Kids or no kids?
This is an extremely personal decision; but it is, as we discussed in class the other day, not one that is merely personal. I already told you guys where I stand on this issue (no kids for me, thanks) and suggested thinking more deeply about the reasoning behind the decision to have kids or not and the rational justifications available to counter the realities of population-related problems. Here are some resources to consider during that process.
I didn’t realize this until I started looking around, but Bill McKibben has actually already written a book on the subject, titled Maybe One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single Child Families. It’s part argument about the environmental impact of having children and part personal memoir about his own decisions.
This Slate article by Daniel Engber explicitly asks the same question we asked in class: “Should Americans have fewer babies to save the environment?”
I’ll point to just a couple of articles briefly making the argument that fewer children equals less environmental impact (one from the New York Times and one from a blog called The Childless by Choice Project). Both entries, though, link back to the same report and, if you’re really interested in this issue, I recommend checking it out.
And finally, this article lists some specific ways that a baby can make a huge environmental impact–as well as some tips for parents to follow to try to diminish these effects.
This is a kind of education that we didn’t get to talk about so much in class. If parents-to-be know more about the public and environmental consequences of having a child (as opposed to just knowing about the personal consequences), is it possible that that knowledge will affect how many children they choose to have?
