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One of my friends has a bumper sticker on her car that reads, “Thank you for not breeding.” Every time I read it, I feel a pang of guilt that I have two children. I know that children in developed countries, especially Americans, use up for more resources than children around the world. The statistics are staggering when comparing children’s footprints across the globe, which causes many environmentalists to suggest that not having children may be the single most important thing you do for the environment. As a mother of two, this is a hard pill to swallow, and I try to convince myself that my children will be part of the solution since they are raised with green family values.
According to Mother Jones, a developed world baby’s carbon footprint is quite large:
Between 2000 and 2050, the U.S. will add 114 million kids to its population. Africa will add 1.2 billion—but their respective CO2 emissions will be the same.
One American child generates as much CO2 as 106 Haitian kids.
Zahara Jolie-Pitt will produce 45,000 lbs of CO2 yearly, compared with 221 lbs if she still lived in Ethiopia.
A typical baby goes through 3,800 disposable diapers in her first 2.5 years.
96% of American babies wear disposable diapers. In China, only 6% do. In India, 2%.
China claims its one-child policy has prevented 400 million births—saving 1.5 billion tons of CO2 in 2004 alone.
China is often criticized for its one-child-policy as a restriction on personal freedom. I am not a proponent of laws that dictate the demographics of a family, but I do think that through education, we can have a significant impact on helping families decide the right number of children for themselves and the environment. I believe in educated choice.
I do have a few friends who have three or more children. One friend was accosted by another mother as being environmentally irresponsible for having three children. For many environmentalists, having children feels like a hypocritical action. Angharad Penrhyn Jones said in the Guardian:
Eco activists spend their lives agonising over the planet’s future – but that doesn’t stop them having children. We mustn’t give up hope.
It is a personal decision whether or not to have children. I believe it is possible to live by environmental ethics and have a child, obviously since I am a mother. The amount of carbon left behind as individuals and families is the most important factor, whether we have children or not. It is all about carbon emissions. If you leave a very small family’s carbon footprint, you are being eco-responsible and can still have children. It is one reason why I live-off-the-grid and grow my food. Just remember:
American children make up 4% of the world’s population, but they consume more than 40% of the world’s toys.
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I recently discovered Bill McKibben’s book regarding the decision to have one kid as an environmental choice. Personally, using China (and I’m Chinese American) as an example for ANY policy, particularly the one child rule which historically and currently has caused ridiculous numbers of girl deaths and filled the orphanages, is questionable.
Having children (or more than one child) is not selfish. The power and the love of siblings is not something to feel guilty about — nor is it if you decide to have only one child.
But personally, I’d say having a bunch of gas guzzling expensive cars, and our nation’s focus on capitalism and excess are far better concerns than folks driving around with “Thanks for not breeding” bumper sticker.
I had such a collection of responses while reading this!
First, I have to say that “breeding” as a verb for having a family, or “breeder” as a term for parents, strikes me as so offensive that it would cancel out any pangs I felt upon reading such a bumper sticker.
Second, the entire notion of saving the environment is just for humans, isn’t it? If we are willing to become extinct and allow the earth to move on to the next dominant species, or perhaps a relatively lifeless rest period, then we can just go on doing what we’re doing, because that is the direction we’re currently heading in. The planet itself won’t be harmed by our behavior — just its appropriateness for us.
Third, I know plenty of single people and childless couples whose carbon footprint as a household is larger than that of my family. Focusing on childbearing can allow those who — for whatever reason — choose not to have children to feel that they are free to continue overconsumption and waste, since they have made that sacrifice for the earth.
Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
This is something my husband and I have discussed. We have two kids right now, and what amazes me is the stuff the accumulate that he and I didn’t even buy for them. Birthday presents and the like.
But what really got his attention, and it’s a stat like the one quoted in the article here, was how many resources it takes to make disposable diapers. He’d refused to go along with cloth diapers before. Now he gets it. Too late for our two, but that’s how it is.
On the plus side, we get by with one car right now. Should we ever get another, we still want to mostly live as though there’s just the one. There have been just a few times where I’ve wished for a second car although most of the time I cope just fine. I say “I cope” because it falls mostly to me, being the at home parent. And any other vehicle will have fuel efficiency as a major consideration.
He wants more kids, and I do argue for adoption if he wants a large family. Seems to me to be a smarter way to go about raising a lot of kids.
We are deliberating on whether to add another child to our family. For us it is about finances, future lifestyle, education and yes, the impact of this additional person on our world. But I also think about it this way, it will be one more person who will live and believe in green ways. One more person to try to make the world better; one person we can help educate to love and honor his/her world.
I don’t feel one bit guilty for having 4 children. I could go on and on about how we try to reduce our footprint (breastfeeding, cloth diapering, small family farm, etc.), but my real point is this, however politically incorrect it may be: if people like us don’t have MORE children, we will never have a prayer of doing the right things for the survival of the human race. As long as idiots who don’t contribute any brain power are having 6 kids who won’t contribute any brain power, we won’t make any head-way. Intelligent people who raise and educate their children right are the ones who will make a difference.
Good point Motherhood Uncensored about the Chinese policy. I should have mentioned the drawbacks beyond loss of personal freedom with such laws. And yes, the bumper sticker was on the back of an SUV!
As a proud father of a rowdy two year old boy that is looking to having more children I’d say it’s up to you. I see any forced restriction on reproduction such as China’s as a form a slavery. I will not condone or comply to such a thing.
How many people are on earth is not as important as how much they consume (Jared Diamond, Collapse) First world “standard” of living is what kills the environment the fastest. By consuming more here we export pollution abroad. The tragedy is that China (India, Indonesia) etc. cannot come to first world standard of living; that is not sustainable… yet undeniable.
Not all American children’s carbon footprints are equal. Living a sustainable lifestyle is so much larger than considering whether to have kids.
Personally, I’d love to see more parents in developed countries raising breastfed, cloth diapered, vegetarian, car-free children. To people like that, I say, “Thanks for ‘breeding’!”
Whenever I hear things like this it makes me remember one of Barbara Kingsolver’s short essays entitled “Somebody’s Baby”. (It can be found in her Hightide In Tucson book.) It’s a look at how children are viewed in different parts of the world, and parental responsibility, and community responsibility. We all have to do our best to raise not only our own children but respect and nurture all the children of the world.
I grew up in a 2 child family and always “knew” that I would have 2 children, no more. I thought academically and environmentally about it, and that I would be “replacing myself and my spouse”. But after our 2nd was born we were blessed with the magic of a 3rd child that I had previously thought would be the end all to any environmental ground I may have gained. But our now over-populated family, has a little girl that could make any environmentalist/greenlover/whatever melt any day of the week as she plants our veggies in the back at 2 years old.
But I have learned that every family has their own magic number for the “right” number of children they “should” have. From there it is the parent’s responsibility to make best choices to help guide their children, the world’s children, to a healthy lifestyle and loving environment.
That’s my soapbox.
We humans are part of the Ecology that encompass this entire planet. Procreating is part of that circle of life. Just as we can’t tell a Lion to stop procreating, we also have the deep instinctual need. We may reason and we may have the mental capacity to say “no, I do not want to have children” but I think that instinct is still there and should not be made feel guilty by some mad hats even if they are environmentalists.
As for it being one of the worst environmental sin, I think that’s bull****. We do destructive things to the planet but we also do many good things as shown by people like us.. people who DO care and who try to make this planet a better place.. and most likely, our children will continue on because they are being taught to be good humans. I think as a parent, you become MORE compassionate, MORE caring, and MORE giving.. which benefits the planet. If there wasn’t any children around… the world would be a sad sad place.
Can this question be answered without asking (and answering) the question, “For what purpose does the earth exist?”
I feel having children is a God given right by Him; however, I don’t think God intended on us abusing his creation. Nor do I think God intended on us being lazy & chosing convience over the care of people or planet.
All this to say, I have four children and I intend on having more if it is God’s will for my life. And I do not, in anyway intend on asking bumper sticker people if it is ok. What about the resources it took to make that bumper sticker? Hopefully that person will not get sick in her old age & our children will have to be her dr or at least hopefully, they will have a different heart than she does. or maybe they’d think she shouldn’t live so long becaue she is using up resources. (for the record, i don’t feel that way, just trying to provide an equal idea for her way of thinking.)
Sincerely,
mom of 4 beautiful children!!!
I am really shocked by this article. I think you and anyone else that bases their family size on what is right for the earth needs some serious freakin therapy. Children are a gift, a miracle. Not a statistic.
I agree with the theory that as long as those of us who are making it a lifestyle point to reduce our waste and consumption and teaching our little ones to do the same and not be consumer-driven-big-box-mart goers is more helpful towards creating adults later who will understand the importance of that verses the willfully ignorant who have just as many kids (or more) who will grow up to be mindless consumers.
environmentalists having children is NOT the problem… may even be the long term solution. who else is going to teach them?
Big families conserve better almost by default. Parents have more colleges to fund, and usually have to cut back in order to save. Their minivans and SUVs are filled to the brim instead of just carting 3 folks around. They can’t afford McMansions or lawn services. Big families usually eat the food they buy, hand down the clothes they wear and carpool because there are only two parents and 6 different places to go. Also, their kids ride their bikes and walk a lot. A lot of big families that I know home school. Can you imagine the carbon emissions that cuts? No to-and-from trips to school five days a week? Count that up. As one of eight kids I know big families don’t over consume. It’s next to impossible. Each kid is waiting for the other to cast something aside and swipe it up for himself. Not much gets cast aside in a big family. Before people have children, they think mostly of what they can GET. They value their new car, their awesome apartment, their flat screen t.v. Single people and even married people who don’t have children are inherently selfish because they have only themselves to look after. Good stewardship and prudence are important in all walks of life. If these people want the rest of the world to understand that they would encourage BIGGER families rather than selfish lifestyles.
With people living longer, one child per family makes sense. Given our current global/environmental condition, having more than one child is irresponsible.
Of all the vain self important things I have ever read or heard, this article takes the cake. The fact that you truly believe that Angelina and Brad Pitt’s child would be better off in a 3rd world country where food, health care, vaccinations and overall quality of life are the epitome of the bottom of the barrel. You would rather see the child die in a cess pool of diseases over seeing the child prosper? It’s just amazing. Because their carbon footprint is larger here? Are you serious? When are the green loving hippies going to understand that the earth will buck this species (humans) right off with one drastic weather change if we screw it up too much. No amount of recycling, footprint minimizing, bike riding, dieting, compost heap building, birthday giftless years are ever going to change that. We CANNOT destroy this earth. But it can very easily destroy us.
So in order to save the planet, you’re going to not have children? Does it ever occur to you that a lot of the solutions proposed to global warming are a lot worse than the problem? I’d rather have the temperature go up a degree or two than deprive couples that want children from having them.
If environmentalists do follow this advice, environmentalism will gradually go extinct as everyone else continues to have kids. Then the public will vote against environmentalist policies. Quite a quandry you’ve got yourself in, isn’t it?
“Having babies” is not so much the problem — having adults is what’s causing the problems. The environmental impact of disposable diapers is heavy, but we are adults much longer than we are children.
People who envision having a baby often forget that they are creating an entirely new human being who will leave in a few years as an adult.
Youth is a wonderful phase of life, whether it’s people, panda, or panther. It’s sad to imagine there being no more of any of them. A baby condor may not be as cute as a baby human, but we must choose to forego one if the others are to survive.
Children’s welfare will improve as there are fewer of them to care for. Considering the future world we are creating for future generations, procreation today is like renting rooms in a burning building — renting them to our children no less.
We must evolve past the selfish desire to reproduce-at-will if we have any hope of winning the war against ourselves.
Choosing to refrain from producing another person demonstrates a profound love for all life.
We must evolve past the selfish desire to reproduce-at-will if we have any hope of winning the war against ourselves.
Why have kids and put money into a college fund when you can go out and buy a big screen plasma tv? its retarded i dont even know why everyone wants to have a kid
Do not allow yourself to feel guilty about having children. Here’s why.
Follow that train of thought to utmost logical end: if by having fewer kids less damage is done to the earth, how much less damage if we have no kids at all? Imagine: in 100 years of having 0 children, we could reduce the population of the United States to a handful of old people still left alive. Everyone else dead and passed away with no descendants.
Pretty ludicrous.
One, because what you’re implicitly saying is that eventually if we want to save the Earth we should all just commit mass suicide right now, Jonestown style. That guy with the bumper sticker can go first. By that logic, Hitler was good for the environment, as was Stalin and the Khmer Rouge.
Two, because it will never happen. If we all agreed to have fewer or no children, people would have kids on the sly. They would hide them from discovery. They would give their 2nd child to infertile/childless relatives or friends to raise as their own to circumvent accounting by the law. If the law says “only 1 kid” then give your 2nd kid to your sister. Or your cousin. Or those nice lesbians next door. Done. Or people will just outright break the law. Look at China.
Third, no one knows how many people the Earth can hold, nor what the future will bring. Technology has changed MASSIVELY since just the 1900s. What about 2100? Consider the light bulb. People used to burn lanterns and candles, and now we have LED bulbs that last 10 years on a watch battery! And there are more efficient lights after that. If we apply our technology to the basics of life: air, water, land, food… no statistics can predict what changes the future will bring.
It works the other way too: AIDS, war, corn blights, hurricanes, volcanoes, record-breaking winters… We not helpless against these problems, but there’s a limit to how much we can realistically prevent them. You can’t control nature. You can’t control the actions of other human beings. You can’t control God. Life will be life, and no amount of simplistic environmental math and shocking statistics can predict or prevent that. An asteroid could strike the Earth at any time, and what then?
I liked your article, and I’m not arguing with it or you. It’s this “guilt is good” mentality, as if guilt is somehow an antidote to greed, as if it solves anything. It’s the snark mentality: making a cutting put-down makes you somehow right.
If you actually fear environmental apocalypse, logically you would want to have 10 kids and live communally on a farm with their husbands and wives. Then you would have a village of 11-20 or more people and have enough hands to raise all your own food and protect each other in case of bandits or corrupt law enforcement. Or just to have more loved ones to talk to when TV and the Internet finally blow out like candles.
Overpopulation and overconsumption are two different problems, it’s hard to take a moral high ground when addressing one, but not the other. I personally believe overpopulation is the root of many of the world’s problems, but we really need to work on BOTH reducing our population size and the amount of waste we produce. In each case, we need more education, resources, and a fundamental change in our way of thinking. And yes, that means changing the societal norm of having 2.5 children.
I wouldn’t worry about it. Look at history – we don’t react until we’re already screwed. When we have to buy expensive filtration devices for our air/water, the _zero_ children per family will probably be the norm for any middle class couple. It’ll be fine when we have enough opposing force.
That said, why aren’t we working on more effective forms of contraception?
EXHAUSTING THE FISHERY IS MY PERSONAL CHOICE, ISN’T IT?
I went into my local Sporting Goods store today to buy some fishing gear for this coming summer season. I engaged pleasantries with Tracy, the lady at the counter. It was about four months since I last spoke to her. In that conversation, I lamented the fate of Kate, a tragically unfortunate woman in her mid twenties with schizophrenia. The whole island knew of Kate. Like so many schizophrenics, she was always seen pacing with a cigarette in her mouth, often talking to herself and sometimes flying into rages.
Unfortunately Kate is an attractive young woman. It is unfortunate because she is prey to cads who pick her up while hitchiking and have their way with her. About four months after her first childbirth she took her baby in her arms and at midnight in the moonlight walked into the frigid waters of the harbour and attempted to swim to the next island. She was apprehended, the baby rescued, placed in temporary social services care and then adopted. Of course the father of this child was no where to be seen.
The father of Kate’s second child was more responsible. He took custody while she went into psychiatric care. But her stay was short. In Canada there is really nothing doctors can do with mental health patients who won’t voluntarily submit to treatment. They are typically detained for two days after a doctor issues an order to the police. Then they are released. Kate has been detained and released over and over again.
This past fall Kate let it be known that she wanted a baby. She enjoyed being pregnant and having a child that cloyed to her and needed her. So every day and every night, she put on her make-up, tarted up, and trolled the roads thumbing rides. By January it was evident that she had been successful in her quest. Her third issue should be due before the spring is out. Even in a tight community with high accountability, there is always a supply of male scum to meet the irresponsible demands of someone like Kate. I can’t find words to describe the impotent rage I feel, and my feeling is broadly felt in the same depth.
When I reviewed Kate’s latest woes with Tracy, I bitterly remarked that with 6.7 billion people on the planet, and our environment consequently on the ropes, government—the community—should have no qualms about seizing people like Kate and sterilizing them. And then hunting down the scoundrels who take advantage of them and summarily neutering them without anesthetic.
“Well, she said, having children is a personal choice.”
Remembering that conversation, I brought my lures to the counter and announced, “Tracy, I won’t be buying a fishing licence this year.”
“Why not?” she asked, “You have to stay in your limit or you might get a heavy fine. Besides, Tim, you’ve gotta leave some fish for the rest of us.”
“Whether I catch one salmon or twenty salmon, surely that is a personal choice,” I replied.
Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
May 4/08
No one can justify having a child to fulfill their own selfish desires. No one.
And my selfish needs? I take long, hot showers and use all the water I want. I drive big SUV’s. I fly airplanes. I use up more resources than most people, but I will NEVER in a million years hurt the earth as much as a mother and her brand new BABY. GIVE ME THE TAX BREAKS, NOT HER!
I’m not sure why people should feel guilty for breeding, if one studies demographics, the womb of the mother is the most powerful weapon. If you think too much about it, and feel guilty about breeding, the world will be left in 40 years to the children of Third World immigrants and Evangelical Christians that most of you probably despise.
To expect that humans will stop procreating (either through education or by UN resolution) is unrealistic. The only way to save a human civilization is to move beyond this planet. We need to invest all our knowledge, energy and money into space exploration before it is too late. Besides, imagine people indeed stated to have significantly fewer kinds. Imagine that you are that lucky child that is still getting born: one in hundred families. You are now is taken care of by hundreds adults and practically have no other kids to relate to. Imagine what spoiled brat you will grow out to be, and when you do grow up imagine all these old retired folks that you now need to take of! Alone!!! I become blue in a face just thinking about it: the only what out is to start colonizing Mars or simething.
Let me start by saying that I don’t ever plan to have children.
However, I am hard pressed to figure out what your saving the world/environment for if it isn’t for future generations… Isn’t that paradoxical?
People have kids for the same reason they believe in God, they are scared. They are scared of one day being alone and they are scared that when they die that that is it, there is no more and want to believe in an afterlife.
Eventually the planet will run out of what we need, it may not be in 10 or 100 years but it will happen. There is no reason to worry about global warming as without reducing the world population there really is no way to change things, you can say your are green but you really aren’t you are just trying to make yourself feel better about yourself. What will probably save this planet some day is a meteor impact that would kill 90% of the earth’s population so until that day there is no changing things as people will just not stop having kids.
If you have more than one child you are very selfish!
Seels previous comments are unfortunatley probably correct,nature will take care of itself in the end meteor or no meteor.
Human world population growth now is at an insane level,and is set to keep growing.
If youre 80 years old just think the world has more than tripled in population in youre lifetime.
In the end world governments are simply going to be forced to reward people financially with money not to have children,money talks and thats what will save the earth
Issues of space colonization are in real terms probably something like 250 years away,no planet within 4 light years of travel would be able to handle life for us humans