To be jealous of people with 3 children

[LovingLife0]

I have a 3 and 2 year old and DP and I have recently decided that we won't be having a third child. We have been talking about it for the past year but have made our decision primarily on environmental reasons.

Since making this decision I have become OBSESSED with families with 3+ children. For example I can't stop thinking how Kim Kardashian has 4 children and how many her children will have and all the carbon footprint. I also follow a few 'eco' families on insta who have as many as six children. As you can see I'm irrationally obsessed!! I KNOW everyone is entitled to their own choice and it's none of my business but I guess I'm just jealous!

I suppose I'm looking for advice on how I can move on from our decision to stop at 2 while not being jealous of people who go on to have large families?

I don't understand why you would want to be outnumbered! 🙈

Have one if that is what you feel completes your family. I’m one of three and love my siblings so much I wouldn’t be without either. I can’t have any children and I’d have had at least two. That makes us net sum zero one. Cx

One thing that’s very clear is the selfishness of people is going to bring the end of the world.

That's the conclusion I came to a while ago and this thread is a horrifying confirmation. So much ignorance and selfishness in one place is hard to take.

Oh well, at least the planet will be rid of us soon.

Posters saying "oh I don't have any children so have my one" or similar ridiculous things are just being plain stupid.

Also Rhootintoot, if you are one of three and are and always have been happy about that then great but as I said, if you have read the thread, I was one of three and certainly did not like it. Even now in my 60's I rarely see one of my siblings. I only see the one I was close to growing up

If you really want to get population growth under control then instead of being rude to western women who chose to have three rather than two children you should do something about the forces that limit the access to women in the developing world to education and contraception. If women are given the choice they choose to limit their families.

Obviously no one's advocating 'being rude' (pointing out that it's not ideal?) but there's nothing mutually exclusive about trying to encourage people to limit family size in both the developing and the developed world. It's not like anyone's sat weighing up, 'now, where shall we allocate resources? Should we fund contraception in Somalia, or should we stand and shout at families of five on Cheltenham high street?'

And while reducing family sizes in the developing world is both an environmental and a human necessity (as you say, women usually choose to have fewer children when they have options so it's a moral imperative to give them those options), the unpalatable truth is that my one Western baby is going to have a worse environmental impact by the time he's 18 than an entire family in the developing world will have in the same time. Our lifestyles are incredibly high-consumption (yes, despite the little tweaks we make - we rarely fly, are vegetarian and try and limit car use; we're still consuming resources at a rate the planet can't take) and each of our babies is having a higher individual impact because of that than a baby growing up in poverty in the developing world.

The problem isn't the birth rate anyway. It's the fact that not enough people are dying. Unpalatable but true I'm afraid.

How can the problem not be birth rate? Won’t those babies also live long lives or am I being thick? Also surely common humanity means we care for those already here and to limit those not even born just because someone fancies having a larger family?

Its a catch 22, if the birth rate falls there's not enough working people to support an aging population. Women in developed countries have never had such few children. Problem is years ago you'd retire and be lucky to live for 10-15 years, now it's more like 25-30. My own view is they'll eventually make euthanasia legal compulsory

I don’t think that can work anymore it’s like a bonkers Ponzi scheme where more and more people required - not sustainable. That’s why this is so hard we need entirely new economic systems that don’t rely on constant growth the planet can’t sustain..

there's nothing mutually exclusive about trying to encourage people to limit family size in both the developing and the developed world

The point is women in the developed world already limit family size.

Problem is years ago you'd retire and be lucky to live for 10-15 years

When the retirement age was 70 it was assumed people would live for another 5 years. Retirement age needs to keep going up.

Just under 1/3 of the UKs energy now comes from renewable resources, and it's increasing fast. I suspect it will ultimately be close to 100%, we've not really begun to harvest the wave energy round these islands but that's an incredible source of largely untapped energy. Third world countries will hopefully go straight to renewables as their economies expand (figures here, and some countries are already at 100% of energy coming from renewables).

I can't see us moving from a capitalist economy any time soon, it's the fastest driver of innovation. We'll move to renewable energy and become more energy efficient, business will recycle more, some things will get very expensive for most people (flights are the obvious one but the oil industry is powerful - hope everyone who has limited their children because of the environment also doesn't fly) and there will be changes that we can't predict yet.

in Order to save humanity we are going to have to adjust attitudes and expectations. It’s not about what we want for our own gratification anymore, it’s about analysing everything we do in terms of environmental cost. Everytime we do something with an environmental impact we need to be mindful the bank is running low. Environmentally speaking we can’t afford more than 2kids per family, we can afford large houses with empty rooms, we can’t afford to have our thermostats set at 23degrees, we can’t afford to buy synthetic clothing every week that doesn’t last long, we can’t afford single use plastics, we can’t afford large suvs/7 seater cars. We can’t afford to be crisscrossing the world on planes (and in turn it’s hard to justify migration if people are going to be wanting to fly back home all the time). It’s a hard adjustment for years many of the most environmentally damaging things are the very things we were told to aspire to because they showed wealth and in turn created more wealth. Buy big cars so we can sell more petrol, buy clothes so you can show you’re on trend, sewing, woodwork and practical skills have been pushed out of schools, cars are no longer fixable without a diagnostic computer. The power to make do and mend has been stripped away, we are just encouraged to buy new. Fertility is seen as the pinnacle of success, childless women are demonised as uncaring, selfish and just not natural, parents of single children vilified as evil for leaving their spoilt child lonely. You must produce at least two children, ideally one of each to have been a success, we need to celebrate the birth of more consumers. We need to turn all this thinking on its head. The ability to mend clothing you have had to be more valued than the ability to buy endless replacements