☀👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Climate change and kids

Prospective parents shouldn't fear the future

Quote of the Issue

“You don't need to predict the future. Just choose a future - a good future, a useful future - and make the kind of prediction that will alter human emotions and reactions in such a way that the future you predicted will be brought about.” - Isaac Asimov

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The Essay

☀👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Climate change and kids

I have seven kids. I think big families are awesome. But people have to make their own choices. I try to remain non-judgmental about family size, even when it comes to my own kids (six of whom are now adults).

One judgment I do make, however, is this one: It’s kind of silly to avoid having kids because of climate concerns. It’s an issue discussed in “The Morality of Having Kids in a Burning, Drowning World,” a review by New Yorker editor Jessica Winter of two recent books that grapple with topic, The Quickening and The Parenthood Dilemma. But how much of an issue is it really? As Winter writes:

It’s unclear, all in all, precisely how much correlation exists between rising awareness of the environmental crisis and steady declines in the U.S. birth rate, which dropped for six consecutive years through 2020, reaching a historic low. It had a post-COVID bump in 2021, but stayed flat in 2022. … In a 2021 Pew survey of childless adults who say they likely will not have children, only five percent specifically named climate change as the crucial factor, with an additional nine per cent citing “the state of the world.” Nineteen percent cited medical reasons, seventeen per cent cited financial reasons, and fifteen percent cited not having a partner. That being said, among people who already have kids, more than half say that climate anxiety does influence how many children they plan to have, according to a Morning Consult poll of thousands of parents in five countries, including the U.S., conducted earlier this year.

The New Yorker

I might suggest that people citing climate change as a reason to not have kids are being… less than truthful. Maybe it’s a way of not seeming selfish or hedonistic to friends and family. Perhaps posing as eco-martyrs helps them see themselves as the heroes of their own stories. But given the rather small share of people who actually cite climate change as a crucial factor, these worriers really might be telling the truth after giving the issue deep consideration. Such folks might legitimately see having children as bringing people into a world of horror.

That said, viewing climate change as a civilizational death sentence, whether or not such a view alters your procreative choices, is misguided.