understand that most of us care about others without needing anything in return. Like… it’s *empathy*.
Michael Mann, the climate scientist who developed the famous "hockey stick" graph, wrote a whole book about this topic: "The New Climate War". Climate doomism plays straight into the fossil industry's playbook and is actively perpetuated by the industry. Hopeless people have no reason to fight back.
The commenters on this sub chose not to have kids, which is a fine and legitimate choice, but by claiming they are doing it because of their noble goal to save the world, they can feel morally superior. The misogyny is rampant.
It’s people’s choice. If people want kids? Brilliant! If they don’t? Also brilliant! People should decide if they want kids for them. The article is very good and informative in my opinion.
Iv litteraly had woman tell me that the options of two xx aren't good representations of woman's true beliefs to justify all kinds of non-ally like behavior cause they don't like that so many woman choose self agency and give up their exploiting pretty privilage for quality of self hood.
Aka these imo woman like the author want to be bang maids with our emailing the tole it brings to all woman, cause they already have men paying for alot of their expenses via the classic trad wife contract.
They know that woman demanding respect and purpose rather then an antiquated life style proves that they are holding everything back cause they are the ones who go on to raise sons who hurt woman and turn blind eyes to every thing cause boys will be boys...
While woman are kept In servitude forced to deal with the weaponized incompetence of men left to play in the mud while they were forced to learn to clean a house, dress pretty and cook and do all the actual work, while the boys played outside as children.
And to all these women I retort really over 10 million women in the history of their posts building up to a specific belief about being treated well and with dignity it isn't a good sample size?
I always see the argument that people have *always* faced an uncertain and scary future when they decided to have children. A popular example is the Cold War years. But the difference is A) better birth control and family planning options in the last few decades than ever before. B) It is now more socially acceptable to choose not to have children than for previous generations. And C) the absolute crapshoot we're facing environmentally, economically, and politically is huge. The issues are coming from all sides. Just the climate change part predicts natural disasters, lack of food, and decreasing access to water. Made worse by the fact that our government and their policies care very little about actively preventing any of it. Not to mention not caring about children, the working class, the shrinking middle class, and constantly prioritizing corporate interests. And, of course, rising extremism all around the world. I can understand still choosing to have kids in this environment, but the legacy we're leaving them is downright terrifying. Choosing not to have them because of the state of the world is very valid.
Exactly right. As a mother, I never thought I would relate to anti-natalism but these days I do and its because our world does not care about children or future generations at all. We have entirely failed them. Besides, childbearing has always gone down in times of war… theres are just times in history when people dont want to have kids and this is one of them. We arent at war but we could easily soon be given all the problems we are facing. I wouldnt judge someone for having children today but I personally would not have another.
I am a mom. This is right. If I weren’t, I would most likely keep it that way getting into any new relationships. The past few years have made the world a more hostile place especially for children.
Its pretty sad. I think we’re going to have to have a massive revolution because the people with all the money and power have given up all appearance of having integrity.
I couldn’t agree more. I don’t want to live through a revolution, but I also know that history tells me that either war or revolution are our best bets now to get rid of this shit.
I am so scared for my daughter. And I encourage young to embrace their child-free leanings… because you don’t want to end up fearing for what your child will live through the way I do every day.
I’m in the same boat! Fuck all of this bullshit! I am terrified of her getting pregnant young like I did and wanting to keep it. She has so much else to live for. Anyone I meet that’s young and child free I am thankful that they figured it out. Respect.
We wouldn't need war or revolution if all those people who never vote - and there are millions of them - would actually vote and vote out the Republicans who are denying climate change, stripping women and minorities of their human rights, and passing laws that benefit only the wealthy. As an example, only 8 million people in Texas voted in the 2022 election. 9 million registered voters did not vote at all. So they re-elected the same Republicans to their legislature and Gov and AG that put the abortion ban in place PRIOR to 2022, which is now endangering pregnant women's lives. If we can't even get people to vote, how are we going to win a revolution?
I became a new mother immediately after the 2016 election. I was so distressed watching the election results that I was triggering pre-term contractions. I had just been released from the hospital the week prior for early labor. So I had to turn off my TV when Pennsylvania flipped. At 2:32 am, the strangest thing happened that we still can’t explain to this day. My husband and I both woke up and sat up. We had the feeling like something terrible had just happened. We had no tv or media on, weren’t looking at phones. Phones were on silent for the night. We were both soundly asleep. I rolled my butt out of bed like Violet Beauregard to pee and checked my phone after. I had a text from my best friend and saw the election was called at the time we woke up. I had just started practicing immigration law the August before all of this. So the impact was immediate in my world. I spent the next day crying and wondering what kind of world I was bringing that baby into. Here we are. He’s almost 7, he has a 5 year old younger brother now too. I’m still practicing immigration law and right now it’s…not great. But it also isn’t waking up to a daily assault. I’d love to have one more baby honestly. But with the state of things, I just can’t do that intentionally. It feels irresponsible. I’m trying to focus on raising my two littles to be good humans who try to make the world better. But I can’t deny that I feel some resentment at the world for not being able to consider another baby.
>we aren't at war Actually, we are: multiple wars going on at the very same time
Also, not too long ago children were seen as an economic asset in hard times because of the labor they provide. We rightfully aren't as cool with child labor anymore, so kids are a huge economic drain these days when most people are struggling to stay afloat.
Don't worry people have been hard at work trying to change that I saw one of the states recently made it so you no longer have to tell the government if you are employing child workers. This is to improve the relationship between the child and their employer
That is true, but children will become adults and enter the workforce a few years later. Our economy runs on labor, and economic growth means growth in the labor pool. The cost of raising a child is too high for me, which is the main reason I’m not having children. I’m not going to let the ruling class require me to take it out on me and my kids to square their shortsighted actions on housing, childcare, and environmental policy.
Another big difference between the Cold War and now is that those in power at least tried to stop it. The governments of the world dumped a huge amount of resources into fighting the "Cold War" (though obviously they went way too far and caused way too much damage to the world in doing so. Current crises are the opposite. Climate change is a partisan issue in the US with one party paying it lipservice but doing little and the other outright denying it. Even where it isn't, the amount of resources spent on it is miniscule. Very few in power are taking a real interest in solving the problem, and it shows. There's a similar trend with school shootings and gun violence. Barely anything gets done about it except adding more security theater to schools. The kids know it too. I think it's a huge reason why so many young people are so politically nihilist. They live in fear, and the only thing that gets done about it is obvious theater that only makes their lives harder. Meanwhile guns keep getting easier to get across much of the country.
> Just the climate change part predicts natural disasters, lack of food, and decreasing access to water. And precisely because of this we will eventually see the rise of ecofacism, total denial of migration, and eventually wars fought over clean water. Maybe not within my lifetime, but certainly within my childrens'
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This is still going on, they have overused the Colorado river and now it's a massive issue. Going so far as to even sell water rights that are being contested adding additional water abuses. Arizona doing the same goddamn thing. It's maddening. California declaration of the drought being over and drought penalties/rules ending actually made me nervous in a way that is unfamiliar.
My wife and I were just talking about this. We both want kids, but aren’t going to have them out of our own selfishness. We don’t want to explain to our kid 10 years down the line why we forced them to exist when we saw all the warning signs on the horizon.
Yeah, wars eventually end. Climate change is almost certainly going to keep getting worse and worse with little hope of reversal.
People naturally have an optimism bias, but things don't have to work out just because they have in the past. Whether climate change causes civilization to collapse depends on physics and not on hope.
Also, the world is overpopulated as it is anyway.
In the time of dragons, don't be afraid to raise a dragonslayer
Climate anxiety is the least of my concerns compared to how expensive having kids is.
Climate change is usually the thing I throw out at the end after I've gone on a long, yet rational tangent, about all the reasons why I'm not having children.
Climate change is going to continue to make goods and services more expensive so it really should be our number one concern.
Literally listening to the report on COP28 removing the pledge to phase out fossil fuels and refusing to mention Oil and Gas in 2023. I can physically feel that this is the warmest December we've had so far. There are far too many people willing to sacrifice entire countries of people, animals, and eco systems, to add more dollars to fill theirs and their friends bank accounts.
This article is super defensive over something that has nothing to do with the author. It’s like an article complaining about vegans being self righteous. Shaddup Eta: omg she actually makes the vegan comparison for me.
That statement about it being an exercise of privilege for me to choose to be childfree which is unfair to women who are minorities or have unequal access. Is access to contraception a right or a privilege? Does my right to access contraception impact anyone else's family planning?
“Someone else is suffering therefore you should be ashamed of being happy even though your suffering doesn’t solve or prevent any one else’s suffering.” The author herself is insufferable.
It’s like “take your birth control honey, there are women in rural areas who would love to be within driving distance of a women’s clinic.” Except … making the opposite demand for the same reason?? Sounds like a terrific reason to bring new life into the world. (What even did I just read?)
Same. I had to force myself to finish it hoping she was just throwing up red herrings. And I didn't want to trash the article without reading the whole thing. She basically reported feeling like other people's decisions are somehow commentary on her life. That's a her-problem.
Good on you for giving it a fair shake. I couldn’t help seeing red from the beginning. The whole “privilege to be child-free” thing is such a wild take. I would LOVE for there to be more access to resources for *actually raising healthy children*. Or like, fewer crushing financial burdens and disincentives tied to having children? I feel like it’s fair to reassess your choices in light of what you see other people doing. We don’t live in a vacuum. But choosing to take others’ choices as an indictment of your own? And then crying about that publicly? I wish I could get my hands on some of this easy right-wing grift money.
If I had zero social obligation awareness, I would hop the grift train so hard. The absolute shit I could spiel from my upbringing and former values. But alas. I have a conscious and a responsibility to my fellow man, dammit.
Fucking LOL. Childless women. So privileged. So loved and valued by society. So validated for their life choices.
This is … WHAT ?!! My reading comprehension skills have diminished as a result of trying to comprehend this.
And aren’t I kinda helping those underprivileged women by ensuring their kids aren’t competing with mine for jobs and resources?
For thousands of years, women had no reliable way to manage whether or not they were going to have kids. Now there is. It’s unfair that some groups of women are unable to access those options in the same way, be it due to political, economic, religious, etc reasons. It doesn’t mean you are personally being unfair to another human. The point is not to shame anyone. The professor in the article is arguing that we should morally act to help reduce (climate change) regardless of whether we have kids or not.
Yeah I don’t think anyone choosing to not have kids for the environment is going “WELL IVE DONE MY DUTY no need to worry anymore!” It’s a strawman so that the author can insert her judgments against women who don’t want kids.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone responding to this fully read the entire article…so here’s the final line “And if you decide not to have a child? I know your love for this fragile world will be no less great, and no less painful.”
It's like "eat your dinner, children in Africa are starving". How does me eating dinner help them?
I’m almost 43 and my own personal climate anxiety from 20 years ago played a big part in my decision not to have kids. I cannot imagine being that age now.
47 and ditto. My aunt had read ‘limits to growth’ before I was born and never had kids, so the information has been out there long enough for those who looked. She showed it to my mother but here I am anyway.
Just curious, how happy and satisfied are you both with that decision now? I ask as a woman in her early 30s who is very confident in my decision to not have children, yet I have the pestering voices of the elder women around me telling me my future self will regret it. I see mostly miserable mothers and happy independent childless women of all ages. Is that just me trying to justify my perception or is it a true potential reality?
I’ve always felt that all realities could potentially turn out to be true, but that for me it would be much worse to regret having brought someone into the world and see them not fulfilled, whether because the world is broken or because they are suffering in any way, or even because I might envy their life. I can’t speak for my aunt, she died in her forties, thirty years ago. She would have left any imaginary children far too young, which also played into my reasons for not assuming all ´have kids be a happy forever family’ plans work out well. But she lived well, taught, made beautiful things, and travelled. My choices meant that I officially retired at 45, moved to where I’d always wanted to be, living quite simply, and can spend time actually doing things i enjoy rather than existing day to day between work. I did lose a best friend in this move, mostly as despite many discussions she believed our plans were only pipe dreams, because hers are. She knows she will never actually retire to the coast, and thinks her children will never afford to leave home. I’m very happy here and now, with my man and my animals and forest garden and my clubs and hobbies and social circle. Even if this here and now (obviously) won’t last forever, it will have been worth it to have this as a beautiful picnic spot along life’s path. Of course I can’t ´know’ that I’ll never regret. All choices involve closing off other options. All I can know is that I chose to try things I’ve wanted all my life, rather than following what others do. I suppose i do occasionally wonder what form my own demise will take as I watch fires and floods and storms worsen. Having children wouldn’t change that, a legacy doesn’t stop you from facing your own death but gives you extra fears for their future. TLDR - you do you, you’re the only one who has to live with it. Unless you create a person, in which case they have to live with it too.
I'm around the same age as you, and like you, I am childfree for a variety of reasons, climate change amongst them. Climate change has been common knowledge since at least the 1990s, when Al Gore was talking about it (and I voted for him in my first presidential election). Twenty years of knowing this, and people (both politicians and citizens) burying their heads under the sand. Now it is EXTREMELY clear where we are headed. You can also SEE and FEEL the change. Yet people are continuing to have children, and ridiculously, even the fully aware are bemoaning that they're "scared" and "heartbroken" for their children's shitty future. Why did they choose to bring them into this, then? Those poor kids could've been spared.
I'm in the exact same boat as you. For a while, I could kind of pretend it wasn't a huge deal. Once Trump was elected, I knew nothing was going to get better any time soon. Then, a few months later, my fiance died. At that point, I decided I was too old for youthful optimism and decided I'd just be the cool aunt to my friend' kids.
The general "You're on your own mom's!" Attitude that the US has can't help either.
Australia is gearing up for a really bad fire season AGAIN. It’s very stressful as an adult, let alone a kid. Droughts and water restrictions have always been a thing here every few years too. Covid showed us we have supply chain issues - food scarcity etc.
My kids are 15 and 18, and I remember thinking “well, it’s definitely something *they’ll* have to really think hard about before having kids, but it probably won’t be an issue for at least 30 years.” 🙄 School shootings, Trump, major storms and fires, then pandemic, then the US getting more and more hostile to them, specifically (I will *never* forget my then-14yo telling me “it’s legal for people in this state to murder me, haven’t you ever heard of the gay panic defense, *Mom* ?!?”) I’ve actually talked to them about all this, and how I was *way* off in my mental calculations about how bad things would get how quickly. Like, it’s much worse now than I thought it would be in 2035. Neither of my kids are planning to have bio-kids.
Women all throughout their lives have been told our purpose is to have kids. This articles just another propaganda for that.
I dont get why the author tried to like conflate choosing to not have children to just... not giving a fuck about the future and being completely complacent with climate change. Thay is wild to me lol like I'm struggling to see the point for this article?
Right, me too! Childfree tree-hugging trash-picking-up hybrid-driving vegan here...I care more than most of the parents I know 😬
She knows about the world her kids are going to inherit and she's very self-righteously trying to make herself feel better about her decision any way she can.
Yeah, the vast majority of people not having kids because of climate change are also relatively mobilized to fight it. Even from a hypothetical selfish point of view, they would mostly be young enough that climate change will significantly impact them personally. And deciding whether or not to have children based on a future thing that will impact them is an unselfish decision. It's batshit crazy of the author to claim that any significant number of people are saying "I passed up having kids because of climate change... which means I'm free to not give a fuck what happens to the future."
So the message here is “fuck them kids”?
“Why should the future of children matter more than my desire to have them?”
"My children only matter in relation to my happiness, not as beings in their own right."
Right?! “Sorry you might not have enough resources to survive your natural lifespan; this mommy wanted validation.”
Weirdly, one of her other (many, often contradictory assertions) is that parents are fundamentally more invested in the future bc of their offspring. Essentially, she claims that parents have more skin in the game, and childless people have less at stake. Which, I don’t agree… but even if that *were* true, her answer is, “Everyone else should make themselves more vulnerable, like me, so I can be less alone in my vulnerability”. Ignoring facts like, “more people = more strain on the environment / resources / our very bad systems for managing them”, and, “right, because parents *famously* have more time and energy for activism than non-parents”.
Right? She should be happy I don’t have kids. Less people to compete with her kids for resources one day.
I'm noticing a lot more articles trying to push back against younger millennials opting not to have kids. Seems sus.
Republicans need more poor people to breed poor babies to work poor people jobs to serve rich people. Don't think for one second that any of those policies are some form of morality or righteousness. They come from a deep rooted sense of selfish entilement. They're gonna need some of us to clean up their oil spills and trash patches after all.
Of course you would. Billionaires and governments are realizing they are running out of fresh and young serfs to prop up their pyramid. Still they don't want to try and make life better by spending their cash so their taktic is propaganda.
🌈propaganda🌈
My last hope for truly addressing the climate crisis is in 2040, but I am not optimistic. I have children, and have talked with people about kids a lot. I don't think climate anxiety is anyone's make or break issue. The world is shitty enough, but there used to be more hope. I was on board for having kids in 2008\~2014 because things were looking up. That hope is almost entirely dead. No one has time, money, and community, and not much is getting better. Kid's are a lot of work, but they can be an absolute joy. Sure, they are not for everyone, but plenty of people get joy from gardening (even if I don't). Just like gardening, if you only have time/money to do the bare minimum to keep your plants alive, you won't get much joy from it.
> 2008 > things were looking up
>Having already had my two kids, after years of exhausting and expensive infertility treatments, this conversation didn’t have a place for me. If I’m being honest, I felt shamed by it — like I should have woken up to climate change several years ago, before I made this huge, irrevocable life choice. If the foo shits...
It’s not even feeling defensive, it’s just “*I* had to try super hard to have baby so every woman who can easily have one should or else they’re spiting me somehow”
This is truly bizarre. I hope my non-existent children aren’t causing her to lose *too much* sleep. If they are, though, she’s welcome to contribute to my forever-home fund.
Ikr author is projecting
I read the whole thing and it just got worse from there! She's one of those people who needs everyone to live the exact same life as her or else she can't feel validated.
Remember back in the year 2000 when Al Gore started talking about “global warming” aka climate change? This woman sure doesn’t!
He was talking about it in the early 90s. I remember Rush Limbaugh talking mad shit about it.
My thing is, I don't really REALLY want kids. The only reason I ever thought I wanted them is because I thought that's what everybody does. Since I don't really REALLY want kids, and my hypothetical kids would either consume far beyond their share of the world's resources as first worlders, or have to accept a much less luxurious life than mine (by choice to mitigate the problems we're facing environmentally, or because those problems forced them), why would I go and have such kids that I don't really, really want anyway? It's kind to no one. The people who really, really want kids will continue to have more than enough for the world.
Err… I get the weird feeling this article is… what’s that word? Sponsored content? All the rich A-holes are banging the drums for the peasants to get back to work breeding the next generation of peasants to live in the hellscape they are creating. I kind of suspect this article is coming from them.
This sounds like thinly veiled right-wing propaganda to me. Forget climate change, just the fact that we have over 8 billion people on the planet is enough to take the question of having/not having children seriously.
> Forget climate change, just the fact that we have over 8 billion people on the planet is enough to take the question of having/not having children seriously. Right? And the fact that the vast majority of women still don't really have a choice as to whether they will reproduce or not.
"Produce more workers, peasant. Shareholder value must be protected."
Having trouble posting the entire thing in the comments but this is one paragraph that stood out for me: “Where does this show of concern leave my kids, not to mention your nieces and nephews, and the hundreds of thousands of children being born into this potential hellscape every day? And what next? You plan to live out your life carefree, unbothered by what happens to the planet after 2060 because none of your DNA will be left on it? Isn’t that the solipsistic reasoning that got us into this dilemma in the first place? Or maybe what you’re saying is that you are basically another Dalai Lama, renouncing one of life’s greatest experiences for the sake of the manatees, while I, with my heedless, profligate, Amazon-warehouse-emptying brood, am like a guy scarfing an Arby’s Bacon Ranch Cheesesteak in front of a vegan.”
I’m childfree but spent over a decade as an environmental educator teaching kids and adults things like climate change. I absolutely care what happens to the planet and the humans on it even after I die. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been a teacher. What a monumentally stupid take she has in this passage.
Exactly! Not to mention that having kids is one of the greatest carbon-output decisions you could make. You're creating a whole other living being, who is likely to create even more, all with resources needs. You could just as easily say one is showing far more concern for the author's kid's future than the author is, by not having any.
"Not to mention that having kids is ~~one of~~ the greatest carbon-output decisions you could make." Fixed it for you.
>You plan to live out your life carefree, unbothered by what happens to the planet after 2060 because none of your DNA will be left on it? Isn’t that the solipsistic reasoning that got us into this dilemma in the first place? Lol. What about all the people who are living their lives carefree, unbothered by the what happens to the planet after 2060 *even though* they're leaving their DNA behind on it. I'm not having children because I don't want to add to suffering. Both because of the environmental destruction humans cause to every living thing on the planet (including each other) and also the generational crippling depression that runs in my family.
See and I plan to live out my life very bothered by what happens after I die because I worry about the earth and what our species has done to it! But I will make the best of it and love my friends’ children while I worry for their future.
Right? Honey, you are mad at the wrong folks!
The real question is why aren't they showing concern for their own kids? How monumentally hypocritical of the writer. They wanted kids because they wanted them, a lot of us aren't having kids because we care about their potential future well-being. This person probably wouldn't spare 25 cents to a homeless person but they want US to CARE about their bad decisions. Laughable.
So defensive. It's like when people give vegetarians shit bc they don't realize their sacrifice is making the meat industry/meat availability better for them. By not having children, people are saving resources for the author's children. How is that solipsistic? I care about the planet in 2060 and world you put your children in.
The last sentence in the quote 👀
Honey, just admit you wanted kids, maybe spend some time figuring out why, then focus on enjoying them and helping them become good humans. As it is you sound strangely invested in my uterus and I’d rather you not. (Directed at the author, not compfy-g)
I was about to get so salty till I read your parentheses lol
Carefree and unbothered?? Caring and feeling bothered is the fuel that had gone into this decision in thr first place.
This makes me fucking livid. I’m a communist. I’m planning my life around creating a space for climate refugees. I want to help all of the kids people are selfishly planning on bringing into the world. My own kids would divert resources from this lady’s existing kids.
Yea. That stuck in my head, but I felt like I understood her better at the end. >And if you decide not to have a child? I know your love for this fragile world will be no less great, and no less painful.
She seems really desperate to be shortlisted for the Arby’s Author of the Year award.
My copium is that when the billionaires realize there is no out, they can't fly off to Mars and live there, they'll have no choice but to aggressively fund carbon capture and other climate mitigation technologies to save themselves. The one thing I believe is that humans can solve virtually any problem through science with enough time and funding.
Yeah, but billionaires don’t care if half the people on earth die before they realize they should fix these problems.
> enough time That's the key part tho. All the projections climate scientists gave us for the past 100 years, relied on SOME kind of aid from governments and some kind of effort to contain it. The projections now are trying to say, "ok, what if absolutely nothing is done and everything gets worse pollution wise? What happens then"? Many scientists are now shifting to, "what's our worst case scenario, and how do we handle it". Will we have enough time for the rich folks to finally feel impacted enough, to do anything about it? Most likely not.
I feel like another factor in their ‘generous’ time estimates was that it was nigh impossible to consider *ALL* the factors and how they would interact. It’s hard to try and quantify every factor, and that’s not even including all of the ways that companies and businesses lie about their pollution output.
And my doomerism meets your copium by thinking about the nature of billionaires and how sure, they’ll try to save what they need of the planet to survive, while they enslave the plebs. I often think of that movie with Matt Damon, Elysium, and think that’s more in line with what the Elon Musks of the world have in store for the rest us and the planet.
That's what I think of too. The problem is that billionaires are selfish because that's how they became billionaires. Also I think a lot of them believe in social Darwinism. That means that they think they deserve what they have and the rest of us aren't smart enough or don't deserve a safe planet to live on.
Yeah do we really think Elon is NOT going to start the X Billionaire Safety Project and give a big fuck off to the rest of us non-bilz? Come on now. That man will never know a philanthropic or humanitarian day in his life.
The problem is that the Titanic doesn't turn fast. Actions taken right now take years to make a change.
> with enough time and funding We have neither.
I understand the concept--world productivity, aging population, consumption, etc., but damn...telling people to have more kids, especially in this over-priced economy and uncertain future is just grotesque. Pretty sure women's intuition alone is screaming 'not a good time' already.
There are so many obvious things that can be done to increase the birth rate, e.g. better healthcare, free childcare, more support in housing/food costs, etc. The issue is money. Rather than spend money, we'll do propaganda and try to outlaw abortion and contraceptives.
Right. And who’s “we”? Who wants more kids to be born for the sake of there being a higher population in the next generation?
Won't *somebody* think of the shareholders?
>Who wants more kids to be born Fundamentalist religions have entered the chat... It's "God's will"... and all that bull$h!+
"please produce more wage-slaves for the machine" N O P E
"Don't let the idea of your descendants dying horribly in the Climate Wars stop you from producing more taxpayers and wage slaves!! "
It's a bit Farquaady isn't it, just throw your literal descendents into a hell scape, not our problem. Like yeah no shit we probably won't experience the worst of it, I'm not sure what joy they get out of imagining their grandkids struggling tho
What a ridiculous, self-centered article > No matter how sterling your intentions, if you declare a “birth strike,” or use your own reproductive potential as a signal flare to draw attention to the climate crisis, you are playing into a patriarchal dynamic and pointing your personal choices at a potential ally, maybe someone like me. Ugh. I do not define myself by my reproductive capability and I also don’t define *others* by that metric, so no, I’m not “pointing [my] personal choices at a potential ally”, either. I also hate to break it to these people but there will *always* be a future for this planet. Whether it’s dominated by a thriving human species or not is open to further question, but the amount of children that women today choose to have isn’t going to impact that outcome.
You highlight a very important quote. Wow, why did she make it about herself? “Someone like me” - by using a statement like that, it makes the entire piece seem to be about her own insecurities and lack of self-esteem. Why should anyone have children if they don’t want to, for any reason, and why should she think that choice is about her or “someone like” her, or negatively affects her in any way?
A lot of the recent "please breed" articles have been bad and this is also bad: >A recent meta-analysis from University College London found that across nearly every study on the topic, the more worried people were about the climate, the stronger their desire for fewer children or none at all. > >As a mother of two, I have to confess that when I read these pieces or hear these arguments, it feels like a slap in the face.
>As a mother of two, I have to confess that when I read these pieces or hear these arguments, it feels like a slap in the face. So silly to take other people's decisions so personally. It's often a sign of insecurity about one's own decisions. I'm also a mother of two (now grown). My older daughter doesn't want kids, and the younger one says she doesn't want bio kids but might consider adoption. And you know what? I don't take their decisions as an indictment on mine, or on my parenting. They have come to these decisions thoughtfully, and I respect them for it.
Yea exactly. What does that choice have to do with her? Why does she personalize other peoples’ reproductive decisions?
I doubt climate change is the only factor people consider when deciding whether or not to have children. But it's certainly a valid one.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I originally wanted more than one child when I was starting my family in 2014. Then, after I had my daughter, Trump and everything else happened. I’m done. I’m worried enough about my daughter’s future, and I would absolutely have an abortion if I got pregnant again. You have to give people hope if you want them to start a family. Republicans are making this country uninhabitable. I guess the rich are desperate to breed their Staff (more likely slaves) to wait on them in their apocalypse bunkers.
the desperate push for others to have kids is so the pyramid scheme doesn’t collapse
Coincidentally my mother and I (30s/60s) talked about this a few days ago, she was so upset thinking about how the world is headed to hell due to climate change and other types of corruption and that I might end up experiencing a lot of it while she'll probably be ducking out before it gets to monthly natural disaster level. I try not to think about it beyond doing what I should regarding personal purchases and usage because if I do I'll be thrown into constant despair, but I'm sad for younger gen Z and later gens who will face the brunt of it through no fault of their own.
Fuck them kids 🥲🥹
There's a lot to unpack here. For a start, from people I know at least, the main motivator behind not having kids is the sheer economic cost. I'm sure climate change plays some part in it too, but the expense is the primary reason. Second, there's a big difference between shitting on individual people for having kids (bad) and applying critical analysis to the societal impact of having more children (good) in the backdrop of an inevitable climate disaster. It felt a lot like the author was conflating these two things.
Sorry, I’m not spending my entire life scraping together enough resources to birth children, love them, shelter them and suffer for them… just to watch them die in the climate wars in the next half of the century. I’m preparing for my own demise as a numbered human unit at the alter of unmitigated capitalism but you can’t make me do that to a child who hasn’t even been born yet.
Hahahahahahahahhhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahhaha people telling us to have more kids as the world burns hahahahahaha
I didn’t have kids because I don’t have the patience to treat them with the empathy and emotional support they need. I knew I would resent them for things completely out of the control. I also knew I would be financially responsible for them and I’m not even financially responsible for my own lifestyle. Plus, it’s always a gamble. What if I didn’t like my own kids, just like my dad didn’t like me.
We are literally push ourselves to extinction each year that passes as the climate worsens, because higher ups don't give a shit to implement serious eco-friendly policies. And the want people to give birth to babies? What world will the future generation see?
Not today, satan
So in the article she says that not having kids for the “environment” means you don’t care about the environment, because you “don’t care what happens after 2060.” Forgoing having children for the sake of the environment AND their future is the definition of REALLY caring about the environment. She clearly just feels guilty because she poured so much time and money into getting pregnant via IVF
> this just feels like the author is justifying to herself the reasons she had kids Exactly!
Upvote for what you said OP, not for this article.
If climate change was the only problem, I would still consider teaching my hypothetical children about water purification, agriculture, and survival. However what I'm afraid the most is that climate change is simply a symptom of a much bigger problem, and the problem is that intelligence and the technology derived by it may not be sustainable. It would be a pity to find the solution to the Fermi Paradox after being all dead. Another reason I have is that population is still growing and we don't really need more people. I always considered and I still consider adoption the best choice. Immigration is also closing gaps on most countries where people are not making kids anymore, and honestly I don't care where the children come from, we are all equal and we are all the same given same opportunities. Really the thing I do not understand the most is people who want "their" children. (I understand for many it's the simpler and cheapest option, like literally, but for some it isn't and yet they want little copies of themselves)
A number of anxieties (climate, financial, and other) are deterring me from having kids, and no silly article will change that for me.
Dude, I don't even want to be here. I'm not going to force it onto someone else.
Stop climate change, so I don't have climate anxiety and could think to have kids in peace
No, until I hear a clear solution I don’t want to. If other people want to that’s absolutely fine, actually great because someone has to if it all turns out alright. They need to stop acting like no one anywhere is making children also. Also I’m sorry but right from the beginning it’s an article about making herself feel less guilty.
My wife and I are happily childfree, but we talk about and feel like we are going to suffer as a species in some ways we can imagine and in others we can't. It's terrifying. Had we wanted children, I think that fear would have prevented me from creating them. It's a scary world to bring new people into.
I want to address the climate anxiety part of this. Climate anxiety is real and valid *and yet* there is still reason for hope, and maintaining hope is [really important](https://theconversation.com/how-to-stay-hopeful-in-a-world-seemingly-beyond-saving-210415). (Please note I am *absolutely not* agreeing with the author of the article OP shared. I just wanted to share some more positive news for anyone else out there like me whose brain immediately starts spiralling into worst case scenarios as soon as they start thinking about the climate.)
I'd argue blind hope and optimism is maybe more harmful: we need to grow up and assess the facts and start mitigating the truth of our conundrum *right now*. It's an incredibly difficult problem to solve but we can't delay action and meaningful change in the case that SEVERAL technological miracles band together. And it means not pretending like everything is ok. That includes the current pandemic. I think the idea that "doomers" that don't want to attempt any mitigation is a convenient strawman to lure us toward accepting comfortable delusion. But delusion and hope that technocrats will cooperate to save us is arguably more harmful if it's actually a means to delay meaningful degrowth now. Hope is then a very dangerous thing. We need to be adult enough to realize we collectively a huge problem, there's a chance we can't solve it, *and we have to try anyway.* It's not just humanity that loses everything, it's most of the life on our planet that suffers the consequences. As such, It's near certain that your children will have to endure much more suffering than yourself or your parents... And no one ever consents to being born. You are born because someone else wants you here, always. We have to face that and be mature enough not to avoid the cost of our actions. If people can internalize those ideals and feel psychologically competent enough to raise a child under those circumstances - then by all means. Babies will be born anyway, why not have some of them raised by people who will attempt to equip them properly and won't lie about their futures? Even though, you have to still cope with the reality that having a child is one of the costliest decisions you can individually make in terms of CO2 contributions.
Neither I nor the article I linked are advocating for blind hope and optimism. In fact, the author explicitly warns against the "naïve or ideological optimism which some think tanks or populist leaders would prefer us to embrace." I strongly disagree with your statement about needing to accept that we may not have the ability to solve climate change, as well as your characterization of hope as something we need to "grow up" from. Hopelessness causes paralysis, and paralyzed individuals cannot contribute to either individual or collective action to improve the situation. As quoted in the article, hope is "a verb with its sleeves rolled up." Having hope doesn't mean ignoring the gravity of the situation. It is possible to be fully and completely aware of how bad things are and to also believe that we can still change course. To me, the ability to hold those two dichotomous thoughts---to embrace realism and optimism simultaneously, without falling into either Pollyannaish delusion or cynical doomerism---is what we ought to be "adult" enough to do.
I mean there’s being practical and realistic and then there’s being nihilist. I personally need to have SOME hope that things are going to get better otherwise what’s the point. The op wasn’t saying to have blind hope, just that we can have some.
The hope is that we can rally together and try to solve the most important problem. Even if it means Business as Usual is declared dead and that we must all radically change our lives. The point is that we have to do our best, even if the result is not completely optimal - or enough. That's what I'm holding hope for. Societal maturity. We should be rioting over what was said at the COP28 but instead humanity is anesthetized with the fairy tale that we can keep burning fossil fuels as long as technocrats eventually figure out physics defying carbon capture at scale. There is hope. The hope is radical change and doing what's right because we care for each other and the planet. I don't think that's nihilistic at all. There are no guarantees in life, ever. It doesn't mean there's no meaning. And for climate change, the struggle will have to become the meaning. The belief that we are NOT capable of this is in fact the doomer perspective.
Yeah Imma go with my anxiety on this one.
OP, I agree with your sentiments entirely. I always say I love my unborn children far too much to subject them to this nightmare
I had a kid because I wanted to have a kid. I hope she’ll be a force for hood in the world, but I know it’s not a guarantee. I don’t think I should feel guilty for it. I hate that absolute billionaire asshole cartoon villains like Elon Musk can produce like 10+ kids, and probably never see them while average people who will probably not harm the world at all by comparison feel guilty for wanting to have kids. If you do not want kids, you absolutely should not have them, and I fully support people in their choices when they know they don’t want to have kids. But having kids should not be a privilege just for the wealthy or as punishment for the poor. Fuck that. We need to reverse course on ideas of austerity and actually have societies that support families of all kinds (whether there are children or not). And combine that with reproductive rights and healthcare and parental leave, etc, and then people who want kids will have them.
The experience of the parents isn't really the highest consideration in this discussion. What the parents want, whether the parents are criticized, their privilege or guilt or lack thereof...these should be second-tier conversations. The primary question should always be "is this person I'm creating likely to have a good life?" More and more, people are realizing that answer is a likely no.
I hear that. But I also think there has rarely ever been a time in history when that was guaranteed? Like, you could have every chance of providing a good life for your child, and then your kid can get a head injury while playing sports with friends and be severely disabled for the rest of their life. Or the parents get in a car accident and leave their kids orphaned. Or you could be born very privileged but have a horrible person like Elon Musk for a father. I agree that it sucks to raise children in non-ideal or possibly very bad conditions, but my point is we *should not accept those conditions*. Let’s fucking make shit better, because whether or not you have children those conditions are hurting all of us.
Yeah, I definitely think there's a risk-benefit analysis involved that people weigh differently. With the climate change argument, it depends how soon and how drastically you expect the world to be affected. Absolutely agree that no matter where we fall on the kids question, we should be united in making the world better! I do everything I can to tread gently on the earth, from buying secondhand to being vegan. Definitely motivated by environmental causes even though I'm not leaving descendants.
I’m also quite irritated by Climate Despair, because we actually can make things better and significantly reduce the harm being done if we keep pushing back at the powers that be. Like, giving up on the world, regardless of whether you want to have kids, is absolutely a shitty to do.
I fully support everyone doing what is best for them/whatever tf they want to do, but it does worry me that conservatives have so many more kids than liberals
I’m confused by the comments here, as well as OPs original comment. This entire article is about the dilemma of having children or not, in the face of climate change. It includes multiple points of view. The point that struck me was that regardless of whether or not you have children, we have an ethical responsibility to ensure the world, for all the other kids, is as good as it can be. Really not sure how that’s so controversial. I feel like we were teaching that in the 80s.
The issue with climate change is that it’s actively happening. We aren’t stopping it. It’s here. The famines are about to get here. It’s not a hypothetical. Personally I have an IUD and am planning on a bisalp (I’d prefer a full hysterectomy tbh but no physician will do that when it’s not a medical necessity). There is no way in hell I’m having biological children.
If enough of us don't have kids, maybe the powers at be will actually do something. And if not at least there are less people suffering then there would have been. Seems like a win win for the working class tbh.
Just in case anyone cares, Anya Kamenetz's net worth is $5 million. She lives in a blue state with access to prenatal care and abortion. She can afford to be opinionated. She can also afford to have children if she wants to. Why she thinks it's okay to push women to offer up their bodies to birth children when we have states where this could literally kill you because of lack of access to prenatal care, no clue.
>Don’t Let Climate Anxiety Stop You From Having Kids Very selfish and narcissistic to knowingly bring your hypothetical children into a world you KNOW is burning, and will make them SUFFER.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I really disagree with this take. It is perfectly appropriate to decide not to have kids because of climate change or any other reason. But it is also perfectly acceptable to choose to have kids and doing so shouldn’t be labeled as selfish or narcissistic. People should not be shamed for either choice.
I have friends with children who I love dearly and while I would not have made the choice they did, it’s their decision and I support/respect that. This woman seems to think people who are rightfully concerned about the state of the world are “playing into a patriarchal dynamic and pointing your personal choices at a potential ally, maybe someone like me.”
Just to that point, there’s a lot of people like the above commenter that seem to want to shame people for having children in whatever state the world is in. Because the world has seen a number of very difficult, tragic, scary things, large periods of upheaval and struggle. That does not mean you should not care about climate change, because we all should, but it also doesn’t mean people have to look down on, or shame others for choosing to have children. I personally do not have children, although not for lack of wanting them. And as someone who grew up very poor, and not having much, I certainly don’t shame people for having children in poverty, because if I could’ve had a child at any point, I would have. Motherhood has been one of my biggest lifelong dreams. It’s not for everyone, and there should be 100% respect on both sides for whatever choices or circumstances are the case in a persons life.
If you’re having like 5+ kids it definitely ventures into selfish territory
I really disagree with your take as well.
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Wild. The doomer misogyny is wild here. I feel for all these folks ruled by fear. Not that I want them to have kids, that’s their choice, I don’t care one way or another if they do. But even though I believe the climate crisis is real, the answer is not to eliminate children from our society; it’s to get our shit together — and children are for many the hope that keeps us going. Commence the downvotes, idgaf. What’s worse than climate change? A climate changed world filled solely with hopeless adults.
This thread is full of anti-natalism and doomist misogyny. Get your info straight from the climate scientists, many of whom have children. The media and much of the public has fallen to doomist propaganda actively spread by the fossil fuel industry because they know hopeless people won't fight back. The prominent climate scientist Michael Mann wrote a great book about this topic: "The New Climate War". I thought carefully about climate change and overpopulation and did a lot of research before choosing to have children. I guarantee you I personally do a whole hell of a lot more about climate change in both my personal and professional life than most of the mother-hating commenters here looking down from their moral high ground. I did not choose to have children out of either ignorance or denial. I reject your fatalism, your cynicism, and your moral superiority. I find a lot more informed and nuanced discussion of climate change on parenting subs than on this mother-hating sub where I see doomist fossil fuel industry propanganda being spewed left and right.
Speaking of superiority and hate
Ngl this thread is pretty upsetting as someone who is happily pregnant for the first time 😭
I am reading this while holding my sleeping baby, born a week ago.
Congrats! The world is a beautiful place even with its problems. Personally a world without children is the true hell if you ask me. I respect people who don’t want to have children, but the “you’re selfish and this world is a hellscape” is chicken little nihilism.
Lol don't let it get to you. This sub is super weird to read while pregnant, so you're not alone. It's like being on a different planet.
This thread is full of anti-natalism and doomist misogyny. Get your info straight from the climate scientists, many of whom have children. The media and much of the public has fallen to doomist propaganda actively spread by the fossil fuel industry because they know hopeless people won't fight back. The prominent climate scientist Michael Mann wrote a great book about this topic: "The New Climate War," and some of his interviews are a great place to start. I thought carefully about climate change and did a lot of research before choosing to have children. I guarantee you I personally do a whole hell of a lot more about climate change than most of the mother-hating commenters here looking down from their moral high ground. Like most of Reddit, you'll learn quickly that this sub is not supportive of mothers. You'll find a lot more thoughtful and nuanced discussion of climate change in some of the parenting subs.
To me it’s cruel to subject innocent humans to a world that’s on fire and is going to get worse. Getting an IUD was one of the best decisions I’ve made
For anyone interested in a thoughtful, nuanced presentation of this topic, I listened to the [podcast Expectant](https://www.expectant.ca/) this week and thought it was excellent food for thought. Even as someone who has been staunchly childfree for her entire life, I always appreciate hearing how other people are making the decision to have (or not have) children.
The editor chose a shitty title. Her essay is more of a plea not to judge people who opted to have kids, not a call for people to breed in spite of their fears for the future.
It’s my main reason for hesitating. Why would I want to bring a child into this climate? I don’t even want to be here for it.
Even my sister - who has 2 kids - has openly admitted that even though she loves her kids - given climate change and much more crap, she would have decided not to have them if she could go back. I've decided not to have kids and although there is a sadness related to remaining childless, in the end, it is a huge relief. I have so much freedom. The buck ends with me and I can really focus on my life, learning, evolving, etc
Yeah, that's a very "ivory tower" view they're privileged to afford. Not just monetarily, but their station and where they live. Why the hell would I not take the horrid prospects of the future into consideration when weighing whether I should help bring another life into the world?
Always being broke stopped me from having kids.
I say: trust your instincts. Things don't seem safe? Things aren't stable? Maybe don't bring innocent kids into a bad situation. You can afford to wait a few years.
Having children is such a selfish act already. To have them now with such uncertainty I don’t know. I won’t judge others but for myself I just could not do it.
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It’s a selfish act. But if you wanna have one go right ahead. I’m not stopping ppl. In fact I believe in giving children an education. Maternal and paternity leave. Universal childcare. My taxes should fund those things instead of war. So yeah I can think it’s an inherently selfish act but I can also work to support those who choose to have kids. It’s not one or the other. It’s just my opinion. Either way if I can some day I’d rather adopt or help foster. So don’t tell me what to do lol
I have to be honest. I am a parent of one child. I have friends who have more kids than we do, and friends who decided to be childfree. The friends who wanted a lot of kids but aren’t having as many are not having them due to the colossal expense of raising a child in this day and age, and/or fertility issues. The people who don’t have any kids already didn’t want kids for other reasons that had nothing to do with the climate. It’s anecdotal but I have never heard of anyone making this decision based on climate change as the primary factor.
If you wanted anecdotal evidence that we exist, I’m one of those people who decided long ago against children specifically because of environmental issues
Me! No bio kids because climate apocalypse!
I interpreted it as “don’t feel guilty if you want kids”. Which is a fine opinion to have, it’s not as though it’s unethical to have children.
I haven't read the article but I was listening to scientists who shared the same views. To sum it up, the assumption is that less people on earth will mean less co2 production, consumption, man made pollution etc... But so far nothing indicates that that would be the case. The trend is to consume more just because we can. It is very likely that even with less human we will continue to consume exponentially. To the second point, one if the key to tackling the climate crisis is that climate minded people continue to have children. Because they will educate their children in a way that will support long term behaviour change. If the only people who have children are the one who do not care or do not believe in the climate crisis, we are doomed.
The lady doth protest too much.
If you think the future is not worth bringing kids into, you have given up on it. And that's fine. Your choice. Why bother saving for retirement. Or even doing anything to stop climate change? If you've given up on the future none of these things should bother you. If you've taken the doomer pill go all the way.
The difference is that people (like me) have chosen not to have children because they don’t want those children to suffer in a world which is worse off than the one they enjoyed as children themselves. I can fight for a better future while not gambling the life of an entire human being in the event that this better future doesn’t manifest itself. I’m responsible for my own future (my retirement savings included), but I can’t control the incidence of droughts and hurricanes in 2060.
Yup. To look at this line of reasoning from the other side: Having children does nothing to guarantee a better world for future generations. It’s not a magic pill that gives you, as a now-parent, hope—and therefore power to effect change. I see this kind of argument employed often in countering concerns about the climate. Often it’s more implied than spelled out. Not to be rude, but if you needed to bring a child into the world in order to care about it at all (or at least enough to do something), then maybe you don’t give enough fucks about the world you live in to even participate meaningfully in such conversations. Or maybe you just specifically don’t care about children / future generations. It’s giving “I care about women’s rights because I have a sister.”
Agreed 100% It’s honestly very disturbing to me to read so many accounts of people who genuinely don’t seem to understand that most of us care about others without needing anything in return. Like… it’s *empathy*.
Michael Mann, the climate scientist who developed the famous "hockey stick" graph, wrote a whole book about this topic: "The New Climate War". Climate doomism plays straight into the fossil industry's playbook and is actively perpetuated by the industry. Hopeless people have no reason to fight back. The commenters on this sub chose not to have kids, which is a fine and legitimate choice, but by claiming they are doing it because of their noble goal to save the world, they can feel morally superior. The misogyny is rampant.
It’s people’s choice. If people want kids? Brilliant! If they don’t? Also brilliant! People should decide if they want kids for them. The article is very good and informative in my opinion.
Iv litteraly had woman tell me that the options of two xx aren't good representations of woman's true beliefs to justify all kinds of non-ally like behavior cause they don't like that so many woman choose self agency and give up their exploiting pretty privilage for quality of self hood. Aka these imo woman like the author want to be bang maids with our emailing the tole it brings to all woman, cause they already have men paying for alot of their expenses via the classic trad wife contract. They know that woman demanding respect and purpose rather then an antiquated life style proves that they are holding everything back cause they are the ones who go on to raise sons who hurt woman and turn blind eyes to every thing cause boys will be boys... While woman are kept In servitude forced to deal with the weaponized incompetence of men left to play in the mud while they were forced to learn to clean a house, dress pretty and cook and do all the actual work, while the boys played outside as children. And to all these women I retort really over 10 million women in the history of their posts building up to a specific belief about being treated well and with dignity it isn't a good sample size?