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.

@Helenahandbasketbing

How many bin bags you put out each week isn’t how environmental impact is measured.

^ this

Not RTFT. Just responding to title.

Big no.

I'd say worse things you can do to impact the environment negatively are things like-

Being in the top echelons of a major oil company
Being Jeff bezos and firing giant dildos into space. Or the other ones doing this insanely costly thing (in terms of environment) so rich people can have a few mins of weightless. (I'd love to do it but still).
Being the people at VW who doctored the emissions tests.
Being involved in dumping all sorts of crap including horrible dangerous chemicals in the sea, around the place when no one is looking.

Plenty more I'm sure.

So no. A baby being born to (usually) 2 people. (IE babies around the world usually have a man involved so it's not just the woman's 'fault'). Is not the worst thing you can do for the environment.

The view that humans are separate from nature and declares all our impact as 'damage' is an ideological one. Every living thing has an impact, and every living thing uses what tools it has to make its environment as congenial as possible for itself.
The impact humans have benefits some living things to the detriment of others. We alter the environment in ways that suit us.
Since we're smarter than other animals, our impact is greater, and we can control or modify it to a greater extent through conscious choice. We can also solve problems, as well as create them. We aren't all just mindless eaters.
No one needs to subscribe to the 'cancer on the earth view'.
I mean, if you want to be a misanthrope, by all means go ahead, but it doesn't give you exclusive space in the moral high ground.
I'm sure your DC are lovely OP, and who knows what they and their descendants will offer the world. In the meantime, they have as much right to exist as everybody and everything else in the world.

Climate change is caused by people. The more people the more demand on the planet, the more climate changes.

Humanity is literally breeding itself into extinction.

If everyone had a large family it would be a problem though.
Fortunately most people have small families so we can afford not to worry about the few who do have large families.
There are plenty more pertinent places we can direct any angst over environmental impact - celebrities flying all over the place in their private jets being one example

@Penners99

Climate change is caused by people. The more people the more demand on the planet, the more climate changes.

Humanity is literally breeding itself into extinction.

That is very simplistic and not entirely true. People cause pollution but we have the science to stop this and even reverse some of the damage. What we don't have is buy-in. Not enough people care about others or our planet to invoke change. We can all use our votes to make a positive difference and we can all live ethically - if we choose to.

@Penners99

Climate change is caused by people. The more people the more demand on the planet, the more climate changes.

Humanity is literally breeding itself into extinction.

Yeah we’re not though. Sorry to disappoint you.

We’ll maybe go extinct from a meteor hit or super volcano or maybe with a return to the Ice Age in a few tens of thousands of years.

I thought you were my colleague for a moment - she has a meat and dairy eating, diesel van driving family of 7 and loves to lecture people about the changes they should be making as her kids will have to grow up in this world.

She once told me - a childless vegetarian who doesn't drive or fly - that I'm not doing enough and should look at veganism.

Live your life. But if you have 7 children, maybe pull back on lecturing others on their environmental choices.

@AudacityBaby once again, I am struck by what utterly appalling people you’ve had to work with ! And in awe of your patience and tolerance.

@kaycepollard I have some utterly lovely colleagues too, thank God - they just don't come up as easily on mumsnet threads.

Children born now will be more environmentally conscious than previous generations.

///:

I agree with this to a degree however I think back to my teenage years (40+ now) and we have always had environmental activism. One of the reasons the younger generation seem to be listened to more, I think, is social media gives any message huge traction. Having a young female poster girl making world leaders jolly uncomfortable is also very emotionally powerful especially when coupled with SM.

However then I go to a restaurant and see young teens who, a moment ago were telling off adults for the burning planet, over ordering food then leaving an obscene amount to be thrown away. Then later, having spent hours on Tik Tok watching influencers showing off a fast fashion haul, order environmental and socially questionable clothes from Shein and similar which they will perhaps wear several times before binning and replacing.

I'm not sure how much of their anger will translate into meaningful action and change.

Have not RTFT. When I saw your heading: Having a child is the worst thing you can do for the environment.

The first thing that popped into my head was: not if they are the generation who turns it all around, finds a way to counteract the damage we and previous generations caused, adapt to the environmental changes and create a new way of living that is far more sustainable and environmentally friendly than what we have now.

The worst thing we can do for the environment is to continue as we are, fail to adapt and change, and continue with attitudes of climate change denial. Or attitudes of I’ll be dead before it gets bad so I don’t care (someone actually said this to me once).

@LadyoftheWoods

There was an article in the guardian about this last week. The conclusion was the global birth rate is slowing and will soon be in decline. It's also the case that the earth could easily support the number of people it has, it's the way we live that isn't sustainable so I would say that as you're already making the lifestyle changes we should all be making, you're on the right track. I think it's easy to say reducing the number of children will solve the environmental crisis, of course it won't. We need fundamental changes to how we live

You have seen the research that says every person would have to live like someone in a very poor country existing on a small amount of food (and no central heating or clothes or tat) in order to "sustain" the current population?

@Binxthecat

I’m vegan so I like to think that balances the environmental impact of having a child and a dog and cats..

Not remotely. Especially as many vegan alternatives are flown in from around the world, and you can drink milk or eat cheese from the farm down the road.

Dogs are quite an eco burden too, though obviously nothing on the scale of having children.

It's not (just) having the children themselves, it's the knock on effects. For example, you have one child and you manage with a small car. But once you have two, you decide you need a gas-gazzling SUV and you drive more because the toddler "can't" walk. Or you need two cars because you need to be two places at the same time with the two children.

@ColinTheKoala

Milk or cheese from a local farm still has a far greater footprint that the vegan alternatives flown in.

All this talk of reducing kids = "reverting to China's one child policy".

There is a happy medium between one and 7

Most developed societies have below replacement fertility. Poorer counties are not far behind and their fertility decline is far faster than seen historically in rich countries and at lower levels of development.
China is well known (although the extent to which the one child policy impacted fertility is debatable - fertility was already declining) but look at Bangladesh. Amazing!

[quote Yourstupidityexhaustsme]@ColinTheKoala

Milk or cheese from a local farm still has a far greater footprint that the vegan alternatives flown in.[/quote]
If you are importing almond 'milk' then you are causing drought in California. If on the other hand you buy milk from British or Irish cattle reared as part of a rotation then you are helping put organic material back into the soil which will help crops grow without the need for damaging chemical fertilisers.

Oh, and lack of calcium can be a serious problem.

Having children isn't the worst you can do though, starting a massive forest fire would be worse, or setting up a retail company that sells huge amounts of pointless shit that is shipped halfway around the world and then driven to your door and then using the profits to fly into space would be much worse.

@fruitbrewhaha

Having children isn't the worst you can do though, starting a massive forest fire would be worse, or setting up a retail company that sells huge amounts of pointless shit that is shipped halfway around the world and then driven to your door and then using the profits to fly into space would be much worse.

Yes but those are rather extreme examples, rather than lifestyle choices applicable to most of us.

Obviously Bezos/Musk/Branson can get knotted though.

The logic escapes me. If no one has children and human life dies out no one will be there to care will they?

@Valeriekat

The logic escapes me. If no one has children and human life dies out no one will be there to care will they?

Other animals are sentient and will realise that their habitats aren't being destroyed, the planet would hopefully stop feeling the ill effects of pollution. The sun will eventually explode as its a star and they all do though, so the earth won't last forever, alas.

@Valeriekat

The logic escapes me. If no one has children and human life dies out no one will be there to care will they?

But seriously we just need fewer kids on this planet, not none at all. The answer to this is female emancipation, if you allow and encourage a young woman in [insert developing country of choice] to take whatever career path she wants, she will be too busy training as a doctor/engineer/lawyer to waste time having kids. Access to and education on contraception (for both men and women) helps too.

7.7 billion people on the planet. If everybody has 5 children what happens when we get to 10 billion? or 20 billion? 100 billion? The Earth's resources can only support a certain amount of people.