having babies despite the state of the world

[TruthOnTrial]

I am wondering about any that are contemplating pregnancy at a time when the world weather is in crisis, fires ranging out of control across Aus, also california, and others. Floods regularly now around the UK, tornados even and more extreme weather generally, a summer just gone with record heatwave temps.

Many are making a decision to not start a family as the continuing viability of life on earth is ever more unsure.

Half a billion animals killed in the Aus fires alone. People having to lock themselves indoors and residents considering leaving Aus for good.

Is it U to consider bringing future children into this?

PatriciaBateman well said

Having children is one of the most precious things you can have. It is up to us to teach them to respect and protect the planet. However i think the number of children should be restricted.

I know of 2 couples and one single all expecting babies in the new year, all aged between 19-21 and in low paid, unskilled work with low job security.
I'd be absolutely terrified about having kids if I was their age and in their position but they obviously think it makes sense.

@Dubya no the world has never been perfect but now it is probably inevitable that the future is going to be bleak. We cannot dismiss rising sea levels, much hotter weather etc. Also experts say there will be food and water shortages.

Humans are destroying the rain forests, wiping out whole species of animals etc. Is that the planet and future you want for your children or grand children?

I can't say I regret my parents having me because that would be silly and pointless. I am in my 60's so hopefully will not be alive to see the worst of the future.

My parents have never said as much but I think if there had been better contraception in their day and choosing to be childfree was more common they quite likely would not have had children.

It’s nice to navel gaze.

Truth is we are compelled by biology to procreate and propagate the human race.

Whether we as a species are able to adapt to the changing world is another thought for another day.

I don’t know why people are saying that even in bad times people still had children. Well, yes, they did but would they really have brought 6,7,8 children into the world during war time or the Depression etc if they’d had any REAL choice about it? Knowing it was another mouth they couldn’t afford to feed, another person to find a place in bed for, another child who may possibly die in childbirth anyway and take the mother with them? We take contraception for granted because we’ve grown up with it. We take safe childbirth for granted, and health care and so the thought of those awful things happening to us is terrifying.. We take for granted the fact that if we don’t, as a married woman, want to have sex with our husband at any time then we don’t have to. rape within marriage didn’t used to “exist”. People never really CHOSE to have children in the past, they were just an obvious consequence of the urge to have regular sex.

We have also now become almost immune to the idea of death, disease and starvation happening to us. It happens “in other places”. Children and women died young regularly in the past and it was just part of life so was just accepted as one of those things when it happened to you. You just got up and got on with things and carried on.

In the past people wouldn’t have been aware of the environmental impact of the Industrial Revolution, of the invention of plastics, even the impact of the NHS in that it means we are living longer and our longer retirement/elderly care needs paying for. The Internet means we are bombarded daily with gloom and doom. We are aware of every crisis and negative thing happening right across the globe. We can’t avoid it.

That is why so many are handwringing about whether we SHOULD be bringing children into the world. We are more conscious of EVERYTHING. More educated about EVERYTHING. We can’t escape the doom and gloom whereas in the past we became immune to it when it was part of our daily lives or we were ignorant of it if it happened far away from us.

The real question is, do we want to choose to bring our children into the world where there is a constant ever present buzz in their minds of “things are going wrong with the world” so that they never get to just live in the moment and enjoy looking up at the clouds on a sunny day. Where instead they look up and immediately think “oh fuck, this is the third day with no clouds in the sky, we’re all doomed.”

We are no longer able to just live in the moment. That’s all that kids do. Once we become teenagers and aware of our place in the world and wonder why we’re all here that’s when the awful anxiety starts. Perhaps we should all just be enjoying life (as responsibly as we can), and holding life sacred enough again to want to bring new life into the world. It’s a gift. We’ve spent years and year’s trying to enhance it, extend it. Why not just appreciate life for life itself and not worry about the “what ifs” constantly.

@sall74 do they all think it makes sense to have a child though or have they given it little or no thought?

Often the low paid with poor prospects are the ones having the larger families.

I have some neighbours. She is 25 and he is 26. She doesn't work at all and has only ever worked for just over a year since leaving school. He does a part time evening job. They never have any money, their electric is always running out, their house is freezing because they can't afford to heat it. Their lives are a constant struggle mainly because they can't be bothered to work. There is work where I am and they both drive and have a car so she could work days and him look after the children and then she is home in the evening when he works.

They have 3 children and are talking about having a 4th! They obviously love their children but they never go anywhere or do anything. The eldest is 10 and has never been to the sea side even though the nearest is only just over an hour away

@SoulsStars we are not "compelled" to do anything even procreate. We all have brains and are perfectly capable of using them.

We are not compelled to procreate as such. Prehistoric man didn’t know that babies were the product of sex. There were no families. The males and females just had sex and 9 months later a baby was born which they assumed was a gift from the gods.

It’s the sexual urge that is the crux. I doubt that will ever go away unless you drug everyone.

CurlyhairedAssassin it is possible of course to have sex and not have children. Plenty of people manage it despite all the supposed "accidents"

It is not inevitable that the human race will continue. We have developed ways of stopping pro-creating.
I think the human race will One day kill itself through its own greed.

@CurlyhairedAssassin

People never really CHOSE to have children in the past, they were just an obvious consequence of the urge to have regular sex.

I'm not sure that's true. Biological impulses drive us to have sex yes, but I can't imagine it took anyone very long to work out that you only have babies once you start having sex...

No individual is compelled to have a child, but as a natural species it is by default our only objective.

isshoes, that’s why I said it was an obvious consequence.

To be clear, I was talking about 2 different times in human existence really. Saying that the urge to have sex has always been there. But in prehistoric times people didn’t connect having sex with a baby being born 9 months later and in more recent times, before contraception, people obviously knew that If they had regular sex then they’d likely have lots of babies as a result, but they still did it anyway.

Prehistoric man didn’t know that babies were the product of sex. There were no families. The males and females just had sex and 9 months later a baby was born which they assumed was a gift from the gods.

This is not a scientific fact. It was, however, the narrative Hollywood proposed in Clan of the Cave Bear. Movies are not really the best source material.

Curly haired
You need to do a bit of actual researching other than watching movies.

Prehistoric man was more advanced than most people are aware. For example, dentition and skeletal studies have found evidence they chewed plants with naturally occurring antibiotics to fight infections. They have also found residue of herbs that have long been used for their abortion or contraceptive qualities. Things like wild carrot seed, black and blue cohosh, etc.

In times gone by, people didn't have much choice bout having a large family.
They wanted sex and pregnancy was often an unwanted consequence.
Now it is preventable.
I remember years ago having conversations with my grandma and her telling me about how horrified her older sisters were on finding out they were pregnant again. If course life was very different then, women s rights were not as they are now and lots of women with large families were trapped.

I've heard residents of Aus saying they want to emigrate, threads on MN, and elsewhere, thats its becoming uninhabitable

Absolutely not so. Most areas of Australia are untouched by the bush fires. Of course they are terrible, and video of the fires has flashed around the world. But most Australians are living normal healthy lives, untouched by the fires. Over Christmas I drove up the east coast of the country, and saw nothing but a few areas of smoke which had been blown from the bush fire areas. Most of the country is perfectly safe and life continues as normal. I haven't heard of anyone planning to leave .

YANBU.
But people will continue shagging away, no matter what.
The urge to procreate is very strong in most people, regardless of what the future will bring.
Babies will always be popping out around the world at a mile a minute, even as civilisation collapses around us.

""We're not having enough children to replace the existing population, the population is expanding beyond anything the world has ever seen."

Yes and no. See here-UN population prediction 2050. No growth in Europe, actually a slight decline.

Practically all population growth will be from Africa and Asia.

www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/africa/1016790/more-than-half-of-the-worlds-population-growth-will-be-in-africa-by-2050/amp/

good news in Europe, let's hope we can share the wealth, get rid of the corrupt governments and educate the women in Africa so that their population won't keep rising for ever.

this planet cannot support an infinite number of people. The one thing Thunberg is right about is that we need to get away from the idea that growth is good.

I will have children and teach them the importance of looking after our planet and the simple things they can incorporate into every day life to help.
I personally think the younger generation now are more aware than any other therefore they will want to pass this onto their offspring

It's 200 years since Malthus was handwringing about the disparities in human growth exceeding food production and how catastrophies such as war, famine and disease keep the human population in check. The suggestion of abstaining from having children is the response that Malthus suggested as the only moral way to prevent immoral catastrophes from keeping the human population in check. Although back then refraining from sex was the only reliable and completely moral method.

The changing environment/ human population is a different angle on an age old human problem. My grandmother talks about her grandfather was talking about the end of days, and her WW2 childhood was proof that the end was nigh... The end is nigh is a pretty common theme throughout thousands of years of writing in the Bible. Whether you believe the contents of the Bible or not, it is evidence of people's concerns and the way they viewed their world at the time.

Is the world changing? Yes. Is it changing rapidly? Yes. Has it always changed? Yes. Are humans exacerbating global change and affecting natural feedback cycles? Probably. How much is probably a moot point. However much you believe in man-made climate change, it is worth changing human behaviours and their impact on the environment. At a cynical level, change drives innovation and society.

I'd like to think I care. I'm not the worst, I'm not the best. I try to make some sensible choices but I also have a mainstream lifestyle. I've had two children, replacement population, not particularly driven out of environmental concern, but it's not something I'm ignorant of either. Attitudes to the environment are influenced by age related lifestyle and different balances of opinion would be swayed by demographic. It's easier to be more idealistic in phases of life with fewer responsibilities and less reproductive urge.

I've found recently that the "climate crisis" attitude is quite off-putting. 7 billion people making small changes should stack up, but when the problem is too big, it makes it easier to give up on petty, mildly inconvenient changes as being pretty negligable in the face of burning rainforests/ bushland or abundant Chinese coal fired powerstations. Rather than being critical of major lifestyle drives like having children, more positive changes reducing their impact such as washable nappies, walking locally, consuming less and not piles of plastic presents would result in more people engaging in positive changes. Negativity shuts people off.

Is it U to consider bringing future children into this? = YABU = it IS U to consider bringing children into this.

Just to be clear.

There have been some really interesting and thought provoking posts, not all relate to having children in the knowledge of the bleak future they possibly face, but some have challenged that thr future isn't what scientists are stating.

Some do seem to deny this is real and happening.

Its not all about Aus fires, but they are extreme now, its about the extreme weather events and environmental damage all around the planet.

I have children and climate change didn’t factor in that choice but it wasn’t being shouted about as much then either. I’m not perfect but I do try to make better choices, haven’t flown in 13 years, try to have a few meat free nights a week, keep my heating at 18 and below unless particularly cold when I might put it up an extra degree but I do have a small diesel car which I need as I live rurally and work in community nursing so drop my children off at school in the next village and then go to work, I cover a large rural area so a car is essential really.

As with many other rural areas public transport is poor and would no way fit in with my job and people are always going to need nurses and with a big push for more hospital care at home this is only going to increase. Hoping to make my next car a hybrid