I hear my mother calling: A new documentary on women and population [VIDEO]

This is not your father’s population documentary. The new film “Mother: Caring Our Way Out of the Population Dilemma” takes a feminist/humanist view as it explores the issue of our exploding numbers. It’s now showing at a handful of film festivals and events. Here’s the trailer:

The film features a number of the usual eco-suspects — Paul Ehrlich, Lester Brown — but also some unexpected voices — author and social scientist Riane Eisler, childfree advocate Laura S. Scott — plus everyday folk in the U.S. and Ethiopia. The central figure is an American woman, Beth Osnes, who comes from a family of 10 kids and, through the course of the movie, comes to recognize her own role in the population crisis. Says Osnes toward the end of the film:

I realize that it starts with people like me and [my husband] JP just sitting down together at the beginning of our families and saying, Our planet’s limits have changed. How are we going to change how we’re making our family?

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If the film won’t be screening near you anytime soon, you can get on the mailing list to be alerted when it comes out on DVD this summer. 

This is the latest in a series of Saturday GINK videos about population and reproduction (or a lack thereof).