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.

@Evelyn52

Of course it is, you can justify it all you like but you feel guilty because you know it's true. However it's your choice and no-one else's business tbh.

It is everyone's business. We all live on the same planet and we're all basically fucked if this continues.

I wouldn’t want to be on this planet without having had children even if it was utopia

Personally I think child free people should be given tax incentives. ( I have children).

I have children. I like to think I do my best for the environment - reduce car usage, energy wastage, meat consumption etc. But I believe the experts - none of these make as much impact as having fewer children. It is simply a fact!

@MareofBeasttown

Personally I think child free people should be given tax incentives. ( I have children).

I agree with this, I also have DC so wouldn't benefit but it really is terrible for the environment

Children born now will be more environmentally conscious than previous generations.
Thankfully we don't live in a country where we forced into having children, or forced to limit the number.

But if we effectively pay people to not have children, aren't we just going to end up with some kind of crisis of having not enough people?

It is. No getting around it. That said I had only 2 children because I didn't want any more and could not afford any more, not for environmental reasons.

Sorry but it’s pretty unjustifiable to have 5 kids in this day and age no matter how worthy your lifestyle. You want to bend the facts to fit your own agenda. Like those that say “well the plane will be going anyway whether I’m on it or not” or “I need to support the tourism industry”.

@MareofBeasttown

Personally I think child free people should be given tax incentives. ( I have children).

Incentive not to have children? When you do you introduce ie Childress at 33 but has a child at 40? So gets tax break for all those years and then has children

Makes no sense

And to be fair

Anyone who can be “paid off” by the government

Really shouldn’t have had children in the first place so I guess good in that sense!

But utterly unworkable

I imagine there are economies of scale. My house uses the same energy to heat and light however many if us live here, but the point is my children will consume food and fuel for the rest of their lives which is always going to be more than the food and fuel that nothing at all would use.

If you're just thinking about the environment, then yes, it is best if humanity dies out - or at least dropped to such low numbers that the few left had no negative impact.

Or, we can continue to reproduce & consume without restraint, and eventually there will be a world even that knocks back humanity - e.g. a pandemic more serious than Covid.

Or we compromise for the sake of future generations by having fewer children and living more environmentally aware lifestyles.

But let's be clear, the earth won't disappear in a cloud of smoke. If push comes to shove, humanity will be wiped out and the earth will continue in some altered form. So when people talk about saving the earth, really they talk about balancing our lifestyles so that humanity can continue its parasitic existence.

Decide which possible outcome works for you, and live that life.

1.5 black bin bags a week!!! Just from food packaging? But you say you cook from scratch. I don’t think I create that much waste from food packing in a year and I also cook from scratch and make all our bread by hand. If you don’t buy processed or pre-made foods where is the packaging from? At most I buy something like olives in glass jars but they go in the recycling. I can’t remember the last time I bought food packed in plastic except plastic milk bottles and they get recycled.

YABU. Having children is the single worst thing an individual can do for the environment (unless they're megarich and paying for trips into space). It's good that you're trying to reduce it, but they will grow up to have houses, and cars, and kids.

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).

I always worry when people start taking about 'over population' and related topics because it invariably leads to eco fascism. There's talk of Europe's ageing population and falling birth rates.

That said I don't think most people in the main make a choice to have / not have children because of the environment.

I’m the ultimate recycler: I adopted two children!

Having children is the single worst thing you can do environmentally. Let alone having so many. It's just hypocritical to pretend that you care about the environment and lecture other people when you've got loads of kids isn't it? Not saying you do, but you see it on here all the time. People who have masses of kids lecturing people on climate change. As if recycling your yogurt pots can negate the effect of all these extra humans. The environmental cost is in producing food, housing and resources for all these extra people. Not in how much you recycle.

Ultimately it is true that letting the human race die out would be best for the planet. Every single one of us have a negative impact on the environment. However that is obviously not practical or realistically likely to happen as self preservation, and the desire to reproduce is hardwired into all of us. The best we can hope for is that we can minimise the damage we are causing so the planet stays habitable.

But let's be clear, the earth won't disappear in a cloud of smoke. If push comes to shove, humanity will be wiped out and the earth will continue in some altered form. So when people talk about saving the earth, really they talk about balancing our lifestyles so that humanity can continue its parasitic existence.

This.

We really should stop talking about the environment or the planet, it's people we want to save!
If the world heats up too much, water levels rise etc. the earth will survive, some life will survive. It's humanity that will perish.

I think the reason people say this is, imagine how many plastic bottles a person uses, or how much general waste one person uses.

Imagine how many nappies a baby uses.

Then imagine how much fuel that person will use over their life time.

Then imagine that multiplied by however many kids you have.

And then consider that every one is different so some people might recycle, some might not, some might grow their own produce, others will do a 20 mile round trip in a city setting in a land rover.

Every person on this earth has a carbon footprint and those of us who can make our own choices should be making choices to reduce this where we can.

So I do agree that having children is one of the worst things someone could do for the environment.

But.... Here's my big but.

I'm also really optimistic that we can reverse some of the effects of climate change, and that with the right input from the powers that be, children can make a difference.

Children can grow up to be entrepreneurs or business faculty with the environment at heart and better choices can be made. And we need future generations to do this.

It's incredibly nuanced though because someone with 7 kids might just eat out of plastic tubs, microwave meals, convenience foods, generate a load of food waste, go on 2 holidays abroad every year etc, but another family with 7 kids might be the most environmentally conscious people ever.

What we need to do is make sure our choice to have children is the right choice by raising them in a way that considers our environment as a priority in a way that past generations have not.

@MareofBeasttown

Personally I think child free people should be given tax incentives. ( I have children).

The country need kids to function.

Your guilt and shame doesn’t actually help the environment OP so lose that. It’s pointless wasted energy. You’re doing what you can. Satisfy yourself with that.

@MareofBeasttown

Personally I think child free people should be given tax incentives. ( I have children).

Why?? There is no need to. Every country that has women’s reproductive rights has birth rates below replacement level. U.K. is at 1.53 children per woman, well below the 2.1 zero growth replacement rate. We don’t need to incentivise even fewer children/lower birth rate. It’s entirely unnecessary. All we need to do is fight for women’s rights across the rest of the planet because 1/3rd of the world population growth is currently caused by the high birth rates in countries where women do not have reproductive rights. 2/3rds of the world population growth is now due to people living longer.