This old earth has spun 'round the sun 40 times since my founding egg and sperm got cozy with each other, and yet I'm still a solo act: no wife, no family, no tribe. While a life partner and tribe can be left to happen whenever they happen -- if they happen -- I'm at the point where I think I need to either become a daddy, soon, or give up the idea once and for all.
Hope floats.
Photo: iStockphoto.
If I ever did co-create a baby, I would want to revel in being a father, rolling and tumbling and running and wrestling and shouting and dancing. I wouldn't want to be dragging along, worn out and gasping for breath -- and I can't assume I'll be spry enough to match a 10-year-old at 55.
But here's the rub: I'm also striving to progressively reduce my destructive impact on the world, walking a path to reach sustainability. Yet I live in a world of almost 6.5 billion people, up from 3.3 billion when I was born and projected to be a smidge over 9 billion when I'm 80 (oh, you cockeyed optimist, you!). I can't imagine how anyone looking at numbers like those could conceive with no qualms. Growth -- in both population and consumption -- is tearing the web of life apart, and I'm convinced we need to not only stop growing but start scaling back. Given that, how in heck could I possibly justify having a baby?
It's true that, if the average number of surviving children born per woman worldwide from now on was only one, the population would begin to slowly decline in the foreseeable future. In that imaginary world, it might be pretty easy to convince me that it was OK to have one myself. But even though the global fertility rate has been declining over the last few decades, it's still an average of 2.6 children per woman, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates -- so no help there.
Of course, it's not merely a question of weighing the direct eco-impact of bringing a child into the world, either; there's also the issue of priorities. I am a writer and community activist, and my mission takes a great deal of time and energy. So do children. If I chose to both be a writer/activist and have a child, one or the other would receive less of me than I want to give, by default. With so much to be done in these days of pervasive pollution, runaway deforestation, climate disruption, extinction, and so on, can I afford to split my life between my mission and nurturing a child?
From another perspective, it's a mighty odd thing for someone to consciously choose not to reproduce. I'm pretty sure that counts as what biologists might call an evolutionarily unstable strategy, or a behavior that tends to be eliminated from the gene pool through evolutionary selection. Those who have no reproductive drive are obviously not going to pass on that tendency -- or any other, for that matter. So why am I even thinking about this? What makes me an evolutionary exception?
As I understand it, things are pretty simple among other mammal species. When ecological conditions deteriorate beyond a certain stress point, the females don't cycle into their fertile phases, and they resume doing so only when conditions improve. No muss, no fuss, no difficult decisions to make. Human females sometimes experience a similar biological effect -- it happens to athletes who are training hard and eating restrictive, calorie-deficient diets -- but most of us in the industrialized world aren't anywhere near that active, and the eco-stresses we face don't generally take the form of food scarcity. I'm not going to be relieved from making a decision that way.
Taking all this into consideration, what's a guy to do if he'd love to be a daddy but also loves the world? He can only make the best choice he's able to see, given the knowledge he has, relying as best he can on his gut feelings, and driven by the values he holds dear.
In my case, that means I've decided to drown myself in the gene pool, never to make a baby of my own.
I'll do my best to help my loved ones raise the children they choose to have, and I won't hold their choices against them. I certainly don't expect or want everyone to make the same decision I've made, and I can well understand why some won't. Maybe I'll choose to adopt someday, which would give me the chance to raise a child to love the world as I do without adding to the population.
But still, I'll never be able to look into my daughter's face and see echoes of her mother, my mother, my father -- myself. I resent being born into a culture that's so destructive to the living community that I can see no better alternative, and I'm angry at all those who came before me and let it get to this point.
And I'm not going to pretend that forgoing daddyhood doesn't leave a ragged gash in my heart, because it damn sure does.
Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots
Comments
View as Flat
roastero Posted 12:26 pm
14 Dec 2005
Population increase is often seen by economically-driven politicians as synonymous with economic growth. Populate or perish?
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Trucha Posted 7:23 pm
14 Dec 2005
My wife and I love kids, and have many children in our lives through our friends, but neither of us feel any real desire to reproduce. So why do I often get the feeling that when we tell people that, there's this underlying assumption that its really me, as the "male" that doesn't want kids and my wife is just aquiescing? She feels just as strongly about it as I do! Environmental issues aside, we also consider the impact it would have on our lives, and we see friends who have no free time, look exhausted all the time, can't just spontaneously go out to a movie or dinner, and we know that its not for us - we enjoy our free time, and the lack of pressure of having to make "x" amount of salary to start saving forr universities, etc.
I've actually heard people say its "selfish" not to reproduce, and to value your own time and energy over having children - what's more selfish than acknowledging overpopulation is a serious issue, but you're going to have kids anyway?
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wren7 Posted 1:44 am
15 Dec 2005
I don't understand why so many people who do want kids have two, three, even four or more children. What's wrong with having just one, which would ease the burdens on working parents and allow many of them to save both for college and for their own retirement?
I often feel like a "female mutant" for feeling this way, because it is definitely not the norm. But since becoming an environmentalist several years ago, I have another reason to be glad that I'm childless.
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yorkvillezendo Posted 6:37 am
15 Dec 2005
What are we, people who do want children but are social-responsibility-minded, to do? It is a real dilemma, and it isn't being discussed.
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bookerly Posted 2:01 pm
15 Dec 2005
One of the reasons that population is not discussed more often is that it usually is spoken of in terms of numbers. However, it's not just how many children one has, but how they (and you) live. The deeper issue is consumption. Someone who builds a huge mansion but has no children has a more negative effect on the planet than a peasant family with five children. The real problem in the developed countries is not just how many people there are, but the way we all live.
While population needs to stabilize and trend downward, more importantly the consumption practices of the West need to be addressed. The houses full of unused stuff, the three cars per family, the suburban lifestyle especially (though not only) are what is killing the planet.
A stable society with good social welfare programs, education and empowerment for women seem to "solve" the numbers part of the population issue. The consumption part is even less likely to be seriously discussed.
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i zimba Posted 1:04 am
16 Dec 2005
"The road to the future leads us smack into the wall and we simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers. The wall is a demographic explosion that triggers social chaos and spreads death, nuclear delirium and the quasi-annihilation of the species... Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years." -Jacques Cousteau (1910 - 1997)
"The prevailing view holds that a stable population that does not tax the environment's "carrying capacity" would be sustainable indefinitely, and that this state of equilibrium can be achieved through a combination of birth control, conservation, and reliance on "renewable" resources. Unfortunately, worldwide implementation of a rigorous program of birth control is politically impossible. Conservation is futile as long as population continues to rise. And no resources are truly renewable." -"Energy and Human Evolution" by David Price
"Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive." -Pardot Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis
"There not need be any more people in the world than one can get to know in a lifetime." - Unknown
"I question whether technological growth can keep us ahead of the consumption wolf pack. Particularly if we're trying to export a consumption-based economy to the whole world. At some point we need to say enough is enough." -Kurt Yeager, president and CEO of the industry-funded Electrical Power Research Institute
"You're not actually mammals. Every mammal on the planet naturally develops equilibrium with their surrounding environment. You humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern, a virus. You're a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague and we are the cure." - The Matrix (Film)
"Relief for hungry children is nothing but a symptom of accelerated ignorance, unaware of how a world forecloses on invading circumstance." - Roy Harper's "Ghost Dance"
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sandysanders Posted 7:23 am
16 Dec 2005
But to get there we need to:
ratify, implement and support all of the features of the Earth Charter...
eliminate political influence or power by non-citizens (this means corporations, businesses or PACs that own our political infrastructure) in our governments, and secure a verifiable and understood to be effective voting system (IRV)...
and establish appropriate taxation of the wealthy so that the lower and middle classes, and our government, have adequate resources to function in a sustainable way, under the circumstance of a satisfying life on Earth ("scarcity" is an illusory myth perpetrated by the Rich Boys Club).
I believe that if these three statements above can be the actively pursued goal of 10% of the population of Earth we can indeed build, what the Universe has as it's intended purpose for all of it's conscious fauna, Ecotopia.
Let's do Ecotopia Now! Let's do Revolution Now!
Peace!
-Sandy Sanders
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Trucha Posted 8:09 am
17 Dec 2005
What exactly are the conerns here? That we may someday have a lot of immigrants in European countries working in low wage jobs?!? While not an ideal situation, is it all that different than the present one? And this seems like a deep-seated social issue, not one caused by depopulation. And clearly, "depopulation isn't really what's happening - it's just population shift. To be honest, after years of colonial pillaging, I have little sympathy for countries like France that now have to deal with integrating people from the countries they robbed from for so many years. It is a serious issue, and one for which I see no easy solutions, but it really has little to do with "depopulation."
And what were the other issues to be concerned about here? That all those folks collecting pension plans will drain monetary resources from "green projects?" Please - a fraction of many countries' bloated military budgets could bridge the gap in a heartbeat. The issue isn't there isn't a result of people collecting pensions as much as it is the western military-industrial complex having warped priorities.
As the Mr. Wendling admits, the world's population is still growing, regardless. And the effects of that far outweigh whatever miniscule and over-dramatized impacts may be felt from declining populations in some limited areas. Frankly, with real issues worthy of serious concern, whether or not the aging population of some small town in northern England can find suitable young people to mate with and do their work for them is pretty low on my list. Yawn....
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Mike Wendling Posted 9:23 pm
18 Dec 2005
At the same time, however, population is tied to very personal choice - i.e. whether or not to have children - a difficult issue that John Kurmann handled brilliantly.
One thing I touched on briefly in my article was the impact on public policy. As a completely unscientific and, um, somewhat flippant survey, I did a bit more research over the weekend, into how many children a select few world leaders have spawned:
-Blair: 4
-Bush: 2
-Angela Merkel: 0
-Junichiro Koizumi: 3
-Jacques Chirac: 2
-Hu Jintao: 2
-Vladimir Putin: 2
-Silvio Berlusconi: 5
-Manmohan Singh: 3
-Kofi Annan: 3
So, like the larger topic - some surprises, few simple conclusions! I'm convinced though that we have to resume seriously thinking about population and how many of us can fit on the planet - despite the problems I outlined, the environmental benefits of a falling population could be tremendous.
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su Posted 2:51 pm
20 Dec 2005
Id love to have a child! somehow having all this machinery and not using it is just the most frustrating idea. Then theres what is called 'instinct',or what i've started to think of as conditioning, society expects that every woman would have the instinct to give birth to a child, and you accept it, and after a bit its so ingrained in you its almost biological.
There is the instinct to care for children, and anyone whose had a brother(s) or sister(s) knows its one of the best things in the world (usually). I do,I think more than one child is a great idea.
Then theres the age old pattern, babies need parents to take care of them, especially ones that love them. Old people, invalids need young people to care for them, especially young people who love them. That is a very important function of a 'family'. old age homes just do not compare.
so its quite clear people need parents, and people need children . . . But its perfectly clear that this genetic instinct for survival is actually responsible for bringing us closer to extinction !
I think the saving grace is that there are plenty of children out there that, unfortunately, do not have any parents. Of course they may not mirror your features, but they will follow your example, they might mimic your expressions , and adopt your walk, or the way you talk, and most importanly your values as much as any biological child would.
I like to think that if some of us have been given the insight to realise that bringing a child into the world is no longer as logical or wonderful as it used to be-for the parent or the child, we must value life-and that would make us more able to accept as our own somthing that has not necessariliy come from within us.
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saxa Posted 10:30 am
21 Dec 2005
Therefore, it would make sense to put far stricter rules around immigration than are currently in place. Not just because it would save the American environment, but the global environment.
Sadly, this thought is often dismissed even by environmentalists as racist for two reasons. First, most immigrants are not white. Second, the most vocal advocates of ending immigration have historically been tied to racist or sectarian groups going back to the 1800s. There is kind of a knee-jerk reaction in mainstream U.S. society to anything that could be deemed "anti-immigrant" because Americans often view the U.S. as an immigrant country.
Added to that, the Mexican government will do anything to increase Mexican migration to the U.S. as remittances are the second largest source of foreign currency after oil exports.
http://www.picayuneitem.com/articles/2005/12/21/news/19wall.txt
It would be nice to see the Sierra Club and other environmentalists take over the immigration issue from xenophobes and militia types so we can have an honest and productive dialoge about the effect of population growth on the environment. I think we can have this conversation in the context of improving the economies of all countries and the livelihoods of their citizens and not in the context of keeping groups of verious national or ethnic or religious backgrounds seperate from one another.
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kateotis Posted 2:08 am
28 Dec 2005
I'm single, and found myself craving parenthood, too. So - I adopted a baby boy from Russia. Ohhh, he's the love of my life. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, and the best thing I've ever done, and I can't believe how happy I am. Yes, I too was a career overachiever, but now it's just a job. I can go back with gusto someday if I want to, but for now, I'm singing nursery rhymes and making snowmen. And I can't believe that I'm actually enjoying it!
There are tens of thousands, or maybe even hundreds of thousands of wonderful kids wasting away in orphanages just waiting for a family. When my little 3 year old gives me a hug and says "I wub woo", the genes don't matter.
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tylepard Posted 4:41 am
26 Sep 2007
Also, if you're in the Washington, DC area: Please attend a discussion on this topic at the Wilson Center on October 2, 2007.
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