To this this is NOT the worst time ever to bring a child into the world

[Celebrityskint]

Quite often I see posts going on about today’s world being a terrible world to bring children into... but honestly... in the UK... we’re probably having a very good life compared to most people in most of history.... it’s not a terrible time to bring children into the world

All the people I personally know choosing not to have children “because of the world” hate children and didn’t want them anyway - they haven’t made some huge personal sacrifice for the greater good.

When has deciding to have a baby not been a selfish decision? What other reason do you have children for (deliberately) if not because you want it for yourselves?

I'm not sure that the state of the world now makes a great deal of difference.

Also, I don't think you truly appreciate the lifelong responsibility it is until your kids have grown to adulthood and you realise that it doesn't just stop when they hit 18.

World poverty and hunger has been increasing quiet alarmingly over the last few years to the point that any progress that we had made in that area has now been wiped out.

While some new areas may indeed become viable for crop growth they are not near ready to do so, and you would need a massive and intensive construction programme put in place to build the infrastructure and make the land ready for industrial scale crop growth. It’s also not a particularly simple process to change from mass producing wheat or rice to another crop that could grow in the changed climate of traditional growing regions and this too would require unimaginable investment.

We can’t start preparing new farmland or converting existing land just yet but, crops in traditional growing regions are already starting to produce lower yields/quality food so there will be a gap even in supply even if new land and/or crops become available.

Finally, from a western perspective, you have to consider the political aspects of future food supply chains. Looking at the geography of the world, the most likely areas for new farmland to be established would be in places like Russia and Canada. We don’t have a particularly good relationship with Russia, so I can’t imagine they’d be forthcoming with giving us access to any replacement crops, and the US would probably be first in line for anything from Canada.

The future looks pretty bleak tbh

Are people really saying if they'd known about climate change 10/20 years ago they wouldn't have had their children? People did know about it back then. The difference was it wasn't shoved down everyone's throats on social media/ constant news etc.

Possibly wouldn't have, I don't know. The point is that it's not just climate change, it's the apparent complete unwillingness of most countries' populations and governments to do what needs to be done to deal with it. That wasn't so apparent 10/20 years ago. It was like "oh, climate change looks like getting bad, we'd better do X Y & Z about it . . . yeah, well we're making SOME progress towards X, and yes we really should start on Y & Z soon, before it gets to the point we can't reverse it and it's going to literally burn us alive."

Now, some estimates are that it's ALREADY irreversible, some that it's within a few years of becoming so, and it HAS started burning us alive in the form of increased wildfires and freak weather events. And yet people are still pissing around with X and failing to do Y & Z because they can't muster the political imagination (or just the acknowledgment of reality) to address them.

The fact that you refer to some peoples' attempts to publicise the imminent destruction of civilisation as we know it and convince people it's really rather important as "shoving it down everyone's throats", as if it's an irrelevant inconvenience like having to hear about somebody's religious convictions on the bus, is a perfect illustration of precisely this problem.

It’s impossible to say what our relationship with Russia will be in 20 years. This is the problem. People are short term thinkers and find it hard to imagine major changes to the status quo and that new solutions will present themselves. Will there be a climate induced population event in the second half of this century? I’d probably say yes on a balance of probabilities. Does that mean it’s not worth existing? Almost certainly not.

Yes this climate change excuse for saying people shouldn't have children is bollocks because many of these people will have had their children when they knew about the ozone crisis and still proceeded. The world is no worse now than any other time in history and like back then we have no idea what the future holds.

Personally anyone who already has children and is whinging about other having them needs to shut the fuck up.

The OP isn't about people "saying people shouldn't have children" though. It's about the idea that "this is the worst time ever to bring a child into the world". One can believe that, while still believing that it's ultimately a personal choice and respecting other peoples' right to make that choice.

I THINK that if I were young now I wouldn't have children. I can't know that for sure, and yes it's easy to say when I've already had the opportunity to have them.

I'm not pushing my grown up children to have children (I probably wouldn't anyway) and I'm realistic with them about the dire likely future of the Earth. But if they decide to do so, neither will I try and talk them out of it, I'll be happy for their happiness and as involved and supportive as they want me to be.

I'm certainly not out beating a drum and trying to convert people to antinatalism. What they do with their lives and how they appraise the future is their business.

But neither will I feel compelled to deny reality, the way most of the human race is intent on doing.

And yet people are still pissing around with X and failing to do Y & Z because they can't muster the political imagination (or just the acknowledgment of reality) to address them.

well, maybe they were going to but then you convinced them it’s already irreversible and we are inevitably headed for a hellish Cormac McCarthy-esque future in which civilisation will collapse and the living will envy the dead, so they just thought “fuck it then.”

Exactly this. If all we tell children now is "your future is fucked and you'll die of starvation/ extreme heat/radiation sickness before 40" then what chance do we have of ever changing anything?

People seem to be spending so long telling children/young people that their future is hopeless so no point striving towards anything (like being a dentist), that no one has bothered to tell them that if things work out OK, they'll need to do things to make a better future for themselves and the planet.

If I was 16 and thought I'd be dead by 30, I'd definitely stop studying, buy the latest phone and go out partying. Because why not? Why bother doing anything else?

@Hopefornothing exactly.
Maybe I’m stupid or ridiculously optimistic but I have a lot of hope for the future. Things will get better in every aspect. Solutions will be found. I have hope for our children and try and instil this.

I liked this article about what it felt like here 1000 years ago, and how to work for better things even when it feels like the world is ending: www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/witness/the-sermon-of-the-wolf

In poorer countries, there are horrific wars, famine, diseases that we have eradicated in this country, poverty, people living with no electricity or decent sanitation, slavery is still a big issue, major crime, governments much more corrupt than ours, education and health care out of reach for many. They still have kids.

As for climate change, if everyone made a conscious effort to tackle it, it would not be an issue. If we all plonk ourselves down on our sofas and say "Oh well, the world's fucked," then it really will be.

Things don’t get worse with every generation though? It’s just for the generation who are adults now, things have been mostly pretty sweet.
Thats not normal. The rest of human existence has been a struggle to survive for most. A struggle to eat, keep warm, keep your kids alive, not die of childbirth / disease.
Compared to life 100 years ago even the poorest people in this country have it very very good. Go back 150 years and the quality of life is incomparable.
The huge sudden jump in living standards and peace during the last 70 years is the anomaly not the norm.

Making a conscious choice to tackle climate change is not having kids.....

@SquishyGloopyBum

OK, we'll all stop and just let the human race die out then.

One of the worst things is the social media today. Its dangerous and toxic world out there and some people have no idea what their children are looking at.
Molly russell works still be alive if she'd been born before Instagram etc and it's not going to get any better.

Climate change has been an issue for twenty years. So all the women with young kids getting on their high horse about people who are still bringing children into the world or intend to have children are being massive hypocrites.

*more than twenty years

I find a lot of MN rhetoric hard to take seriously after being here all through covid and literally lying awake reading threads where people ‘knew for sure’ there would be a 50% death rate and we would DEFINITELY be seeing bodies piled in the streets, the army would be out and you could die at any moment, and that they knew someone who went out for TWO walks one day and touched a gate and got covid and dropped dead. People saying that if you took your children outside you were essentially a murderer, and I’m not exaggerating. I remember thinking holy fuck these people know something I don’t and this is going to be horrendous. I mean it wasn’t good was it but we as a society came out the other side. I do think climate change is obviously massive and don’t think people are exaggerating about that in particular but other parts of the general MN rhetoric are off the scale at the moment. In fact the heat vs eat, ‘we may all freeze to death’ thing has always been so on here, there’s a thread in mumsnet called ‘no more cold mumsnetters’ about how everyone lives in 18th century cottages with wind blowing through holes in the walls and how to use gaffer tape and a candle to survive, or some other bat shit situation.

*thread in mumsnet classics

I'd argue that with regards to the current threat from Russia the worst time to have a child was probably around 2010, as they'll be just old enough now to understand and worry about things they hear on the news. Of course no-one in 2010 knew this was going to be a problem in 2022, but that's the point, isn't it? How can we possibly say now - or ever - whether it's a good or bad time to have children when we have no idea what the world will look like in five years, let alone the decades to come?

@Chloefairydust

I agree OP, things seem to worsen with every generation and with climate change, living costs rising, wages not meeting inflation etc the future does look a bit doom and gloom.

"....things seem to worsen for every generation..." WTAF?!? I don't think I've ever seen anything on MN which is more ridiculously untrue and more detached from reality than this.... To think that people today live in worse conditions than a typical Victorian or Medieval person lived in is beyond absurdity and ignorance.

@Thebestwaytoscareatory

World poverty and hunger has been increasing quiet alarmingly over the last few years to the point that any progress that we had made in that area has now been wiped out.

I accept that the past few years has seen a decline, with the largely being down to the impact of Covid. But to say that all progress made over the past decades has been wiped out is preposterous and completely wrong as any review of something like Human Development Index (HDI) would show. Apart from some war torn countries, the vast majority of countries have a higher HDI than they did in 2010, and pretty much all countries have a massively higher HDI than when the measure was first measured in the 1960s.

Birth rates have been slowing globally for decades... in fact, many countries now need more births not fewer births to maintain their populations! The reason the population is still growing is down to life expectancy growing over past decades. It's now 73... it was just 47 in 1950!

Life these days is incredibly easy compared to any time in history, certainly in this country but a lot of people on mumsnet are ignorant of history and everything else and are only happy hand wringing about how terrible their lives are.