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.

First, without beings to enjoy it, there's no point in having an environment. Having kids means having people to enjoy the environment, making having the environment a particular way that people enjoy worthwhile.

Umm there are plenty of beings other than humans to enjoy the planet. The planet does not exist for human enjoyment. It will do perfectly well without us as it did before us.

The environment was a factor in our choice to only have one child, along with the associated issue that life is only going to get more difficult and expensive going forward, due to the environment, but now Brexit and covid legacy, so we felt we'd be able to support one child better (hopefully we'll be able to support her enough that she can graduate uni with only the same level of debts that DH and I graduated with in the early 00s).

Having one child has meant we can live in a small 75m2 house, which means our mortgage is smaller and combined with only having to provide for one child I can afford to work part time meaning we could drop to one car, and afford to buy an electric car. We could also afford to update our heating to an ASHP which due to the size of our house was not prohibitively expensive.

We also do the usual eco living things like a predominantly veggie diet, menstrual cup/CSP, cloth nappies, recycling etc. But these things are the basics that everyone SHOULD be doing already. But we all need to do far more, and having less children is part of that.

@SmaugMum

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

I feel that family size is a personal choice.unless we want to return to china's one child policy or similar! Most people want children .you seem a very green family. The impact of children may be reduced by parents using reusable nappies when they can.teaching dc to recycle,perhaps cycling and cooking from scratch all help.we Normally holiday in UK, but probably use tumble dryer a lot ,drive the dog out and so on .another person will holiday abroad and use the tube for example .its all about choices.enjoy your family, you sound like you are doing a great job

It's so pointless saying to someone that they shouldn't have have children or that many children. What are they going to do about it? Whereas everyone - with children or not- can make some changes and do better.

@StrychnineInTheSandwiches

It doesn't matter how green your day-to-day life is in terms of weaving your own pants and making your own yogurt. You've had 5 kids and they will most likely go on to have at least one kid each. You've created a lot of people who will all go on to have a huge carbon footprint for decades to come.

I'm not being aggro, just factual. A person who doesn't give two hoots about recycling or plastic waste or flying around the globe three times a year etc will still have a far smaller impact than you if they never have kids.

⬆️

My husband used to say this was why we couldn’t have more children. I hated it. I can’t change what the big powerful people and governments are doing. I can’t make much of an impact. It really makes no difference how many kids we have.

Micro plastics and forever chemicals are going to do the job of reducing the population.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/18/toxic-chemicals-health-humanity-erin-brokovich

I agree OP. It's an argument for an environmental free pass for certain childless people...

We all do our bit. As long as you can afford to support your children, now and till the end of their education, and instill green values then I can't see the harm.

@RIPWalter

The environment was a factor in our choice to only have one child, along with the associated issue that life is only going to get more difficult and expensive going forward, due to the environment, but now Brexit and covid legacy, so we felt we'd be able to support one child better (hopefully we'll be able to support her enough that she can graduate uni with only the same level of debts that DH and I graduated with in the early 00s).

Having one child has meant we can live in a small 75m2 house, which means our mortgage is smaller and combined with only having to provide for one child I can afford to work part time meaning we could drop to one car, and afford to buy an electric car. We could also afford to update our heating to an ASHP which due to the size of our house was not prohibitively expensive.

We also do the usual eco living things like a predominantly veggie diet, menstrual cup/CSP, cloth nappies, recycling etc. But these things are the basics that everyone SHOULD be doing already. But we all need to do far more, and having less children is part of that.

I think more and more people are going to go your way. I am going to encourage my children to either have zero or only 1 child. Frankly, I think they may not be able to afford any!

Sigh we had a very similar thread to this last week, iirc.

OP, as said before, it doesn’t matter how many of your own sweaters you knit or how much you recycle. Those acts are in the here and the now, whereas having lots of children creates a huge and increasing impact for years to come.

You seem to be arguing with yourself really, underneath you know this but you keep trying to double down by saying you won’t apologise, do X Y and Z to be green, etc.

Saying people shouldn’t have more than 2 kids isn’t wishing your existing children’s lives away and you know that. I think you’re using that to suppress people saying things that make you uncomfortable because they are true

@MareofBeasttown do you really think they’ll take your advice about how many children to have? I would find this very intrusive.

@icebreaker99 because I'm still not working because childcare would cost more than I can bring in, so at the moment we are on one income. Pair that with increase in council tax and the leccy bills we have recently had to tighten our belts.
yes we have a lot of mouths to feed but I genuinely believe if I hadn't had so many, I could have carried on without even knowing what batch cooking was. I certainly wouldn't have thought about growing my own.

This is my whole point. I wouldn't feel the strong urge I feel to protect my children.
I have noticed a lot of the people doing zero waste blogs and stuff are mothers. (mothers not fathers which is also interesting)
I wouldn't put in this much effort to preserve myself, but my kids is a different story

@MrsColon

YANBU. There are a lot of smug, self-congratulatory folk on MN who present their choice to have one or two DC as 'for environmental reasons'. Bullshit! Most people only want one or two DC. People are re-writing the past so vehemently that they come to believe it themselves.

Then they think that absolves them from making any changes that are remotely inconvenient to help the environment - oh, we did our bit and only had one/two children. Conveniently forgetting that we need people to have DC to pay our pensions, and to be our future doctors, scientists and engineers!

Totally agree with this!

Disagree . We need to reduce impact of humanas on the planet .

@ArblemarchTFruitbat

Wipe out the human race?

If looked at dispassionately, the disappearance of the human race altogether would absolutely be the best thing for the planet. That's a statement of fact, and again, not tantamount to saying 'I wish everyone would drop dead tomorrow.'

@ArblemarchTFruitbat actually no it wouldn't! It would not be good for this planet if we all fucked off it tomorrow! We would leave such a toxic legacy behind which would worsen with time. Think nuclear waste unmanaged etc.

If we want to do something beneficial to the planet we would raise environmentally friendly children who understand the importance of looking after and protecting the environment. We don't have to have a big carbon footprint if we choose to live our lives differently!

@MrsColon

YANBU. There are a lot of smug, self-congratulatory folk on MN who present their choice to have one or two DC as 'for environmental reasons'. Bullshit! Most people only want one or two DC. People are re-writing the past so vehemently that they come to believe it themselves.

Then they think that absolves them from making any changes that are remotely inconvenient to help the environment - oh, we did our bit and only had one/two children. Conveniently forgetting that we need people to have DC to pay our pensions, and to be our future doctors, scientists and engineers!

That’s not the reason people have children though - because they are “needed” - that’s just as much bullshit as those you claim are bullshitting they only had one or two because of the environment.

I have noticed a lot of the people doing zero waste blogs and stuff are mothers. (mothers not fathers which is also interesting)

Not really a big mystery- blogging about making your own toilet roll makes no money. Men are into making money.

Why are people obsessed with my children having a car? None of my siblings have a car.
Cycling and public transport facilities are getting better (and greener)
I would be very surprised if my children ever got a car. Maybe if they moved rural

Maybe not a car, but of 5 or 7 children (I'm not sure exactly what you mean by family of 7) it's likely at least one will want to travel internationally most years or a few times a year, and not unreasonable that one might move abroad which would require flights to stay in face to face contact. I think the key thing is that you have absolutely no control over what they do. They might become very environmentally conscious or they might become the CEO of a petrochemical company and so I think that the argument on raising them to be more eco aware fails because you don't have that control.

This isn't blaming everything on the mother as one poster has said. It's just that having more consumers will have more of an environmental impact and both parents are responsible for that decision, even if they aren't for the choices their children make. One child will require fewer resources than seven. And raising a child to be environmentally conscious isn't mutually exclusive with having fewer children.

We don't have to have a big carbon footprint if we choose to live our lives differently!

But people won't - to really reduce our carbon footprint we would have to return to a primitive, pre-industrial way of life. The average person isn't going to give up electricity, for example.

Every child born in the west has a carbon footprint of between 54 and 56 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year.
If we allowed everyone in the third world to upgrade to a basic western lifestyle, we would already need two and a half planet Earths to provide the resources.
This is patently not sustainable. And every extra child makes global warming worse, by the extra CO2.

We either need to reduce our family sizes, or condemn millions to live in low carbon, poverty struck, subsistence lifestyles, to compensate for our greed and consumerism.
And we are running out of time.

The amount of AI that will render people's jobs redundant by the time your youngest child is an adult does mean that there we are facing a huge revolution in how the word turns - it won't be the case that they are needed for tax purposes to fund old people's care as we'll all either be on an assisted dying scheme or having our arses wiped by robots by then.

I'm genuinely ok with the idea that the human race will die out over time.

The bottom line is that - for humanity to have a half decent future on this planet - we need to reduce our carbon footprint AS A SPECIES. That means ideally both fewer people and for those people to have a smaller footprint. And the footprint of an average person in the UK is by no means small. So yeah it’s about the worst thing you could do. Of course you can mitigate it to some extent by being vegetarian, not flying, not consuming too much etc.

You can disagree all you like but it doesn't stop it from being a fact.

I have one child and a lively DiL, we all live together in a split house and share one car. I work in the NHS and they work from home full time.
They are In their forties and have decided not to have children and I'm very pleased about that. I cant bear the thought of any potential grandchildrens future the way things are going. I dont think it would be any kind of a life for them. We rescue cats instead.