Amanda Porretto isn’t sure she’ll ever be able to have children.
She is 27, the average age of new mothers in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She feels the pressure of being an only child. His father wants to be a grandfather and his mother, before she died, always told Porretto that she would eventually want to be a mother.
“Some people think it’s bad” to not have a child, said Porretto, who works in advertising. “I just don’t think I need to bring more people (into the world) when there are so many things we need to fix right now.”
According to several studies, younger generations of Americans increasingly cite climate change as a factor that makes them reluctant to have children. They are concerned about bringing children into a world with increasingly intense extreme weather events as a result of climate change, caused by the release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide when oil and coal are burned. And they worry about the impact their offspring will have on the planet.
In a 2024 Lancet study of 16- to 25-year-olds, most respondents were “very” or “extremely” concerned about climate change. The study also found that 52% said they were hesitant to have children due to climate change. Adults under 50 without children were four times more likely than adults over 50 without children to say the weather influences their decision, according to a Pew Research Center report published last year. And a study published this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that more than half of respondents said “yes” or “maybe” to whether climate change made them question having children.
Climate impact of children.
Parenting and climate change are linked not only by fears for the well-being of a child, but also by concerns for the well-being of the planet.
Compared to the carbon emissions of all other decisions, “having a child is by far, by orders of magnitude, higher,” said Nandita Bajaj, executive director of Population Balance, a nonprofit focused on the environmental impact of humans.
Unlike other options, procreation entails something that Johns Hopkins University bioethics professor Travis Rieder calls “carbon legacy.”
“You’re not just doing carbon-expensive activities like buying a bigger house, a bigger car, diapers and all that,” Rieder said. “You’re also creating someone who will have their own carbon footprint for the rest of their lives.”
That child could have children, and those children could have children, creating an impact that will last for generations, Rieder added. Of course, the logical extreme of minimizing your environmental footprint means not having children, Rieder said, something she doesn’t advocate.
It is difficult to quantify the impact of a child. This is because there is no consensus on what percentage of their impact is the responsibility of the parents, and partly because that child’s impact depends on their parents’ lifestyle.
“One of the best predictors of how expensive they will be in carbon is how rich you are,” Rieder said.
For example, the United States emits 123 times more carbon emissions than Ghana, according to the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research. Adjusted for population size, that means the average American emits more than 12 times more than the average Ghanaian.
Why is it taboo to talk about it?
Procreation may have the biggest climate impact, but when it comes to actions people can take to reduce their personal contribution to global warming, having fewer children is often not talked about.
Researchers who study climate change and family planning give two reasons.
“If a person tells you that they are pregnant or pregnant, the immediate response is to offer them some kind of support, congratulations, that kind of thing,” said Trevor Hedbert, a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Arizona.
The other factor, Rieder said, is that the impact of procreation is sometimes tied to conversations about overpopulation. The environmental movement of the 1970s expressed fears that there were too many people for the planet’s resources, which led to racism and eugenics, which provoked a strong backlash.
Taboo or not, the climate influences people’s decisions
Ash Sanders, 43, knew when he was young that he didn’t want to have a baby. Then she got pregnant.
“I didn’t want to add another person to the world and have it have a bigger impact on a world that was already too stressed and strained by the number of humans that were here,” he said.
Sanders, a freelance writer who covers religion and the environment, wanted to have an abortion but felt pressured by her Mormon upbringing and her father to have the baby. She said they called her a bad person for not wanting to have a child.
She placed her daughter for open adoption and sees her regularly. Today you feel conflicted with your decision.
“I feel guilty bringing her into the world. I mean, she likes the world, she’s a happy girl, she’s great. I’m a big fan. But I feel guilty all the time,” she said.
Juan Jaramillo said the environment was always a factor in his fatherhood calculations, even when he was a teenager in the 1970s. He later went to school to become a marine biologist.
“Pollution and climate change weren’t a problem yet, but the rest of the problems we have now were there then,” he said.
Plus, I just didn’t want to have kids. So he had a vasectomy and doesn’t regret the decision. Her decision not to have children and her environmental concerns aligned.
That’s not the case for Rieder, the bioethics professor, who has spent years studying that impact and still really wanted to be a father.
“Having children is a deeply meaningful and important activity for people. It is also carbon expensive,” he said. “So how do you weigh these things?”
For Rieder, finding that balance meant having only one child.
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