I am at that age where some of my friends are seriously considering whether or they want children in the next few years or even decade. While there are several considerations that goes into the decision, such as finances, perceived ability to be a parent, the time one can spend child-rearing, whether or not one has the temperament to nurture children, the effects on career and personal fulfilment and well-being, to name a few, there are also two ideologies that people are coming across.
Anti-natalism or the idea that having children is inherently bad.
Pro-natalism or the idea that one must have children.
Now, many religions will say that one must have children, from the perspective that if we stop having kids our species will die out. Which is fair, but personally not a good enough reason, because it’s not enough to have kids. We must also raise good human beings. And that? It requires a lot, and parents should thus be encouraged to take this decision when they are ready for it. Because while some may not believe the anti-natalist idea that to be born is to be subjected to pain which you wouldn’t have faced otherwise, we all can agree that we must give our kids the healthiest and happiest lives possible and raise them to be well-adjusted adults. And no, I am not open to hearing counter-arguments on this one.
(Psst, I am.)
But my blog is on healthy and realistic sustainable living, so why am I talking about procreation and children? Isn’t it a given that environmentalists do not have children because we have too many people and not enough resources? Welllll….
Not exactly. But also, yes.
Shall we?
Stages of Population Growth
Experts have said that there are four stages in which population exist, which has been noticed almost globally. Essentially it is how population grow and decline and why that happens. Now, since I am not here to tell you whether you should have kids or not, because I don’t know your circumstances and what’s important to you, I will simply share this information, in case, sustainability is playing a huge role in your decisions. After all, even if we cannot anticipate every consequence of our decision or have all the knowledge, they do say well-informed is well-armed. Be warned, it can get a little triggering.
Stage One: High Birth and Death Rates
Essentially, here disease, infant-mortality, and such horrible things are high. Societies are mainly labour-intensive, women don’t have many rights, and extra kids are seen are freer labour, so people have many. There is also the fact that only a few of these “numerous” children make it to adulthood, because I mentioned disease and infant mortality right, and so having a litter was a precautionary measure against ending up childless.
But thankfully, we evolve and our tech gets better and so many countries move on to the next stage.
Stage Two: More births, less deaths
As medical science progresses, life expectancy increases and suddenly our birth rates are higher than our death rates. Usually, this is when things are starting to stabilize but eventually this leads to overpopulation and resource degradation begins.
Stage Three: Less births, less deaths
Access to contraception, women empowerment and ability to choose how many kids they want, and lack of access to good food, as well as increasing social and economic costs of child-rearing, lead to birth rates falling. Now, we this happening in many “developed” nations, and people have cited even more reasons than what experts initially suggested. There is the lack of social support such as extended family for child raising, there are work hours which are simply not possible to raise kids in, the high cost of child-care for working parents and the safety of children, environmental concerns, the toll pregnancy and giving birth takes on people’s bodies, the lack of proper maternity and paternity leaves and so on. Thus, in this stage, birth rates decline and since death rates have already gone down to match, what do we get?
Stage Four: Stabilization
A stable population! Which is what many countries should be facing right now, except, tiny problem, mi amigo, many places, like Japan and Italy, have hit some issues. Some demographic experts may even call it, stage five.
Basically, once birth rates and death rates have stabilized, what happens is that older population increases as compared to younger population, which means more dependents and less people who can work. Again, this is affected by social perceptions of age and work, as well as type of work, and health of the older population, but in general, this can be an issue because it means our economic systems which promise retirement as part of the social contract might collapse. Some experts suggest migration to solve this, while others turn to pro-natalism. Yet others, suggest we change our economic systems, citing that despite population going down, the planet still has a biocapacity and if we increase consumption, we will have to reduce population regardless. Others suggest a mix of these approaches (in a healthy manner- let’s not make people’s procreation choices for them) alongside practical sustainable living and asking government systems to change.
( Psst, Kurzgesagt- In a Nutshell has a great video on this topic.)
As you can see, there is no one size fits all solution. And if you want my personal opinion? There shouldn’t be. Children should not have to bear the weight of the world at their birth as either “born to increase population and save us from dying” or face guilt associated with their birth because their parents feel that their child is another person on a rapidly resource-less world. Both are also extremes in my opinion, but that’s just me.
And here’s the thing. People innovate, which means we can find ways to live a less resource-intensive life. To an extent, at least, which is why no one is saying have endless children.
It should be your choice, which honors your wants, needs, and ability to raise tiny humans to full-grown members of society. So, if my friends were asking me, whether they should have progeny, I would refuse, because I don’t think anyone of them is responsible enough- I carry them home after they break their legs, so I know, but jokes aside- I would tell them to see what feels most aligned with them and work to make that the best possible choice. If then it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t. At least, you tried.
Go to therapy.
Understand why you feel having a child is the best or the worst thing on the planet.
Work on it. Perhaps you decide not to have one. Or you decide to have, but still want them to live a planet-aligned life.
Look at sustainable ways to raise children and also how to accept your child might not be sustainable at several points, until they understand the importance of it.
There is a lot that I feel goes into being a parent, and this is just after experiencing being a child. I’m not yet a parent. And a world that is rapidly headed towards climate-change, you may feel, isn’t the best place for a kid. But here’s hope. Like I said, we can do better.
Our governments can.
So again, let me reiterate, you can choose to not have a child if that’s what aligns best with you. But don’t let climate change stop you from fulfilling the need to be a parent. Without at least lobbying for a better world.
But who says you have to listen to me? Not me.
And if you are wondering, how to sustainably raise a child? I recommend Sonika Bashin’s parenting podcast. She shares great options in cloth diapering, clothing for children, traveling sustainably with a lil’ one and so on. Do you feel I should also do a blog on the topic? Let me know in the comments!
Author’s Note: If you found this helpful, you can support my blog with a share or subscribe to my sustainable living channel- Realistically Sustainable Diaries. Merci!
Beta Reader- Shubhr Aakriti
