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.

I have just finished watching 1883, about a group of pioneers crossing the Oregon Trail back in the 19th century. It was based on a lot of factual accounts of the absolutely brutal, hazardous, terrifying journey they undertook to get from one side of America to the next. History books are full of tales of infant death and cannibalism the settlers experienced as they trudged through 10 feet of snow and boiled the same bone over and and over for some kind of nutrients. This is just one example of the utter feats of human endeavour our human ancestors undertook for a better life, while they continued to populate the planet. The urge to create new life is so strong within us.

Because you are potentially condemning them to a life of misery, and doing that knowingly.

We are all being educated of how bad the damage we have done to the earth is, and what the future is very likely to hold. It does not look good, even in the best case scenario.

Hence the OP considering the morality of bringing someone that you will love with all your heart into a life where they may suffer terribly.

If you don't want children don't have them, but don't not have them because the future scares you. Your child could be the next Newton/Tesla/Einstein/Fleming or Lovelace/Earhart/Curie. Your child could be the one to find a cure for cancer or the answer to climate change. Even if your child does not do anything big and notable they will change other people's lives by interacting with them.

Don't think and worry about the bad, look at the beautiful things we have instead, things the next generation will work to preserve and your child could be part of that.

People have children in war and literal sieges.

It it happens we will sit round the table and hold hands and go together like in Don’t Look Up. Will have been worth it. Don’t not have children you want! That’s so sad.

Isn't the essence of life, doing things for other people. Making invisible choices for children that help them develop, consciously making the decision to put someone before your hardwired tendency as a human to be self centered. I don't think that devotion is altered by climate change but obviously this is post having children. You cannot have doubts at all IMO as the devotion to the above nurturing does not allow it.

If they each planted and looked after 1000 trees they could

Anyway, we'll need children to fan us when it gets too hot. And to fetch the firewood when the AMOC collapses.

You could consider adopting. There are children already here who need parents.

This will still have implications for the UK and other less affected areas. Climate (and by association economic) migrants will need refuge, especially as a lot of the contributing factors came/come from cooler climates polluting environments and developing and funding the mining and logging industries amongst other things.

Over the generations some children have grown up to have hard lives and some to have charmed lives.
It's always been like that and nothing will ever change that.

No, only some of us are being “educated” into fear of having children.

When I was a teenager in the 70s I decided against having children because we were told we were all going to perish in nuclear Armageddon and if we didn't then population explosion meant we would all starve.
In hindsight it was a good reason to give people who asked me about having children but actually I just didn't want them.
Changed my mind 20 years later.

Population trends for Europe and Africa since 1900 and predicted to 2100

I was reading a thread on this same topic from a couple of years ago. I was surprised how many posters mentioned that they weren’t bothered about being alive and, given the choice, would have chosen not to have been born. They all insisted that they weren’t depressed. It was quite thought provoking. The future does look increasingly tough for humankind.

What point are you making @BackFrontSideToSide?

The birth rate is increasing in some parts of the world and declining in others. That has nothing to do with individual couples making a choice about whether to have children or not. Some people don’t want to create humans who will likely go on to have a more difficult life than they themselves have had. African birth rates are irrelevant in that decision.

I think anyone who thinks the UK will be immune to the effects of global climate change is very naive. For so many reasons we are not well placed to cope with what is coming.

I think many people are worried their (currently non-existent) kids would experience some very tough times as a result of climate change.

Because what about the children? What if they don’t experience joy in the life that you bring them into? What if their life is hard and miserable? This is what is being discussed here.

Some people are choosing not to have children because they are fairly certain we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, so why would you deliberately create new life if it’s going to be a difficult life? Choosing to create life is not just a question of ‘What makes me happy?’

So many posters talk about the joy they get from being parents as justification for having children.

Even contraception failures?

Which goes back to an early pp. Having children is essentially a selfish act. I suppose it has to be and this caused the “success “ of the human species, but I think it will also be its downfall.

Does that mean you think the idea of stopping the human race is the answer though?

As I mentioned, on a previous thread quite a few posters said that, given the choice, they’d choose not to have been born. But not course they had no choice in the matter. That is very different to your suggestion that “we don’t have to be here” - that implies that ‘leaving’ is an easy option - it obviously isn’t. I don’t really understand your last sentence!

Adoption is a VERY different ballgame to having your own biological child.
You need to be a very strong person who actively wants to help a child who will have difficulties resulting from adverse childhood experiences.
It was something often suggested to me whilst I was going through fertility treatment (always by people who had their own biological children) as if it was a like for like alternative. It isn’t.
Adoption is a wonderful thing to do but you should adopt a child because you actively want to adopt rather than as an alternative to having your own child.

@sensiblefootwear climate change was one of the many reasons I didn't have children. IMHO there are too many of us on the planet, so I didn't feel the need to make it worse.