Having a child is the worst thing you can do for the environment

[saveourtrees]

I disagree with this wholeheartedly. My family of 7 (I will not apologise for my children's lives) create less waste than my brother and his girlfriend. In fact we take in their pet waste and food waste for composting.
Virtually all of our clothes, toys, boardgames, furniture is secondhand. A couple of white goods (does oven count as white goods?)
we grow our some of own food, process and preserve, batchcook and freeze, hardly ever use the heating (hot water bottles and blankets), bake, make dinners from scratch etc.
I knit (using wool from the charity shop), sew badly to fix holes in clothes.
we don't buy cards or wrapping paper, we do absolutely everything we can.

We still make about 1.5 black bags full of rubbish a week though, solely from food packaging. We just don't have enough to stretch to a zero waste bulk shop in the city center. But one day, when I go back to work I think we could probably manage it.

So why am I feeling guilty for having children? If it wasn't for my children I probably wouldn't have even cared as much about the environment and the state of the world. A big drive for me changing from a typical consumer to a more conscious one was the birth of my first child. Suddenly when people asked 'what world are we leaving for our children?' they were talking about my children.

I think the eco conscious people not reproducing to ''save the planet'' is stupid. If the people who care, who would teach their children to mend and say no to fast fashion, eat less meat, don't holiday abroad, etc. .. if they don't have children but the avid consumers do then isn't that worse? There will be less eco friendly grownups in 20/ 30 years but just as many grown-ups who weren't taught by their parents how to be eco friendly

I don't know, but don't come onto mumsnet and tell mums they shouldn't have had their children. That really is horrible.

People who keep saying, we need to reduce family size - you do realize that the native population in the UK is declining already, right?

it's scary how many don't get this & the fact that the way are economic system is currently set up means we are going to
need immigration to sustain it as birth rates are declining too quickly.

By 2030, one in five people in the UK (21.8%) will be aged 65 or over,

We need to be doing much more than the NHS hike to manage & plan for this.

@MsTSwift

Agree Plan my teens talk the talk but are desperate to go on a shopping trip to NY and don’t like the long train journeys we make then go on to the sun when it’s sooo much quicker to fly…what some of their pals are up to on Instagram is shocking to me - like going to the Maldives for a week etc

I agree with this. I live in a big student area and work at the university they attend.

The rubbish! It's awful. When they move out they just dump their shit in the street. They never put their bins out or recycle. And after a sunny evening the local park looks like a festival site with discarded bbqs and beer cans everywhere.

The local council have to bring tractors in to clear it up.

Yet they bang on about other generations being at fault for the climate crisis.

Having 7 kids....
7 kids that will eat meat
Have cars
Reproduce
Don't recycle
Take airplane

You might be doing it all "as good as you can" right now
But those 7 kids won't

7 kids... jeez. No wonder you are defensive

Can we really assume that one person who drives a gas guzzling car and flies to the Maldives is always less of a burden on the planet than 2 people who lead very modest lifestyles? I am always uncomfortable when people question women's fertility choices, whether it is about them having 'too many' children or none at all.

I heard a radio programme last night suggesting that it might be wrong to assume that declining birth rates were necessarily a good thing:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0011chh

It was basically the arguments outlined by ronfa above.

YABU. Having children is the worst thing you can do for the environment (yes I do have a child).

People will come onto MN lecturing others about flying abroad or buying things brand new but as soon as it comes to children it's "no one else's business". Hypocrisy.

@StolenAwayOn55thand3rd

Completely off topic but most food packaging can be recycled. Sainsburys and Co-Op (and possibly others too, those are just the ones I use) have big bins now for food cellophane. I know it's not just about waste but 1.5 bin bags a week is quite a lot, you are probably throwing away a lot of recyclables.

1.5 bin bags a week really isn't lot for a family of seven. Of course there will be some people who do "better" than this, but the OP is doing a good job. Besides, if she lives where I do, the excess waste doesn't go to landfill but gets sent to an "energy from waste" plant which is pretty environmentally friendly, probably more so than shipping tons of plastic waste over to the Far East!

It's not just about the rubbish you generate. It's the resources your children will consume over their lifetimes - all of the food, energy, fossil fuels, etc. And of course, if your seven children each have two children, that's 21 more people in the world using resources because of your decision, rather than 6 more people for a couple who have 2 children who each have two children. However much you reuse, reduce and recycle, your impact is vastly greater than that of your brother and his girlfriend, or any other smaller family.

Should you feel guilty and ashamed? No. Those aren't helpful emotions. And in any event, climate change is vastly more complicated than a simple calculation about family size, and most of the work to fix it requires to be done by governments regulating polluting industries.

Individual responsibility is important but it isn't going to be the thing that makes or breaks the planet. And in any event, it's too late for you in that respect and you can hardly send your children back, so what's the point agonising over it?

@BiscuitLover09876

Countries in western Europe are actually thinking about doing the opposite I.e. trying to incentivise people to have children because the birth rate is so low (whether you like the idea or not).

Indeed... We need to have 2 children on average or we're in trouble demographically. Many countries are experiencing crises due to de-population trends in the decades ahead. Having twice as many 80 year old than 40 year olds isn't good.

Besides, the way things are going, our children will be living in zero carbon societies when they reach our age.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53409521.amp

this is a thought provoking article re fertility rates. As someone who is not young this scares me more than climate change & I worry what the NHS & social care provision will be when i'm older.

Your seven kids will need seven houses when they grow up, each likely made using a lot of concrete and furnished using a lot of unsustainable forestry etc etc etc

Children born today won't need a new house built for every single one of them & even if they did it won't happen. 160k new homes were built in 2019 vs 712k live births.

Also, what’s to say your kids will live sustainably just because it’s how they’ve grown up? They might decide they need 4 foreign holidays per year.

It's highly unlikely looking at the current economic model that young people will be going on 4 foreign holidays annually. It's not even half that figure now & living standards are declining for many.

I don’t care how many kids you have, but your family of 7 is NOT having less environmental impact than 2 adults. And they will not in the future either. So your fooling yourself if you think that’s the case.

And of course, if your seven children each have two children, that's 21 more people in the world using resources because of your decision, rather than 6 more people for a couple who have 2 children who each have two children.

It's statistically unlikely that the OPs dc will each go on to have 2 dc.

@ronfa

And of course, if your seven children each have two children, that's 21 more people in the world using resources because of your decision, rather than 6 more people for a couple who have 2 children who each have two children.

It's statistically unlikely that the OPs dc will each go on to have 2 dc.

What's the average number of kids in a family now, 1.5 or something? So statistically OP's 7 might have another 10 / 11 kids between them (though children who come from big families tend to have more children themselves, so it might skew those statistics a little higher).

In any event - it's still many more people using many more resources than a couple who have two children, unless one of those two children goes on to have 9 or more kids themselves (which you must admit is even more statistically unlikely).

Don’t feel bad.

They can’t even admit that immigration will cause increased carbon emissions in the UK, but will happily tell you not to have children.

We’d have a shrinking population in most Western countries if not for immigration. You’d think this is an issue the Tories and Labour could actually agree upon.

These are not serious people. Honestly stop listening to them.

I think you shouldn’t feel guilty at all however justifying having seven because you realised you could be more environmentally conscious after 1 just sounds like a poor excuse. You clearly wanted seven, you weren’t doing it for the planet. Which is absolutely fine. But, it is what it is. I agree with others saying it’s just like saying yes I fly a lot but I cycle to work. You could still cycle and fly less. In your case you could have had less kids and live responsibly too. One doesn’t cancel out the other. I’m not into policing others lives or environmental choices but you’ve kind of put yourself in an odd position here to attract criticism.

Agreed. You obviously wanted a large family and the idea that you’ll turn them into some sort of environmental ambassadors by your anti-waste attitude is, frankly, odd. You are also only thinking in the short-term. At present you are all one household so there is no reason why you should generate more rubbish than your brother and his partner. However in the fullness of time, your children will form their own households and generate 5 or 7 times than them if they remain childless. Your children will need to be housed. I live in an expanding town, little or no empty housing and the hills are definitely alive with the sound of building. They might well rebel against your frugal lifestyle and want to drive cars and go on loads of flights. Childhood is really quite short!

@User4272946730203 the UK birth rate is 1.6 and declining yr on yr so statistically i'm the future it's unlikely that all 7 children will even have one child.

I have never claimed they won't use resources but it's wrong to assume future children have the same carbon footprint as we do because that would assume our footprint never changes.

The OP said a family of 7. Is it 7 in total - ie 5 children, or a family of 7 children?

We’d have a shrinking population in most Western countries if not for immigration. You’d think this is an issue the Tories and Labour could actually agree upon.

That is quite true but when people are talking about overpopulation, they are generally thinking globally rather than locally. However in the U.K., we have this shrinking population because those women who have children tend to have between 1 and 3 and have them older. If everyone had as many children as OP, our population would be increasing even without immigration. If OP wanted a large family, fine, but to make out it doesn’t have an effect on the environment is wrong.

The problem is BOTH population and environmental impact.

The fact is that a family of 7 in Niger will use so much fewer resources than a family in the UK. Even one which is eco concious. But you still do use resources.

That said, there are also other wider societal benefits to having children, especially when the fertility rate in the UK is below replacement. A rapidly ageing society is not one which is easy to deal with. So yo u have 5? kids and other women don't have kids (1 in 5 women reach 45 with no kids) or they have one kid. Most people do not choose to have big families for a million other reasons so as a population we're below replacement. We need to worry far more about our footprint than our population size (which is slowly declining without including migration)

* Virtually all of our clothes, toys, boardgames, furniture is secondhand. A couple of white goods (does oven count as white goods?)*
we grow our some of own food, process and preserve, batchcook and freeze, hardly ever use the heating (hot water bottles and blankets), bake, make dinners from scratch etc.
I knit (using wool from the charity shop), sew badly to fix holes in clothes.
we don't buy cards or wrapping paper, we do absolutely everything we can.

7 children
You live in a 3 bedroom 1 reception property
You don’t work

I reckon you NEED to do all the above anyway because you simply couldn’t afford the alternative

It's a slightly crude measure but if you look at potential support ratio ( the number of people of working age for every one person who is retired) it's around 5.4 now. A combo of declining birth rates & Brexit forecast it 2.5-2.7) in the next 40 years.

That has huge ramifications.

@CecilyP

We’d have a shrinking population in most Western countries if not for immigration. You’d think this is an issue the Tories and Labour could actually agree upon.

That is quite true but when people are talking about overpopulation, they are generally thinking globally rather than locally. However in the U.K., we have this shrinking population because those women who have children tend to have between 1 and 3 and have them older. If everyone had as many children as OP, our population would be increasing even without immigration. If OP wanted a large family, fine, but to make out it doesn’t have an effect on the environment is wrong.

Yes but most people don't want such a large family for many other reasosn apart from environmental. Low fertility has been the norm since the post-war baby boom.

@HanukahMatata yes, poorer countries use no where near the same resources despite having larger families.

I'm actually jealous of your big family. We have two and my husband is done. If we'd started earlier then we'd probably have had four.

Don't feel guilty!