to think you can't understand climate science and want kids

[sensiblefootwear]

Hoping that people will (gently, with good evidence) tell me I'm BU.

I love children and have always wanted them. But for the past few years and especially this year I'm finding the science on climate change and the tangible effects of it (houses on fire in nearby towns, schools so hot people's children have been sent home after fainting, looming food and water shortages, etc etc) increasingly difficult to ignore and I can't help but thinking it's an incredibly unwise decision to choose to bring another life into this world.

To be clear, I'm not talking about choosing not to have children because I think it will somehow have any impact on the climate, because of course it won't. I'm talking about choosing not to have them to spare them the horror of what's to come in the next few decades.

Am I being unreasonable to feel this way? I'd really love to hear from people who genuinely understand climate science and know where things are heading, but are still staying firm in their decision to have children in the future.

This was pretty rude tbh!

No less an authority than Richard Tice(!!!!) said this week to enjoy the heat but I suspect he is watching his fossil fuel investments

I'm sure you don't, she is a ghastly person all round and despite claiming to like children was spectacularly nasty and jealous of her step daughter too.

I feel like you need to stay off the internet for a while and switch off the news. I am astounded by how many posts I have seen online recently suggesting that having children with the state of the world as it is today is so cruel etc. When you think of some of the awful conditions people have lived through in human history and yet they still continued to have children. I’m sure all generations have worried about their children’s future for all different reasons, for me, climate change is not my biggest concern. I also try to be a bit positive and have some hope for the future as that is really all any of us have and no one can predict what will happen tomorrow.

If we limit the concern to the 'what sort of life will my kids have in the future?' rather than thinking abroad the broader issue of whether it is a moral choice for other reasons, I disagree with your conclusion.

None of is, however privileged, can ever guarantee that our kids will have a good life.

What is more, humans in every era and every place have lived worse lives than most of us do right now in the UK, at least by most measures: safety from violence or drought or starvation or disease; housing and access to heat when it is cold; access to shoes and clothing; healthcare; social security and pensions; personal autonomy and freedom; legal rights; sexual and racial equality; self-expression; reduction in the time required for the basic labours of survival; travel; convenience. We can argue the toss on other things, like whether all of the above is worth the price of increased social isolation, or whether technology has improved our lives or impoverished them, or whether a decline in religion is a good or a bad thing. We can also still be rightly furious about the inequalities and injustices that continue to exist in our society. But in many ways we are unique in how good we have it. Most people in most places throughout history have not had children with any expectation that their lives would be easy or better than theirs in any way.

I think people's lives could stand to get a lot worse before they would become not worth living. Nor do I think the lives of all of those who have gone before us were not worth living given the hardships people had to face.

If we have kids and they have to suffer through a world of upheaval, that does not mean that their lives will lack value or ultimately that they would have been better off not having lived.

It reminds me of the agony of decision parents can go through if they learn during pregnancy that their child will be in some way very severely disabled and / or will have a very limited life expectancy. Some parents choose to end the pregnancy as they don't think it is fair to bring a child with those challenges into the world. Others choose to continue with the pregnancy because they consider that the child should still have a chance to live. Both positions are totally valid in my view and a deeply personal choice, but the principle that a life is only worth living if it will be free from difficulty and pain simply does not stand.

And sure, if you gave me a time machine and sent me back to 1347 and asked me whether I wanted to have a kid just before the Black Death was about to wipe out a third to a half of Europe'a population, I would probably come down on the side of 'no' (putting aside my other anxieties about childbirth without modern medical support...) But the current situation, however dire, is not necessarily a good comparison with that. We can't see into the future and we don't know how everything will play out exactly, and I err on the side of (perhaps ridiculously over the top) hope.

Just one take.

I don't think there is a right or wrong when it comes to the decision each person makes.

You never know what may happen in the future, we may be able to fix climate change, or we may be hit by a meteor, or there may be a world war, leave the future to the future generations.

If the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) collapses as a result of melting ice we are more likely to see temperatures drop to something similar to other countries on the same latitude; think dry cold winters with temps of -20.

You’re not unreasonable and it’s something I grappled with too, but ultimately people talking about climate change want action - although some changes can’t be reversed and the lack of action by governments is depressing, doomerism is not the goal. In deciding to have a child you could say you are choosing to move forward with hope and investing in the future rather than writing it off. I would say any reason is valid to not have children, I completely respect that though.

I work within nature/climate so am aware of the incoming risks. My child is now 14 but if I was looking to have kids now on balance I think I still would. I would however consider moving somewhere very temperate, ie Scotland or the north, or indeed out of the UK if that was an option, where extreme heat will be less of an immediate problem than SE England.

YANBU. I had my children 20 and 18 years ago and I feel guilty about bringing them into the world (both for the planet and for the more difficult lives they will have compared to me); I felt more optimistic at the time.

I suppose I just wonder, is the world at a point where I wish I hadn't been born? No of course not. Realistically every day we all choose to keep living, we don't have to be here. By not having a child, you're essentially choosing for them that their life wouldn't be worth living, and that just seems so sad :(

You don’t need a reason to want or not want kids. Just say you don’t want any.

There is no need to start a goody thread saying that those of us who had or want kids are idiots who can’t understand basic science, it’s insulting. Having children isn’t some awful doom you are imposing on them, look at what we inherited ffs, we dealt with it.

We have known about and been taking steps to stop human caused climate change since before I was born over fifty years ago. If I hadn’t been born, then all my activism wouldn’t have happened. The same for my adult children.

I am one of many, not saying I’m like a Greta Thunberg, but that every voice counts if it exists to speak up.

If the people who care about the planet don’t raise children who care about the planet, then all that will be left are the people who don’t give a fuck about pollution, global warming, extinction events, extreme weather and they and their kids will keep on wrecking the planet because they will raise their kids to think the same way they do.

Those of us fighting for Earth should have children to pass the torch on to. The planet isn’t going save itself from humanity, it is a good thing to ensure there is a next generation of people to fight for every living creature on the planet not a bad thing.

As for population growth, the growth rate has been slowing since the 1960s driven by women having reproductive rights. World population growth is mostly driven by more people living past age 65 than by birth rates. The world population is projected to reach zero growth or decline before the end of this century. So long as women have reproductive rights, population isn’t a problem.

I sympathise, a d worry for my own kids' futures as a result of the climate and other things. But humans are resilient and I am not hopeless.
I also remember that for the entirety of human history until a couple of hundred years ago life for the vast majority was unremittingly hard and grim, with no prospect of a better life for the next generation. So I'm glad our ancestors didn't give up on the idea of having kids!

My day job requires me to understand climate science deeply. I have a PhD. I also have children.

If you had any idea how the one child policy actually worked in practice, you would never say China has the right idea.

Unless you're a sociopath

Not many multi generaitonal, Western Europeans would have had the experience of war, I don't think it's just Mumsnet posters.

Generational not 👆

Climate change will not kill absolutely everybody - there will be survivors.

It would be an incredibly sad future if every single one of our children felt they couldn't have children and never experienced the joy of raising a family.

I want my child to experience raising a child with someone if he wants to.
Yes it could be a nightmare journey ahead - but that's life.

People continued to have children throughout history - how much choice did they have? Reliable contraception is a very recent development and still not easily available to many women around the world. Plus, the idea of women having the right to say no to sex, especially from their husbands, is very recent even in the UK (and still not available to many women around the world).

Its definitely a concern

YANBU in the sense that my 2 young children are my absolute world, but I am now extremely concerned about their upcoming quality of life after the heatwaves this year. Both became very unwell at school, so I kept them home for several days. I hadn’t foreseen this at all, and I do understand that some may worry greatly about how things will be for future generations. It’s been a wake up call.

YABU I think a population bust is going to be worse than climate change, at least in the UK. Either way, humans are clever and good at overcoming hardships. I don't think it's worse than what we had before. We now have amazing technology and medicine.

It is only natural for a mother to worry about bringing a child into the world, it's the ultimate leap of faith to do so, to believe that life is worth living. I'm not religious by the way.

I think the biological urge to have children that exists exceptionally strongly in some people is a separate thing to an intellectual understanding of science.

It is frightening to think that children being born today are more likely to die from heat related problems than cold related ones

It will go from being a spike in deaths in elderly/vulnerable currently during Jan/frb due to flu, COVID etc to being a peak in summer as well due to heat.

I think the overall life expectancy will stop increasing & either hold or gradually reduce. I think people will live fewer years in good health.

I don't think that means that all children born now will suffer terribly, I think we are just reaching our peak health & life expectancy.

I think the population increase needs to slow down a lot, the pyramid scheme of increasing the population to improve the world's economy will collapse in more ways than climate change.

I think worldwide we will need to suffer for several generations with a smaller working population supporting an ageing population.

There also the huge problem of booming populations in developing countries.

I don't think we need to stop reproducing in this country but I think we need to be aware of what we are doing

You are being played. Humans are brilliant at adapting to different climates. Stop worrying and go lie with your husband.