"Only if we view ourselves as isolated consumers do we end up thinking that having a child or not is a competing choice, as if the question is, 'Who's getting the most for their money?' If we think of ourselves as parts of a human ecosystem -- a community -- such a question seems silly, akin to asking which is better, a tree or a meadow. The choice of whether to have a child or not is obviously significant for the person in question, but real communities should be able to incorporate, and benefit from, everyone, whatever their choices."
Monday, April 05, 2010
It's not about who has the kids
Grist: Last week there was a silly article I ran across discussing the environmental benefits of being childless. I think this this response strikes the right chord. Humans are social and tribal creatures, and we need children. Only in a fragmented society like the U.S. could we end up having a discussion of the cost of children.
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5 comments:
Does China's one child policy count as a discussion of the cost of children?
Also, I would question the statement that "real communities" should be able to benefit from everyone, whatever their choices. How do we benefit from the food shortages if everyone on earth has 8 children. That sounds ridiculous? Maybe, but wasn't that the norm on the farm not too long ago? I'm guessing the reason people don't have 8 children anymore is largely the various costs. (I am ignoring the impact of child mortality improvement, but replace 8 with 4 or whatever the right number is and the same reasoning applies - we may not be able to afford to double the earth's population in the next 30 years.)
200 years ago, fine, we don't need to worry about the cost of population growth. Today, I think it is a legitimate concern. (Not that we should feel guilty about having children -- obviously the extreme case of nobody having any children is no good.)
Agreeing with Rick, I'd also say that one of the points of the "silly article" was to get people talking about the decision to have or not to have kids. It is a valid discussion, any reasonably-sized population can handle *some* of it's members being childless, and the point doesn't seem to be so much "don't have kids" as "not everyone needs to have kids" or "it's ok for us to decide as a couple not to procreate".
Moving beyond that fairly safe and obvious backing for the GINC movement, I might even push this farther to saying that in today's world we're over-populated and trending even worse, and maybe these GINCs shouldn't be just respected as reasonable, but lauded for taking steps beneficial to everyone.
I think you make good points that extremism is this issue is a problem. The concept that society benefits from everyone is silly (murderers are not exactly of benefit).
I think the issue of children, however, is an emotional rather than rational one. People don't choose to have children only based on reasons, but upon their social expectations. And frankly, the evidence in our history suggests that as societies move toward modernization, people have fewer children (I'm not sure about the resource use per person over the same timeframe).
At any rate, China did need to have a conversation about children because of resource scarcity, but the world as a whole (and U.S. in particular) are not at that point.
I would argue, from my own biased frame of reference, that we are better off improving the efficiency of our resource use rather than demonizing the having of children.
Here's a nice follow-up on the issue of population. Providing birth control options to women across the globe so there are options regarding childbirth.
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-04-06-we-need-birth-control-not-geoengineering/
I agree that this is an emotional issue and that social expectations play a significant role in decision making regarding children.
In a meeting the other day someone I have met only a few times asked how many children I had. When I replied "zero" she continued with "none yet" and moved on to another topic. I later wondered if I should have added that we were only recently married, so as not to seem abnormal.
I was recently at lunch with a half dozen people in a professional setting. A few of us were sharing stories about childrearing. Of course I ("none yet") didn't have much to add. After a few minutes, another silent observer who was apparently in his fifties chimed in with "I never had children of my own but in my experience [etc etc]." This marked the end of the conversation.
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