Cutting back on babies to save the earth?

106 thoughts on Cutting back on babies to save the earth?

1. how we can incentivize people to make the fewer-children choice

   easy. raise people’s standards of living to first-world levels, improve people’s baseline education to first-world levels, provide well-paying job opportunities and reasonably secure old-age prospects to people like what are currently found in the first world, and birth rates will likely drop to below replacement level — just like in the first world.

   pity we’ll need another couple of planet earths to provide the resources needed to give all six billion of us a first-world lifestyle, but oh well, can’t win ’em all eh?

   (yeah, Malthus was right about the general outline. he got the timeline wrong because he didn’t factor in just how adaptable a species we really are, but so long as our total resources are finite, his point that our population level cannot go to infinity will stand. either we limit ourselves, or momma nature will limit us the hard way, eventually.)

2. I politely disagree Jill.

   I think a smaller family, ie having fewer children IS the right thing to do in this world, as we already have more than the world can comfortably support. I honestly don’t see that thinking such is a good thing, a more ethical thing, will automatically turned into enforced coercion.

   Maybe having lots of children will turn into something thought strange, or something to be a tad frowned on. I don’t see this as necessarily a bad thing, both for the world, and for the children in these families.

   I also agree with Nomen Nescio above that this should also be a part of a wider effort to improve living-standards around the world in a sustainable way. Further, we can make it parts of efforts to ensure those of us that have the least power aren’t unduly impacted by such.

   Yes, I am someone that doesn’t want children, and honestly gets a tad sick of hearing how damn saint-like and expected child-having is. However, this isn’t about having children vs. not having children, this is about if you are to have children, thinking responsibly about how many that would be.

3. Maybe we could start with cutting out all the crap about how one MUST have a child to live an interesting and fulfilling life…and then the crap about how an only child will grow up twisted, lonely, and spoiled. And then the crap about how disasterous it is when “first world” countries have negative population growth. Want more people? Invite them in!

   pity we’ll need another couple of planet earths to provide the resources needed to give all six billion of us a first-world lifestyle,

   I respectfully suggest that this assertion is unproven and that unless/until it is, the best way to reduce the population growth is, in fact, to try to improve the standard of living for everyone in the world. In the mean time, people in the more developed countries can work on making their lifestyles less consumption heavy, including more technical solutions to problems like greenhouse gas production (cleaner burning power plants, alternate fuel sources), solid waste disposal (recycling, reuse), and so on. That leaves more resources available for people in less developed countries and allows more of the world to be “developed”. With much luck, we might be able to encompass the entire world that way.

4. Sarah- You mean like it DIDN’T in China? Oh wait.. it did, oops.

5. Sarah- You mean like it DIDN’T in China?

6. Pingback: Pandagon :: At least trying a bit of voluntary population control :: September :: 2007

7. If you focus strictly on what works, the non-coercion and all incentive works very well. Like Nomen says, nothing has the power to limit child-bearing like truly empowering women economically and in their social lives. I read somewhere that women on average want one less child than men on average—so make it a woman’s decision, and boom! You’ve automatically slowed population growth while increasing women’s power.

8. I think this is one of those problems that would take care of itself in a few generations if we could get third-world countries roughly on par with first-world countries in terms of family planning access and infant/child mortality rates.

   Parents who can choose how many children they have and be reasonably certain of those children surviving to adulthood aren’t often going to decide to have more than they can support. The fewer people who have to pick between feeding their children and making the best long-term decision for themselves and their families (economically, socially, environmentally, etc.), the better almost everything gets.

   As far as the pressure on certain people not to reproduce–so long as it’s not codified into law, I imagine it’s not going to get much worse than it has been in the past. Members of certain groups are already pressured to reduce their “child output.” It’s just not for environmental reasons. If we can work on social issues like that while simultaneously working on making it easier and more socially acceptable for people who don’t actively want kids to just, I don’t know, not have them, I think we’d hit a point where comparatively big families wouldn’t be liable to be viewed as a problem.

9. Yes, I am someone that doesn’t want children, and honestly gets a tad sick of hearing how damn saint-like and expected child-having is. However, this isn’t about having children vs. not having children, this is about if you are to have children, thinking responsibly about how many that would be.

   But if smaller is better, isn’t smallest best? And if so, isn’t “zero” the right answer to the “thinking responsibly” question?

   I’m skeptical, in general, about a reliance ad hoc individual approaches to massive social problems. If we as a species are going to reverse our destructive impact on the environment, it’ll be because of a massive political, economic, and technological transformation. If that transformation happens, it won’t matter that my wife and I produced two kids. If it doesn’t, no one family’s decision for childlessness will have the power to save us.

   Which is not to say that incrementalism is a bad thing, or that we shouldn’t all be cinching our carbon-footprint belts where we can. But I wouldn’t ask a rural dweller to move to the city just for the sake of the environment, even though city living tends to be greener, and I wouldn’t ask someone who lives thousands of miles from his or her family to never go back and visit.

   There is a case to be made for the radical transformation of our individual lives in the face of the present threat to our environment. But if you’re going to make that case, you have to make it in a thorough-going way. Don’t ask someone to give up breeding if you’re not also going to ask her to give up her car, and her air conditioner, and meat-eating, and dairy, and plastic, and air travel, and so on and on. And if she has given up all those things, is she really the earth’s enemy because she has a kid?

   I’d never discourage someone from taking environmental impact into account in deciding whether to have kids, or how many to have. But it strikes me as unlikely that environmental impact is ever going to be the deciding factor in such a decision. If your heart is set on being a non-adoptive parent, the environmental cost is unlikely to dissuade you — if that’s what tips the balance, it was probably a pretty evenly weighted scale. (And I might wonder, privately, whether you were looking for something to tip the scale in that direction, for reasons of your own.)

10. If you focus strictly on what works, the non-coercion and all incentive works very well. Like Nomen says, nothing has the power to limit child-bearing like truly empowering women economically and in their social lives. I read somewhere that women on average want one less child than men on average—so make it a woman’s decision, and boom! You’ve automatically slowed population growth while increasing women’s power.

    If what we’re doing is empowering women and a side effect of that is a lower birth rate, then that’s great. My problem is with women’s bodies being continually used as political ping-pong balls, whether that’s with fetishizing fertility or with incentivizing a lower birth rate.

    My other issue is that there can be a thin line between direct incentives and coercion when it comes to these issues. Empowering women is great. But incentivizing — giving people tax breaks for having fewer children, for example — makes me really uncomfortable. I think you’re right that women women have a wider variety of choices they make the choice to have fewer children. Obviously that’s better for the environment. My problem is with the continued politicization of reproduction; that is, not empowering women because it’s the right thing to do, but empowering women because then they’ll make the kinds of decisions that we want them to make.

11. Well, already the people adopting this viewpoint are the most privileged people. These days, the more education and wealth someone has, the more likely they are to postpone having children and they’re more likely to have fewer children.

    The major flaw with the zero population growth crew’s argument is that certain groups won’t follow it. Those groups tend to be fundamentalist and patriarchal. And well, if those groups keep reproducing like rabbits, they’re going to take over the world.

    This discussion is not new, it’s been around for quite a while. Many people opt out of childbearing. And I’m all for letting people make that choice. I don’t want anyone forcing me to bear children or to not bear children. My body = my choice.

12. I think this is one of those problems that would take care of itself in a few generations if we could get third-world countries roughly on par with first-world countries in terms of family planning access and infant/child mortality rates.

    Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember one of the major correlates of both improved economic conditions in a country and reduced fertility as being improvements in the education of women. So maybe the first thing to focus on is getting more women educated. Then they’ll take over agitating for better birth control, maternal health care, etc.

13. Sarah- You mean like it DIDN’T in China? Oh wait.. it did, oops.

    Oh PLEASE, don’t be so obviously intellectually dishonest. I overtly said nothing about establishing legal and civil enforcement, and focused very strongly on a cultural basis.

    As Amanda also says, if such fits within a wider cultural change of empowerment, particularly for women, if can’t help but be a good thing. If it’s part of an effort on wider social issues, then socially it can’t help but be a good.

14. But if smaller is better, isn’t smallest best? And if so, isn’t “zero” the right answer to the “thinking responsibly” question?

    Especially when considering how many orphaned and abandoned children (not just cute widdle babies) there already are. Isn’t the moral solution for people who want to be parents to adopt, not to breed?

    Sarah, you’re rare in that most people who are into the one-or-two argument are really saying “yes but *I* want to have kids”. But you’re still buying the argument that fucking up the planet by spawning is a Right.

15. But if smaller is better, isn’t smallest best? And if so, isn’t “zero” the right answer to the “thinking responsibly” question?

    Er, no. It’s perfectly reasonable for a society to have cultural practises without them descending into extremism, just as it’s perfectly reasonable for a mature society to have constraints on speech without it descending into totalitarianism.

    I see what you are arguing about there needing to be changes made more as the structural larger-scale level. However, I would argue that such changes are impossible without individual changes occurring simultaneously. Like you, I do think city-living is better for the planet, as it is more efficient, but I don’t think people should be forced to move. However, I do think it is more ethical for someone to NOT have a huge McMansion and large amounts of land. Encouraging people to avoid such is not enforcement.

    As I said above, and I agree with you, each of these needs to be part of a wider socio-cultural change, and not ad-hoc disparate efforts. If there is one thing we have learnt from our feminisms, it is that legal civil changes are never going to be enough, though they have their place. We need cultural changes, and that’s what I am speaking for here.

16. But you’re still buying the argument that fucking up the planet by spawning is a Right.

    That’s the thing mythago hon, I do think it IS a right. Cutting off that right is a line that I think to cross is a step too far.

    It’s perfectly okay to support choice for someone, for everyone, without thinking what they chose is a good thing.

17. I think a smaller family, ie having fewer children IS the right thing to do in this world, as we already have more than the world can comfortably support. I honestly don’t see that thinking such is a good thing, a more ethical thing, will automatically turned into enforced coercion.

    Well, sure, Sarah, I agree with that. I also think it’s a good and ethical thing. I think it’s good to have those conversations, and to add that into the dominant narrative that fertility is the best thing.

    My concern, and this probably wasn’t clear in the post, is with how that will influence policy.

18. And to be clear, I think we’re using “incentivize” in different ways. Offering women education, health care, fair pay, etc isn’t an incentive for decreasing their birth rate, even though statistically those things lead to a decreased birth rate. Incentives are things like tax breaks for families with fewer children.

19. My concern, and this probably wasn’t clear in the post, is with how that will influence policy.

    Oh definitely, I too share your concern, and now that you phrase things that way, I can see that in what you were writing initially.

20. ’m not arguing that we shouldn’t position having fewer children as an ethical and responsible choice, or that we shouldn’t discuss it. Of course we should

    The problem is that any predictable discussion will quickly get where you don’t want to go.

    Because if X is an “ethical and responsible” action, then it is reasonable and predictable for people to start saying “How can we get X to happen?”

    So when you say

    It’ll shift to a discussion of how we can incentivize people to make the fewer-children choice, and incentives easily shift into coercion.

    I’m not sure why that is so bad. If something is vastly the preferred choice for society (avoid raping; don’t let people starve; don’t steal; don’t dump oil into the lakes) then it seems good to incentivize folks to do it. Or even to coerce them. Doesn’t it?

    It is a tricky discussion.

21. I just posted this on Pandagon, but I’m going to reproduce it here:

    While I agree that improving women’s health care, education, etc etc will ultimately lead to women having fewer children, and while I agree that having fewer children is a good and ethical thing, I have a big problem with the continued politicization of reproduction. Because at the end of the day, women are getting screwed. Right now, a lot of us are getting screwed by the fertility-fetishism that demands women have more children than they want. I don’t want to replace that with a system where women are screwed if they have more children than is deemed socially acceptable. I think you’re absolutely right that making child-free or one-child lifestyles more acceptable is a good thing, but I don’t like the idea of doing so at the expense of the acceptability of multi-child families.

    The problem with public policy incentivizing child-free or one-child families is that incentives often bleed into coercion for the people with the least power. Take the group CRACK, for example — they target drug-addicted women and offer them a few hundred bucks to be permanently sterilized. They bill themselves as an organization dedicated to preventing more “crack babies.” For you or I, $200 in exchange for our fertility may only be an incentive; for a woman who is desperate and addicted and is being offered $200 worth of drug money, things look a little bit different. Is it technically coercion? No. But it’s a fine line. And of course, the women who have their reproductive capacities taken away are disproportionately black and brown. In my post I alluded to our “ugly history,” and I know you’ve read the fabulous Dorothy Robert’s “Killing the Black Body.” Ideally, population control wouldn’t have a racial element to it; historically and realistically, it does, and it’s something we need to be really careful about.

22. Like you, I do think city-living is better for the planet, as it is more efficient, but I don’t think people should be forced to move. However, I do think it is more ethical for someone to NOT have a huge McMansion and large amounts of land.

    Right. You’re saying, if I’m following you, that people can properly be asked (not ordered, but asked) to make reasonable adjustments to their lifestyle, but that it’s unfair to ask them to completely turn their lives upside down for The Cause.

    But you’re also saying — if I follow the analogy — that having no kids is like living in the city, having one is like living modestly in the country, and having four is like owning a McMansion. You’re saying that having more than a couple of kids is conspicuous consumption. And I just don’t buy that. The decision to have a third child can be made for any one of a zillion reasons, and few of them (recent trend pieces on yuppie NYC families notwithstanding) have anything to do with ostentatious display.

    I’ve got two kids. Two is how many I want. If six years ago, before our first kid was conceived, you’d asked me and my wife to stop at two to save the earth, we’d have seen that as a reasonable request — but only because it’s what we were going to do anyway. If you’d asked us to stop at one, we would have seen that as unreasonable, because it’d have been asking us to make a huge change in our life plans for a tiny marginal environmental effect.

    If it’s extreme to suggest to people who want kids that they shouldn’t have any because of the environment, then it’s extreme to suggest to people who want two that they should only have one, and extreme to suggest to people who want four that they should only have two. All those requests may be justifiable, but I don’t see how any of them is more extreme than another.

23. I think we need to continue to incentivize education, particularly in the sciences, not directly incentivize having fewer children. As has been stated, education and standard of living do correlate with smaller birth rates, but also, a higher general standard of literacy, science, etc, will inevitably also produce solutions to some of the problems that too many people cause.

    Of course, again, the people fighting hardest to force people to have lots of children (or take away their ability to choose) are the very ones who see science as the enemy.

24. f something is vastly the preferred choice for society (avoid raping; don’t let people starve; don’t steal; don’t dump oil into the lakes) then it seems good to incentivize folks to do it. Or even to coerce them. Doesn’t it?

    Well sure, but it’s a balance. I may think it’s a good choice for people to have fewer children, but I think it’s more preferable for people to be able to make unencumbered reproductive choices. Incentives for one-child or child-free families influence free reproductive choice. And so while I hope people will make certain choices — and while educating them and giving them good health care tends to push people in that direction — I don’t like the idea of public policy being used as a tool to encourage one reproductive choice over another.

25. Er, Brooklynite, I’m not saying anything about display. I’m talking about irresponsible consumption. The way it looks couldn’t matter less to me.

    If it’s extreme to suggest to people who want kids that they shouldn’t have any because of the environment, then it’s extreme to suggest to people who want two that they should only have one, and extreme to suggest to people who want four that they should only have two.

    That’s the thing, I don’t agree. I do feel the former is a tad extreme (not excessively mind you, but a tad so). But the latter couple examples I see as perfectly reasonable. Graduations of what is appropriate is how the social works.

26. I’m going to go out on a limb here and agree with Jill. And, additionally, Loretta Ross, who makes roughly this same point.
    And, up until your last comment, Sarah in Chicago, I was going to disagree with you…but yes, fucking up the planet by having kids IS, indeed, a right. Just because the purpose behind restricting a woman’s right to choose to give birth is “good” & “pure” & “for the environment” doesn’t mean you’re not still restricting/denying her right to procreate. And no, that’s not ok to do. Ever.
    And while you might have good intentions and not mean for your environmentalist policies to be directed at women of color and poor women…that’s what’s gonna happen. That’s what’s always happened. Your good intentions (that everyone should reduce their baby output) aren’t going to subvert this racist system we’ve got (which will turn into: poor women/w.o.c. should reduce their baby output).

    But because I could never say it as well as Loretta Ross, here, from “The Color of Choice: White Supremacy and Reproductive Justice,” regarding environmentalists who claim that the world is overpopulated and drastic measures must be taken to address this catastrophe (a little long, but worth it):

    “This [blaming environmental degradation, urban sprawl, and diminishing natural resources on poor populations of color] is a widely accepted set of racist myths promoted by many in the environmental movement…The reality is that 20% of the world’s population controls 80% of the global wealth. In other words, it is not the population growth of the developing world [or, really, population growth in the “developed” world] that is depleting the world’s resources, but the overconsumption of these resources by the richest countries in the world…Rather than perceiving overconsumption by Americans, agricultural mismanagement, and the military-industrial complex as the main sources of environmental degradation, many US environmentalists maintain that the fertility of poor women is the root of environmental evil, and cast women of color, immigrant women, and women of the Global South as the perpetrators, rather than the victims, of environmental degradation…
    Population control groups on the Left will often claim that they are concerned with eliminating gender and economic inequalities, racism, and colonialism,” but since these organizations address these issues through a problematic paradigm, inevitably their efforts are directed toward reducing population growth of all peoples in theory and of people of color in reality.“

27. Aw shite, the blockquote didn’t work … middle paragraph above is a quote.

28. annnd my comment took me a while to look up/quote/write, so the “last comment” i was referring to from sarah was actually a while back…number 16. apologies if the rest of my comment isn’t quite as relevant as when i started writing it, either…

29. Right now, a lot of us are getting screwed by the fertility-fetishism that demands women have more children than they want. I don’t want to replace that with a system where women are screwed if they have more children than is deemed socially acceptable.

    And if we do that, it also takes our eye off of the larger problem.

    Plastic recycling is great. But to the extent that people who recycle believe that they’re doing their part to stop global warming, it’s potentially pernicious, because consumer-level plastic recycling is never going to save the planet.

    So yeah, when I hear suggestions that we encourage lower birth rates to address environmental degredation, I get twitchy. Because it’s a solution that can’t solve the problem, and it’s a solution that’s aimed at a politically and economically vulnerable group, rather than at the politically and economically dominant group whose behavior actually does need to change, and change dramatically.

30. But incentivizing — giving people tax breaks for having fewer children, for example — makes me really uncomfortable.

    Do tax deductions for *having* kids (or being married, or owning property, or insert social goal here) make you uncomfortable, too? Because we already incentivize having kids.

31. Do tax deductions for *having* kids (or being married, or owning property, or insert social goal here) make you uncomfortable, too? Because we already incentivize having kids.

    Yeah, absolutely. But tax breaks for having children is a little more complicated, given that the financial output for children is so overwhelming that the tax benefit is really negligible in the big picture.

32. ok, and caveat number (what am i at now?) two:
    i didn’t actually read the article before i posted, so i was mostly responding to Jill’s & others’ responses to the article. and now I see that the article was actually targeting Americans, not those in the Global South/developing countries. so the international arguments that I used a la Loretta Ross may not be as relevant…but then again, they kinda are. Interconnectedness and inability to completely divorce foreign policy from domestic policy and all. In any case, even if it’s not directed toward women of color/poor women in other countries, any policy (or, potentially, cultural) incentives are still going to end up directed toward women of color/poor women over here.

33. If it’s extreme to suggest to people who want kids that they shouldn’t have any because of the environment, then it’s extreme to suggest to people who want two that they should only have one, and extreme to suggest to people who want four that they should only have two.

    That’s the thing, I don’t agree. I do feel the former is a tad extreme (not excessively mind you, but a tad so). But the latter couple examples I see as perfectly reasonable. Graduations of what is appropriate is how the social works.

    But you don’t want kids, so of course you see encouraging people to have one kid as reasonable. It’s a policy that encourages what you’d do without the encouragement, and throwing in a little wiggle room for people whose preferences are slightly different from yours.

    Honestly, I’d be happy if everyone on the planet chose to at two kids. And setting aside the concerns that Jill has raised, my initial emotional reaction to the idea of a public campaign to encourage two-kid families is mostly positive. But I can’t separate out that response from the fact that I only want two kids myself.

    I think of an “only have two” campaign, and it makes me smile. I think of an “only have one” campaign, and it makes me cringe. And I’d argue that “only have one” makes me cringe for pretty much the same reasons that “don’t have any” makes you cringe.

34. Ulyanovsk, Russia Gov. Sergei Morozov has decreed Sept. 12 a Day of Conception and is giving couples time off from work to procreate. Couples who give birth nine months later on Russia’s national day — June 12 — will receive money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.

    I question the timing.

35. Jen –

    I completely agree with you that given the paradigm we operate under, the racist, classist and sexist nature of such will tend to be reproduced in any actions we advocate.

    However, I don’t think of it as an inevitability. I think if we work with our colonialist, etc world-view in mind and try to work to prevent such, we can minimise the effects of such. Not eradicate it admittedly, but minimise it.

    I think the problems are too big to just give up and assume apriori that we are going to fail.

    [Oh, and for the record, I’m not an environmentalist, as I don’t work for any of such organisations, etc. I’m a feminist, a gay rights activist, and an academic, I’m just interested, and intend to work, in international politics, and this is allied with that for me *smile*]

36. I agree – the problem is not the number of children, but how we impact the earth with those children…hell, even on our own.

    Then we use TONS of resources to extend people’s lives – not extending their quality of life but extending their quantity of years.

    Let’s face it: even the most careful, green-living people use up more resources than, say, a family in China.

    It’s not about children. It’s about the waste that comes when we have children.

37. And I’d argue that “only have one” makes me cringe for pretty much the same reasons that “don’t have any” makes you cringe.

    Nope, because there IS a difference between saying “have children, but have a responsible amount” and “have no children”. The former leaves choice in place.

    We may have to agree to disagree on this one.

38. Either each leaves choice in place, or neither does, Sarah. It’s just that the two address themselves to different choices.

    There are lots of people who believe that kids do better, are happier, or otherwise thrive from having siblings. I know as many people with one kid who really want another as I do people with no kids who really want a first.

    In what sense is the decision to have one’s first kid a choice that’s inherently deserving of more respect or support than the decision to have one’s second? In what sense is that first decision a more valid decision than the second?

    I just don’t see a way to make that case that isn’t capricious.

39. Brooklynite –

    I don’t want to belabour this, and I have a lecture to finish writing, so this will be my last comment on this.

    Drawing the line at having fewer children rather than no children leaves in place the choices of whether or not to have children, AND of how many to have, within reason. This is eminently more about choice than saying to everyone “nah, can’t have any”.

40. Fair enough, Sarah. If you’re talking about a “have fewer” campaign (as opposed to, say, a “have one”), then yeah, that does address the choice issue.

41. It’s about the waste that comes when we have children.

    How about the waste that comes when we don’t have children? The waste that comes as part and parcel with living in an urban, industrial/post-industrial setting?

    I have child-free friends who earn around what I do, and live in similar neighborhoods—generally, older, working-class homes built anywhere from 1900-1940. They aren’t magically destroying the environment less than my daughter and I; we use the same resources to heat and power our homes, we use the same resources to drive our cars to work and elsewhere, we buy our food, clothes and sundries at the same stores, with the same packaging, the same advertising, etc. The difference in my daughter’s “extra” consumption over mine, vs. my child-free friends not having that “extra” person—is more than made up for by the increase in consumer spending and travel my child-free friends have.

    There’s already a strong incentive for women to have fewer children—-the cost it takes to raise those children. Women in urban, industrial/post-industrial settings already have fewer children. The so-called “tax breaks” aren’t an incentive to have kids. You don’t even break even with those “tax breaks”, let alone end up with more money. Nobody has a child for financial reasons, period. Exclamation point. Having a child carries a serious economic price for women, as mothers are less likely to be hired, less likely to be promoted, less likely to get “plum” job assignments—even when we don’t leave work (which most of us don’t). Yet, here we are, procreating anyway.

    So, why is this even a question, unless it’s another way to shame women? ‘Cuz face it, if you are a woman, no matter what your decision is regarding children (if, when, how many, etc.), you will be shamed for it. I sure don’t hear anywhere near the level of “tut-tutting” over men starting second families that women get to hear for having one.

    Look. It’s not the children. It’s the nonsustainable lifeways of modern, urban capitalism. Waste earns money for some people. It costs the rest of us. It costs the planet. Wanna save the environment? It’s gotta be about more than individual “choice”. It has to be about systemic change—infrastructure change—not individual “choices”.

42. As the Communications Manager at Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth), I am really happy to see that people are once again making the links between a rapidly growing population and environmental degradation. All of the population and/or environmental organizations that we work with are adamantly against coercive family planning programs. What happens in China is deplorable and should not be mimicked anywhere.

    Much simpler and more humane than a policy like China’s is the funding of programs to provide voluntary family planning services and supplies to everyone in the world who wants them, regardless of age, marital status, or ability to pay. There are over 200 million women of reproductive age who have “unmet need for contraception.” This means that they are in a sexually active relationship, do not want to become pregnant within the next two years, but do not use any contraception. Providing contraception to these women could prevent 52 million unwanted pregnancies a year, many of which end in unsafe abortion.

    While it is helpful to do things like change light bulbs, drive hybrids, and open the windows instead of using air conditioning, these solutions pale in comparison with the effects of slowing population growth. In a world where the average annual human carbon footprint is 4.1 tons, each child should be planned and treasured. There is no room in the biosphere for the millions of unwanted births that occur each year. And a positive consequence of delaying childbirth and limiting the number of children one has is the increased level of education that each child receives and the higher overall investment in that child’s well-being. Children become even more precious when there are fewer of them, especially on a small, family scale.

    Countries that have lower fertility rates also tend to have higher standards of living. When people can invest more in their own self actualization and that of their (few) children, economies soar. As countries become more wealthy they do tend to have higher per capita emissions, but also can afford the alternative energies and other environmentally friendly solutions that are currently available to those who can pay.

    By denying U.S. funding to foreign NGOs that provide reproductive health services (through policies like global gag rule), we are inadvertently saying that we don’t care whether poor people continue to live in squalor or whether the earth’s limited resources are used up in the next few decades. And by withholding medically accurate contraception information from teens in the U.S. we are saying that they are too irresponsible to have information about sex, but that they are responsible enough to become parents: ridiculous.

    Humans have a responsibility to make decisions that won’t hurt future generations, and choosing wisely the number of children that they want, rather than just leaving their childbearing to chance, is one of the most important decisions they can make.

43. “There are lots of people who believe that kids do better, are happier, or otherwise thrive from having siblings.”

    But does that make it so? I mean, there are lots of people who believe that childless women are really just in denial about their overwhelming need for a baby to complete them. That doesn’t exactly translate into Empty Uterus Syndrome being in the DSM-IV.

    If there are a large number of people whose reason for wanting more than one child is to make the only child they would otherwise want happier or more successful, it seems more productive to first see if that’s a reasonable expectation and then educate people if it turns out that it’s actually not than to just give the assumption (or other, similar assumptions) a pass.

    That’s not even just in the specific-to-this-exact-discussion sense, either. There are a lot of things like that that make parents feel pressured into doing something they may not really want to do, or feel comfortable doing, to no benefit. Making sure that the assumptions are true and combating disinformation and truthy-but-unexamined parenting advice leads to more people making better-informed decisions and suffering less from misguided guilt or fear.

44. If there was more incentive for people to adopt, either for all of their children or to fill out their ideal family, I think that is one way to help out. I know when we adopted our daughter it was horribly expensive and the paperwork and wait time was huge. Make it easier, faster and cheaper to adopt… children who need homes would get them, foster care wouldn’t be so overwhelmed and people would maybe choose adoption over extreme fertility treatments. I know I would love to adopt again if I could afford it.

45. As the family is a social construction, the necessity of having your “own” child is socially defined; it is not “hard-wired”. My little sister, adopted from South Korea when she was 3 months of age, is as innately familial to me as she would be if she were a biological sibling.

    Public policy makers are capable of shaping cultural mores. With very little exception, people no longer litter and everyone wears their seat-belts. Is it far-fetched to imagine an effort to promote the behavior of adoption on an enormous scale?

    Drive that Hummer to soccer practice, so long as there’s five adopted kids strapped in the back!

46. I guess I have to say, while I can agree that choice should always enter into it, having some argument to counter the “real women have lots of babies” image of feminity and the whole cult of motherhood is a good thing.

47. As the family is a social construction, the necessity of having your “own” child is socially defined; it is not “hard-wired”. My little sister, adopted from South Korea when she was 3 months of age, is as innately familial to me as she would be if she were a biological sibling.

    Public policy makers are capable of shaping cultural mores. With very little exception, people no longer litter and everyone wears their seat-belts. Is it far-fetched to imagine an effort to promote the behavior of adoption on an enormous scale?

    Now this, I would definitely support.

48. Right now, a lot of us are getting screwed by the fertility-fetishism that demands women have more children than they want.

    Do you mean the way fertility treatments often result in twins, triplets, etc.? Because if that’s what you’re talking about, that’s an American phenomenon, not a fertility phenomenon. Our health insurance and our medical system is set up to encourage doctors to implant more than one fertilized embryo so that the likelihood of implantation is more successful. So, they basically, do one operation and ‘put all the eggs in one basket’ rather than do multiple operations for each egg. If more than one egg implants, then the woman must choose to destroy excess eggs or keep them all.

    Naomi Wolf describes this in Misconceptions.

    Or do you mean something else?

    Regarding incentivization:
    There is already tax incentives to adopt rather than breed. There is an adoption tax credit that can be taken in addition to the standard child credit:
    http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc607.html
    http://www.irs.gov/publications/p972/ar02.html

49. IMO procreation is by definition an irrational choice, especially for women. Why risk a myriad of health problems –or even death– for something that will mostly be a burden and a liability during the next 18 years or so? The “joy” of parenthood is highly overrated and tends to come at a pretty steep price, emotionally, financially, and otherwise. Yeah, and it ain’t too good for the environment, either, but that’s almost an afterthought. People should remain childfree to empower themselves, not to prevent global warming (way overhyped!) or save the whales or whatever.

    And no, there’s nothing inherently wrong with regulating procreation. Hell, pretty much every other facet of our lives is somehow regulated by the powers that be, so why not breeding? You need a licence to drive a car, own a gun, or catch a fish, but just about any irresponsible, immature moron can have as many kids as s/he wants? Irresponsible breeding is the root cause of crime, poverty, wars, female disempowerment, and many other problems. It’s bad for the people who do it, bad for their offspring, and bad for society as a whole. It’s stupid and immoral, period. Only the financially, genetically, and emotionally fit should breed (if that’s what they really want), and if that means “radical” measures like welfare (or rather basic income guarantee) linked to sterilization than so be it.

50. I guess I have to say, while I can agree that choice should always enter into it, having some argument to counter the “real women have lots of babies” image of feminity and the whole cult of motherhood is a good thing.

    But the problem is that the “real women have lots of babies” cult of motherhood isn’t a universal one. There are plenty of women who are routinely shamed for having more kids than is deemed acceptable for someone like them. And there are women like me who who are white, middle class and (almost) highly-educated — in my social circle, having children early and having many of them (“many” meaning more than three) is an oddity and is looked upon skeptically. In other parts of the country and in other social circles, my total lack of desire to have kids and my eventual hope to adopt and foster no less than a decade from now would be seen as truly bizarre, and the sign of a raging feminist lesbian man-hater with shriveled ovaries. Lots of women of color and poor women are attacked for having “too many” kids. It’s not a black-and-white issue.

51. Do you mean the way fertility treatments often result in twins, triplets, etc.?

    Wow, no, I wasn’t talking about that at all. When I said that “Right now, a lot of us are getting screwed by the fertility-fetishism that demands women have more children than they want,” I meant that many women feel socially pressured to have children they can’t afford and don’t want. Many women are unable to access the tools to prevent pregnancy in the first place, and even more are unable to access the tools to end it. Women’s needs often take a backseat to the desires of a male partner. White women’s bodies are used as tools to fight the “culture wars” against people of color, liberals, foreigners, non-Christians, etc.

    You make interesting points about fertility treatments anyway though!

52. Jill, Oh, OK. I wasn’t sure what you meant by “fertility-fetishism.”

    I think you’re right that many women feel pressured to reproduce and that women’s needs take a back seat. In fact, the first thing my mother in law said after my wedding was that my husband could now get me pregnant. Wow. And now she’s still waiting for her grandchild.

    I’d like to adopt and I’ve been looking into it. But I’d also like to experience pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and all that goes along with having a biological child. I may end up doing both, we’ll just see. Or neither… who knows the future?

53. It sure took you a while to get your first troll, Jill. Are you losing your touch?

54. Irresponsible breeding is the root cause of crime, poverty, wars, female disempowerment, and many other problems. It’s bad for the people who do it, bad for their offspring, and bad for society as a whole. It’s stupid and immoral, period. Only the financially, genetically, and emotionally fit should breed (if that’s what they really want), and if that means “radical” measures like welfare (or rather basic income guarantee) linked to sterilization than so be it.

    I don’t agree with that. I am the result of irresponsible breeding and so is my nephew and most of my family members. And some of us are exceptional individuals, if I do say so myself 🙂

55. While there is a tax credit, there are huge up front costs. For example it cost around 500 dollars to get fingerprinted which has to be renewed about every 1 1/2 years, so if your on a long wait list you have to spend the 500 again (actually the cost might be higher now as we adopted 3 years ago). Then there is the cost of the Home Study, the agency fees, getting copies of your birth certif. and marriage certif. (which costs ya) and other fees. That doesn’t even include all the costs for adopting internationally (even adopting in the US can cost you air travel expenses). The credit is a big help, but it helps only after the fact. You can take out loans or what not, but again.. more costs, paperwork and time.

56. Babies have always been an investment in the future, although I guess we wealthy Americans can always count on importing service workers (including doctors, dentists, and lawyers) from underdeveloped countries.

57. Only the financially, genetically, and emotionally fit should breed (if that’s what they really want), and if that means “radical” measures like welfare (or rather basic income guarantee) linked to sterilization than so be it.

    How about the ethically unfit? Because I’ll nominate you to go first.

58. Irresponsible breeding is the root cause of crime, poverty, wars, female disempowerment, and many other problems.

    But the question is, who gets to decide what’s irresponsible? Do you want the guys in charge to be the ones who pick and choose the “breeders”?

    Because that’s already how they view women, you know — as instruments of reproduction. And when we start classifying who’s “fit to breed,” we reinforce that view of all women while also targeting and stigmatizing the traditionally most disempowered women.

    Oh, and I’d love to see any stats backing up your assertion that “irresponsible breeding” causes every social ill ever, up to and including female disempowerment.

59. It sure took you a while to get your first troll, Jill. Are you losing your touch?

    Ha, apparently!

    But I blame Zuzu. She banned all the good trolls.

60. I think it’s really interesting that while there are discussions of how best to non-coercively implement strategies to encourage folks to have less children, there’s little to no discussion about whether or not population pressure is actually causal to environmental problems. While I totally agree that everyone should have access to family planning and reproductive freedom that is not coerced or restrained, the politics of declaring a population crisis as environmental crisis is neither new nor containing only the bias of our ‘ugly history.’

    A good place to start to investigate the problematic history of the “population bomb” is the Committee on Women, Population and the Environment – I like this article by Betsy Hartmann, director of the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College, but the whole section is useful. There’s no question that population is part of the military industrial complex, and has been for decades, used to combine security threats with environmental threats. As James Oldham notes (pg. 33),

    Much of the PE [Population-Environment] literature tries to emphasize the social and human health benefits of integrated programs rather than focusing on environmental justifications. Yet many of the same authors and organizations also disseminate a vision of population threats to the environment on a global scale where the emphasis is on high and fast growing populations in and around biodiversity hotspots of the global south.5 Most organizations carrying out community-based PE programs also acknowledge that one important objective is to reduce population pressure on the environment. For example, CI describes a global problem of population threatening key areas of ecological concern: “The regions of the planet undergoing the most severe environmental degradation are the same as those experiencing the most rapid human population growth.”6 This concern is then addressed locally: “Since 2001, Conservation International (CI) has been working in the Selva Lacandona of Mexico—one of the richest biodiversity hotspots in the world—to reduce human population pressure on natural resources.”7
    These generalized assumptions about population impacts on the natural environment are too simplistic. A significant body of research demonstrates that human populations can actually enrich biodiversity and ecological complexity through their interactions with the environment. In one example, banning local people from a bird sanctuary in Bharatpur, India led to the decline in populations of key bird species.8 Studies in parts of Kenya9 and Java10 have documented that growing populations
    have increased capacity for environmental remediation, resulting in enhanced biodiversity. Similar trends have been found in countries as diverse as Nepal, Guinea, and China.11 Although such outcomes depend on many variables, these examples highlight the unreliability of broad generalizations about linkages between population and environment.

61. This whole debate makes me impatient, because it just plays into the right-wing perception that we’re all a bunch of moonbats.

    Making reliable, affordable contraception available across the world, and brushing aside the protests of the Catholic Church, the Bush Administration or whoever, would do more to alleviate the humans-using-resources problem than any amount of handwringing over whether Americans are having “too many” children.

62. One thing that would help, without the potential problems, is something that women generally can do.

    If we stop holding up motherhood as some righteous, saintly and essential part of being a woman, as something without which our lives would be incomplete,

    If we stop automatically assuming that our daughters will want to be mothers, pushing little dollies onto them even after they make it clear they don’t want them,

    If we stop telling those who chose to opt-out that they will either change their minds or come to regret their decision,

    If we stop guilt-tripping our daughters into having babies because we want to be grandparents,

    Then perhaps many women will be able to make the decision free of coercion (I hope) from either side of the debate.

    Of course, societally, making contraception freely available, offering better education about sex and allowing those who wish to opt-out surgically to do so would also help a lot, by preventing unwanted or accidental pregnancies.

    I realise that the larger issues are always going to involve walking a fine line. But hopefully the above will be possible without also involving coercing those who do want children against it.

63. oh yeah…

    Only the financially, genetically, and emotionally fit should breed (if that’s what they really want), and if that means “radical” measures like welfare (or rather basic income guarantee) linked to sterilization than so be it.

    I think the fact that you included “genetically fit” worries me the most. I mean, people should always have the choice, but I agree that people should try not to exceed their financial means when deciding how many children to have where possible.

    But exactly how do you think one would go about choosing who was “genetically fit”?

    Because that statement is just full of scary connotations.

64. I missed a troll?

    Bah. You *knew* I only came back for the banning, and now you’re working my side of the street. Step off!

65. Oh, wait. I see the troll.

    Carry on.

66. I have my own complex sets of guilt issues about whether I should be procreating right now. But I am in fact gestating at this very moment nonetheless. I’m white, educated, and urban. Very few people would try to pressure me not to have kids; the pressure is much more likely to go in the opposite direction.

    I agree with Jill, and want to fit this into a wider context. This is part and parcel of the culture that says that my uterus is public property. It comes out as women being pressured to have kids, women pressured to have one more so they won’t have an only, women pressured to have fewer kids, pregnant women being told what to eat (by strangers!), pregnant women being told when to walk and when to sit down, pregnant women being approached by strangers and touched, etc. etc. I am so glad I am starting to show late so that the amount of random crap I get from strangers is decreased. It even comes out in the complex medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth, which posits the health of the fetus as always more important than the health of the pregnant woman.

    Apologies for taking all conversations off in pregnancy/birth directions; I’m a little preoccupied these days.

67. Is it far-fetched to imagine an effort to promote the behavior of adoption on an enormous scale?

    I blanched at this statement.

    I don’t think creating a demand (on an enormous scale, no less) for adoption is a good strategy. As in, creating a demand for a product that is often a direct result of someone else’s misery. It’s one thing to deal with the supply that might follow in wake of suffering, but to actively create a demand of such seems cold and spoken from privilege.

68. But the problem is that the “real women have lots of babies” cult of motherhood isn’t a universal one. There are plenty of women who are routinely shamed for having more kids than is deemed acceptable for someone like them.

    I understand what you’re saying here, but I think that most of this . . . I’ll call it hand-wringing of “those people” breeding, because I’m sadly pretty sure that’s how it’s thought of, not because I agree. . . comes from the idea that women all want to and should have babies. The argument is over how to get the “wrong” women to deny this “natural” urge. It’s not an alternative idea, but rather a question of how to restrict the right to belong to the cult.

69. Adoptive parents know better than anyone else that the adoption-as-solution meme is flawed. Domestic infant adoption has years of waiting lists and huge expenses due to the supply never meeting the demand. International adoption is fraught with all sorts of perils, from allegations of cultural theft to outright fraud (shady adoption brokers coercing families to give up their children.) It’s a myth that there are millions of children languishing all over the world just waiting to be adopted. Domestic adoption of older children is the one place where supply somewhat exceeds demand, but that is also tied up with cultural clashes, legal problems, and huge expenses.

70. This is part and parcel of the culture that says that my uterus is public property.

    Brava! *clap clap clap!!*

71. It’s perfectly reasonable for a society to have cultural practises without them descending into extremism

    Promoting adoption is “extremism”? Deciding to have no biological children is “extremism”? Sheesh.

    Dr. Confused – who said anything about infant-only adoption?

72. I’m trying to differentiate between the two sources of problems:
    1) it’s bad because it would affect the rights of women specifically; and
    2) government should not have a say in reproduction, generally.

    So as I’m sitting here, I’m thinking of an unusual hypothetical:

    What if this were enforced on MEN? IOW, if I lived in China, I’d get one kid. Then I’d have to get a vasectomy or be in trouble.

    Would that be as much of a problem? I don’t think it would.

    And it would be very different from the abortion arguments. Because as I see it, the “reproductive right” thing stems from AVOIDING getting pregnant (access to BC) or STOPPING a pregnancy (aborting). It has extra power in those areas because women, and women alone, bear the direct costs of an unwanted pregnancy.

    But not having a child? Different thing entirely, and not only limited to women. Plenty of people want kids and can’t have them. They’re sterile, or they can’t find a partner, or they simply waited until they were too old, or they HAVE a partner and can’t conceive with him/her and don’t want to use a bank.

    I have trouble seeing something so common as also being a “rights” violation, which is why I have some problems applying the prochoice rhetoric to the right to have kids.

    (and FWIW: if this means that people think your uterus is “public property:” being pressured to have kids, [being] pressured to have one more so they won’t have an only, [being] pressured to have fewer kids then hey, my testicles are public property too! Which is silly. But it demonstrates the problem with expending the rhetoric too far.)

73. I think fucking up the planet by having more kids is a right, but it does seem extraordinarily cruel to have kids only to doom them to a fucked-up planet. It’s sort of like marrying people when you know you’re just going to cheat on them and divorce them.

74. edit: when i said “…the reproductive right thing” I meant to say “…an important aspect of the reproductive right argument w/r/t prochoice”

    My bad, that’ll teach me to type too fast.

75. Oh PLEASE, don’t be so obviously intellectually dishonest. I overtly said nothing about establishing legal and civil enforcement, and focused very strongly on a cultural basis.

    Oh please yourself, and I never claimed you did. My thoughts were in response to this sentence.

    I honestly don’t see that thinking such is a good thing, a more ethical thing, will automatically turned into enforced coercion.

    It’s naive to think that it won’t (no, nothing’s automatic, but some things are only too predictable) It’s really only a small step from thinking it’s a good thing for everyone to do, best for the culture, the species, the world, etc – to thinking you’re fully justified in enforcing it for the “greater good”. I’ve seen people who were squimish about abortion start out thinking it’s just “not good” and end up as anti-choicers advocating bombing clinics.

    Already reading this and other threads on this topic I’ve read quite a few comments following that train of thought. Also considering the impact a few small but extremely vocal groups has had on this country and our freedoms… I’m loathe to consider passing judgement on women based on whether they have none or a dozen children.

    As others have pointed out, there is already quite a bit of incentive to NOT procreate. I have one child. I pay $500 a month in daycare. That alone is cause for me to avoid having another child.

76. Actually I have adopted from Mongolia. There are many children who need homes there. The problem is finding people who will wait through the process. Now that the U.S.A. is moving to comply with the Hague Convention, anything shady should be shut down and hopefully things will proceed faster. The fact that our daughter is loosing connections with her culture is a factor we’ve thought of. In the end, she wouldn’t have probably survived in Mongolia after leaving the orphanage. We are doing all we can to have her have contact with her birth culture. Adoption is still the best option then letting children die.

77. Mythago, I also mentioned adoption of older kids. I think those who adopt older children (usually having serious medical conditions, histories of abuse, etc) are wonderful people doing laudable things, but I don’t think that it’s the one and only way people should be growing their families.

    Vail, I know that international adoption can be great, and again, I admire you for it. All I’m saying is that the “why don’t you just adopt” crowd seems to not understand the complex controversies, the huge expense, and the waiting period.

78. I think fucking up the planet by having more kids is a right, but it does seem extraordinarily cruel to have kids only to doom them to a fucked-up planet.

    Phrased this way, it sounds like the folks most responsible for environmental damage are the women who choose to give birth, and the children they give birth to. Monsanto, Mobil, Exxon, BP, Union Carbide, etc. are mere pawns in the game, in the face of all these powerful women. Please.

    Amanda, you’ve noted that women face social pressure to have children. What result has all that social pressure had on you? Still don’t have any kids, do ya? Still probably won’t have any, willya? So, doesn’t it stand to reason that women who do want children are going to make that choice regardless of any social pressure to not have them? Because what I see you advocating on the related thread on your blog is slut-shaming in a different direction. Instead of slut-shaming a woman for having sex, it appears you want to advocate slut-shaming for having kids. I’m thinking that’s going to work as well as the first version.

    I’m going to go with the old standby—Trust Women. Make birth control cheap and easily available, and women will make our own right decisions.

79. The problem with promoting and encouraging adoption is that most adoptive parents want perfectly healthy white newborns (newborns so they’ll be easier to adapt to new parents, white because most adoptive parents are white and it’s easier to raise a kid of your own race, healthy for obvious reasons) to a point where there’s actually a “shortage” (applying economics to humans is kinda squicky) of them causing adoptive parents to pay up to $40,000 and run through insane amounts of waiting periods and paperwork. That also means that healthy white single pregnant women get approached and pressured into adoption, because it’s a lot of money for people. There’s all kinds of stories about women being coerced, lied to, and having their legal rights to revoke the adoption ignored. Increasing demand for adoption will increase the demand for healthy white newborns, of which there are already not enough to go around, which will just increase the injustices done to young pregnant women as the costs raise even higher.

    The other side of the story is the adoptable kids who are not white, newborn, or perfectly healthy. While the closer to the ideal they are the more likely they are to be adopted (I heard that black babies are so popular now they’re importing them from Africa….) there’s a lot of children in foster care who have been abused or have serious health problems and no one wants to take them. If we want people to adopt instead of reproduce, we have to encourage them to adopt the children that really need homes, and we have to make sure they have the resources and support to take care of the kids and their problems and raise them in a loving, good environment.

80. I agree that there needs to be more support after the adoption. I know with our daughter we noticed she wasn’t bonding well, and when we talked to our agency it was like ‘oh well we got your money see you”. Our HMO was very slow to help us find a RAD therapist to work with her (that they would pay for) and she only gets 2 paid visits to a Sensory Therapist per year. I’ve heard horror stories about parents going bankrupt dealing with children from the foster system or adopted children. Mental health care is waaaaay down on the list of priorities. I think we need to help the children now before it’s too late and they’ve grown up. But then again it’s more important to make sure that people don’t have a choice about continuing a pregnancy then to take care of the kids that are already out there.

81. “The US population is growing faster than that of eighteen other industrialized nations and, in terms of energy consumption, when an American couple stops spawning at two babies, it’s the same as an average East Indian couple stopping at sixty-six, or an Ethiopian couple drawing the line at one thousand.”-Joy Williams, “The Case Against Babies”

    I’ll have to disagree with Jill here, as this is one of the few issues on which personal choice might realistically need to be curtailed. Sometimes to do what is right, sacrifices have to be made. If someone wants twelve kids, it’s not wrong to tell them they should have two, because they should only have two, as we don’t live in a world where resources are limitless and children don’t usually make it past age 2. I really hope and pray that it doesn’t have to come down to coercion, and I support all the alternatives mentioned here, but in all honesty I think its naive to suggest that trying to do the right thing shouldn’t involve sacrifice. Sacrifice on personal, national and global levels is the only hope we have of saving what’s left of biodiversity.

82. I think fucking up the planet by having more kids is a right, but it does seem extraordinarily cruel to have kids only to doom them to a fucked-up planet.

    By this logic, nobody should have daughters. It does seem extraordinarily cruel to have kids only to doom them to be unpersons in the patriarchy.

    The quote about ‘growing faster than eighteen industrialized nations’ is disingenuous horseshit. Yes, we have a slightly higher birthrate than a lot of countries that are well below replacement rate, like Japan. So what? Our birth rate is ALSO less than replacement rate.

    And what La Lubu said. It always comes down to the perfidy of women, who need to straighten up and fly right for the Greater Good.

83. we have to make sure they have the resources and support to take care of the kids and their problems and raise them in a loving, good environment.

    The government doesn’t do a good job at this for any kid: A co-worker’s daughter had mental health problems starting at puberty. She quickly maxed out the lifetime mental health benefit we all had. For her to get further treatment without bankrupting her family, her mother had to turn her over to the state.

84. “The quote about ‘growing faster than eighteen industrialized nations’ is disingenuous horseshit. Yes, we have a slightly higher birthrate than a lot of countries that are well below replacement rate, like Japan. So what? Our birth rate is ALSO less than replacement rate.”

    I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that information, as it’s from a decade old essay that I didn’t see the sources for, but I think the point is that more people in the US is worse than more people in any other country, because once the kids are born or immigrated they immediately broaden carbon footprint. Mind you, I’m not positing an immigration moratorium or suggesting that we shouldn’t adopt from other countries; I chose the quote because it had a fairly biting tone and illuminates the hypocrisy of American fair-weather environmentalists. I don’t agree with everything the author writes, but all in all she says it very well.

85. OK, as a parent, I gotta ask: why, exactly, is the population issue being discussed as if women conceive, birth, and raise children all by themselves?

    Abortion is a womens’ issue.

    Population control is the HUMAN RACE’S issue.

    So when i see this:

    I’m going to go with the old standby—Trust Women. Make birth control cheap and easily available, and women will make our own right decisions.

    I think: Nope. Women are people, and most people in general have a tendency to prioritize their own self interest over the good of the larger group.

    That ‘Trust women” line makes perfect sense in an individual context; I trust that any given person (male or female) will make the right decision for themself. But it’s the wrong phrase for this arena.

86. She quickly maxed out the lifetime mental health benefit we all had

    That would be the lifetime mental health benefit through your work, provided through a private insurance company? And then your co-worker made too much money to qualify for state assistance?

87. mythago: yes on both.

88. “…what I see you advocating on the related thread on your blog is slut-shaming in a different direction. Instead of slut-shaming a woman for having sex, it appears you want to advocate slut-shaming for having kids..”

    Breeder-shaming.

    “That ‘Trust women” line makes perfect sense in an individual context; I trust that any given person (male or female) will make the right decision for themself. But it’s the wrong phrase for this arena.”

    Sailor, you have a point.

    Because guess what? I’m still gonna have unprotected sex with my husband and if I get pregnant, I’m keeping it. I like baby-sized animals, human or not. We’ll go live in a yurt or an earthship if we have to, but damn if I’m going back on birth control. (The good news for you is that we haven’t used birth control the entire time we’ve known each other and I’m still not preggers.)

    I think it’s really interesting that while there are discussions of how best to non-coercively implement strategies to encourage folks to have less children, there’s little to no discussion about whether or not population pressure is actually causal to environmental problems.

    Katie has a point. We can probably handle many more humans if we reduce our consumption.

89. I’m sick of the shaming from within, particularly from people who seem to be defensive about their own choices and are unwilling to consider more than one factor in the equation.

    People who opt not to have kids claim it is irresponsible to have more than one. Yes, we have three kids (including twins) but there’s more to the story. We purchased a green-certified house with less square footage, are all vegetarians, drive a hybrid car, volunteer & donate, recycle more and produce less trash than our neighbors who have NO kids… etc. Deciding to try for a second child was about what’s best for our family – based on our experience with only children, our siblings, and our values, including respect for the environment. We discussed adoption and decided against it – again, based on our experience with close family friends who were adopted or who recently adopted children, the cost, current system, etc. And we support our friends & family who have made different decisions.

    People who favor adoption scorn those who pursue fertility treatments. We’re told that one can’t be a true feminist if she wears make-up and “capitulates” to the patriarchy. A swinger says that I’m not “natural” because I’m in a happily monogamous relationship. Own your choices – I support your right to make them. But don’t pretend that they are valid for everyone else. That’s the right wing’s job.

    For years I never understood why my mother felt so alienated from feminism, but reading the comments has given me new understanding. I’ll continue to read this blog because I want to stay abreast of these issues that I don’t hear about in the mainstream news and I think it’s important to discuss them with my husband and our friends. I think I’ll just stay away from the comments from here on out.

90. One person might decide not to have kids to reduce environmental footprint. Another might make specific choices as a consumer. Some may volunteer, and/or work to educate friends, family & neighbors about changes they can make. It’s all good. It’s the lack of respect for others’ choices, particularly reproductive ones, *from feminists* that freaks me out.

91. That ‘Trust women” line makes perfect sense in an individual context; I trust that any given person (male or female) will make the right decision for themself. But it’s the wrong phrase for this arena.

    No, it isn’t. There has already been a dramatic drop in the birthrate from my grandmothers’ day to mine. Why? Availability of birth control, increased education for women, increased employment opportunity for women. Boom. the big three, right there. And who made the decision to lower the birthrate? Women did. Women saw the advantage to having fewer children, and because we had the opportunity to have fewer children, we did. And do.

    We already have strong disincentives to having children. The lack of paid (or any) maternity leave, the lack of available or affordable childcare, the lack of paid (or any) sick leave, the Mommy Track, job discrimination, school hours that don’t coincide with work hours, and the fact that the purchasing power of wages has decreased. In the face of all that disincentive, women are still having children.

    And we are still being shamed for it. Or shamed for not being able to be shamed for being mothers. We—women—are still the perennial Selfish Bitches, because we don’t have children, or don’t have enough children, or have too many children. We don’t earn enough, or we earn too much and spoil our kids. We don’t discipline enough, turning our kids into brats; or we discipline too much and inhibit their personalities. We work outside the home, and our kids suffer from neglect. Or we stay at home, and thus are “helicopter” moms with wimpy kids. We drill them with homework lessons, and are accused of stifling their creativity, trying to create “designer geniuses.” Or we let them work on their own, and thus are again neglectful, not nurturing of their young intellects. We feed them fast food or prepackaged foods from the grocery and are accused of ruining their health and nutrition (not to mention geez, how lazy are you, Mom?). Or we feed them home cooking, and are accused of martyring ourselves, or spending too much money on food, or trying too hard to be Supermom. We take them to the park and we’re trying to live our second childhood just having fun; we keep them at home and turn them into couch potatoes. We sign them up for classes they are interested in and we’re yet again creating “designer” children or shortening their childhood; we let them daydream and we’re raising up the next generation of losers. We let ’em play and get dirty and we have slobs; we keep them from getting dirty and we’re not letting them be children. We aren’t teaching them to be masculine enough. Feminine enough. Smart enough. Athletic enough. Artistic enough. Musical enough. Competitive enough.

    Enough’s enough. You know what all these conflicting criteria have in common? Not a fucking one of them is levied against Dad. That’s why it’s a women’s issue. We get to bear the burden of any and all public censure. Not men.

    We live in a world where mothers who go without food in order for their children to have enough are routinely called selfish, yet the men who impregnated them aren’t. And you seriously believe men are somehow going to share the public shame for producing children?

92. La Lubu, I know you’re probably straight, but I should just point out that I’m a little bit in love with you after reading that comment.

93. Hector, so in other words, the issue isn’t that the government did a bad job. It’s that the private sector doesn’t see it as profitable to help people like your co-worker, and we’ve directed our government to close the gap in only the most economically dire of circumstances.

    I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that information, as it’s from a decade old essay that I didn’t see the sources for

    That’s a really, really bad way to start off an argument. That said, the information you posted is meaningless. If the birth rate in every other country in the world is 0.1 children per woman, but in the US it’s 0.3–WELL below replacement rate–then you can still make the argument that the US’s birth rate is “higher than” all those other countries. Knowing that the US has a higher birth rate is, by itself, meaningless.

    And what La Lubu said, with the WHOLE bag of chips.

94. the issue isn’t that the government did a bad job

    No, I was addressing Marle’s issue:
    If we want people to adopt instead of reproduce, we have to encourage them to adopt the children that really need homes, and we have to make sure they have the resources and support to take care of the kids and their problems and raise them in a loving, good environment.
    Where are these resources and support coming from? The government would rather take the kids from their homes and loving good environments than provide resources and support to parents.

95. The government would rather take the kids from their homes and loving good environments than provide resources and support to parents.

    So you’re one of those nanny-state liberals?

96. Enough’s enough. You know what all these conflicting criteria have in common? Not a fucking one of them is levied against Dad. That’s why it’s a women’s issue. We get to bear the burden of any and all public censure. Not men.

    I can personally attest that this is bullshit, as I know multiple men who contradict your examples. Sorry, but you’ll have to put the “look, I’m a martyr” t-shirt down for a moment.

    We are talking about the fucking PLANET. And you know what? If talking about the planet, saving the planet, and trying to preserve it for my kids and other kids as well… if that makes you uncomfortable? Conflicted? I don’t really give a shit. Feh–just one more bit of rich privilege to deal with, right?

    I am personally APPALLED that you would consider this type of discussion to even be in the same category as worrying about your kids’ goddamn homework, or whether you feed them fast food.

    Please. It is fucking ridiculous. It is the classic rich person “look how baaaad my problems are, I can’t tell which chicken is organic!” response.

    I’m not trying to shame you for having kids. But I think you should be ashamed of your response here.

97. No, Sailorman, you’re just trying to get zuzu to shut the fuck up because she pointed out an uncomfortable truth. Take off your own martyr shirt and stop pretending that the shaming and hectoring about ‘parenting’ is directed just as much at daddies.

    By the way, you may not have been around here long enough to know that La Lubu is a single mother working in the blue-collar skilled trades for a living. But please, pretend that she’s rich like your buddies at the office if it makes it easier for you to ignore the sexism attached to all these “OMFG but it is TEH PLANET!!!11!” discussions.

98. mythago: zuzu? What does zuzu have to do with it? Perhaps you mean La Lubu?

    I’m not trying to get her to “shut the fuck up” as you put it. If I were, I’d say “shit the fuck up.”

    I’m trying to point out that the venting she went off on is smoke and mirrors. The issue of whether parents are put upon for helicopter parenting is pretty damn irrelevant to whether they should be put upon for environmental issues.

    It is frustrating to have such an OT rant.

    Oh yes, forgot this part: do you have a different way of interpreting “any and all” than I do? Which meaning do you use?

99. The issue of whether parents are put upon for helicopter parenting

    Heh. Speaking of smoke n’ mirrors.

    It’s not “parents”. It’s “mothers”. La Lubu’s point was made in response to a poster who said that women’s reproductive rights are completely irrelevant when we’re talking about the environment. And she correctly noted that the “oh yes, but this is More Important” line of argument is just more bullshit about how whatever the problem, there’s a woman at the bottom of it.

    Sorry the classist angle didn’t work out for you.

100. mythago: mille grazie e bacciddus for running point for me while I was at work.

     Sailorman, I am not rich. While I have the ability to say, “fuck you”, I don’t have fuck-you money. Do you know what fuck-you money is? It’s the amount of money necessary to be able to say “fuck you”, without it having negative repercussions in your life. And that’s key. If you don’t have fuck-you money, you get to swallow a lot of anger. You get to have the privilege of stress, because you don’t have the power to put yourself into a situation that will alleviate the stress. You don’t have the power to extricate yourself from having to deal with the people who shovel shit your direction, and expect you to wade through it, wallow across it, and thank them for the privilege of being able to stride through the shit they lay in your path, because hey, you could always have it worse.

     And since I’m feeling charitable tonight, feeling an inordinate amount of serenity, and since this doesn’t happen very often, I’m going to take advantage of my opportunity to rise above. I’m going to assume that you aren’t speaking from mere hostility, but from profound ignorance. After all, the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” double standard doesn’t affect you. Now, pay attention, because the damned if you do, damned if you don’t double standard goes to the very heart of this matter; it is far from off topic.

     Wanna know where my rant comes from? Most often, it is manifested in time off from work. As in, when I get a call from my daughter’s school to pick her up, because she came down sick, and I then excuse myself from work to pick her up, I get to hear “again?!” Because it happened four months ago too, when I had to take four hours off. Yet, here it is, the change of seasons, when the heat of the midwest levels off to cool breezes and fall colors along two lane roads, and the minds of many brothers on the jobsite turn toward their Harleys, and getting a few long rides in before it gets too cold. And their absence from work is never questioned. Nor is it for hunting, fishing, golf, canoe trips—or even their fatherly duties such as watching their kids ball game, or taking a family trip to Disneyland.

     From the objective standpoint, I miss fewer hours on the job over the course of the year than 95% of my male compadres. From the subjective standpoint of the guy in the office, my absence speaks to a lack of sincerity towards my career; after all, the guys don’t have this problem with sudden absences!

     We all bring our whole selves to any endeavor, any argument, any discussion. We all come from where we’ve been. So, while it has never come as a surprise that I would be enduring the same struggles as my mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and female ancestors from time out of mind—the ways in which these struggles become known can sometimes catch me off guard. Take the homework, for example. I was floored the first time I was criticized for being Mama Hardass about the homework (she’s seven). Apparently, that’s a Bad Thing, according to some people. The ones who have fuck-you money. The same people who think you should shield children from the fact that bills have to be paid, and sometimes it’s difficult to pay them. That there is such a thing as job loss. Boggles my mind. I grew up taking leftovers to lunch for school, because it was cheaper. My daughter takes leftovers to school for lunch. So, I wasn’t expecting the lecture I got from the “flex team” (like parent-teacher conferences, just more people across the table from you) Tuesday, about how I’m wasting my money sending those sandwiches to school with her, because she doesn’t always eat them, or eat all of them, and why am I buying the expensive bread instead of Wonderbread?

     And here it is, Thursday, and I’m still wondering why those women felt the need to micromanage my girl’s lunchbox. Like Roseanna Roseannadanna said, “It’s always somethin’.”

     I got my first taste of motherhood double standard shortly after giving birth. Prematurely. Twenty-five weeks. I asked for Family and Medical Leave and had a pink slip mailed to me instead. No hi, hello, howareya, kissmyass, just a damn pink slip in an envelope in the mail. Reduction in force. Not even the courtesy, the respect of a face-to-face. By the time my daughter was having her fourth surgery in St. Louis, I was spending money I didn’t have calling the Department of Labor. I eventually got my health insurance benefits paid, but I didn’t get my job back. (I agreed to the DoL arbitration rather than extend my battle through the courts. I needed insurance at that moment, and no, I didn’t feel like risking a blackball with the contractors. All comes down to that lack of fuck-you money).

     What’s the point, Lubu? Who gives a shit? Why, I’m glad you asked. Because see, despite all the b.s. that comes from being a single mother, and not the Murphy Brown version, either (not that there’s anything wrong with that), I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. In spite of all the struggles of being a mother of a daughter who at one time had special needs (iliostomy bag, feeding tube, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, developmental therapy), I’d do that in one hot minute, too. Despite all the variations and permutations of job discrimination, harassment, and even sabotage I’ve had to deal with as a woman integrating the trades…..you guessed it, I’d do it again, just-like-that. Why? Isn’t it obvious? The benefits outweigh the drawbacks. It’s all a matter of perspective. And that perspective has deep roots.

     I love my daughter. I wanted my daughter. And it had nothing to do with any “social pressure” to produce offspring. I’m not exactly the poster child for procreation; it’s not like advertisements feature smiling, swarthy women in Carharrts, boots and hardhats trying to convince you choosy mothers choose Jif.

     With all the disincentives already offered, do you really think that anything less than forced sterilization is going to cause most women to just say no to motherhood? Because I’m not seeing breeder-shaming (thank you, Elaine) as any more effective than slut-shaming. And make no mistake about it, it is already being tried (on some of us, anyway).

     And perhaps, Sailorman, since you have admitted to having children, you can patiently explain to me how your family deserves to take up the carbon footprint it does. What would do more to reduce the carbon footprint of your family—cutting one or two car trips out per week, or having comprehensive, round-the-clock public transportation, combined with urban planning that restores walkable communities? For my family, it’s definitely the latter—I can’t really do anything as an individual to limit my car use in flyover country. But streetcars (even evening ones) once existed in this town, as did neighborhood grocers.

     So, you can get your shorts in a wad over the fact that yes, you have male privilege that keeps you from having to bear criticism over your decisions regarding children, and you can get further exercised about the fact that it’s so impolite of me to point that out. And you can continue to labor under the delusion that the power players in the pollution game are those pesky women giving birth (gosh, don’t they know what causes that?). And you can continue to congratulate yourself for not being part of the problem (somehow).

     Or, you can haul your ass down from off your high horse and roll up your sleeves doing something more substantive —though it may not feel as good to you— than sneering at Breeding Women Fucking Up the Planet.

101. So you’re one of those nanny-state liberals?

     Nice trolling. Are you one of those fiscally conservative/socially liberal Republicans who has to watch Dickens’ Christmas Carol in reverse to make it have a happy ending?

102. Hector B, that was a shot of sarcasm from mythago. She’s one of those pesky nanny-state liberals in favor of say, laws that protect workers’ rights. She’s an attorney who handles a lot of workers’ comp cases.

103. Oh, and Sailorman? One more thing before I head off to work:

     I’ve seen you around at Amp’s blog. And couldn’t help but notice that you have never responded to a man the way you have responded to me. Let’s recap:

     We are talking about the fucking PLANET.

     and

     I don’t really give a shit.

     and

     I am personally APPALLED

     and

     I’m not trying to get her to “shut the fuck up” as you put it. If I were, I’d say “shit the fuck up.”

     No, can’t say I recall you ever taking that tone with men. And why would you? They’re men. And men are worthy of respect. Women? In your eyes, not so much. Now, you can dress that up any way you want, but your actions have already spoken for you. It was your intent to put me, the uppity bitch, in her place. And it was your male prerogative to come to the feminist blog and do so.

     Didn’t work. It just showed your ass as the phony faux-progressive man (“I can be pro-feminist, as long as a mere woman doesn’t call me out on my male privilege”).

     Also, I’d like to hear what kind of new math you’re using that makes your multiple children use up less environmental footprint than my one child, since you’re so worried about the fucking PLANET, as long as it didn’t interfere with your fucking, hm? Or is that part of male entitlement, too—-the magic power that smooths all rough spots?

     Back when I went to high school, there was a term—“grippin'”. It basically meant begging, bowing, scraping, shuffling and various other forms of verbal backtracking. You think I’m “entitled”, because I have the audacity to speak about double-standards women face on a feminist blog. To a man, no less. Who the hell do I think I am? In real life, I get to swallow a whole helluva lot of bullshit just to get by. That lack of fuck-you money again. Oh, I speak out often, but unlike you, I have to watch my tone. My delivery. My facial expression. My hand motion. I have to adjust my mode of expression and be mindful of every got-damn thing I say and how I say it, or it will come back and bite me on the ass.

     You know, like you can. Ciao!

     You can commence to grippin’ now.

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