Amanda Porretto isn't sure she'll ever have children.
She is 27 years old, which is 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. Her father wants to be a grandfather, and her mother always told Porretto before she died that she would eventually want to become a mother.
“Some people think not having children is a bad thing,” said Porretto, who works in advertising. “I just don’t think I need to bring more people into (the world) when there’s so much here right now that we need to fix.”
Younger generations of Americans increasingly refer to climate change according to several studies, this makes them reluctant to have children. They are concerned that children will enter a world experiencing increasingly intense and intense extreme weather events as a result of climate change caused by the release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the burning of oil and liquefied coal. And they are concerned about the impact their offspring will have on the planet.
In The Lancet 2024 study Among people aged 16 to 25, most respondents were “very” or “extremely” concerned about climate change. The study also found that 52% of those surveyed 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 climate played a decisive role in their decisions. in accordance with Pew Research Center report released last year. AND study Published this year in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, more than half of respondents answered “yes” or “maybe” when asked whether climate change has made them think about having children.
Parenting and climate change are linked not only because of concerns for the well-being of the child, but also because of concern for the well-being of the planet.
Compared to the carbon emissions from all other decisions, “having a child is much, much more by orders of magnitude,” said Nandita Bajaj, executive director of Population Balance, a nonprofit focused on human impacts on the environment.
Unlike other options, childbearing comes with what bioethics professor Travis Reeder of Johns Hopkins University calls a “carbon legacy.”
“Not only are you doing carbon-intensive activities like buying a bigger house, a bigger car, diapers and all that,” Reeder said. “You're also creating someone who will have their own carbon footprint for the rest of their life.”
That child may have children, and those children may have children, which has a multi-generational impact, Reeder added. Of course, the logical extreme of minimizing environmental impact means no children, Reeder said, which he doesn't advocate.
It is difficult to assess the influence of a child. This is because there is no consensus on what percentage of their exposure is the responsibility of the parents, and partly because that child's influence depends on the lifestyle of his parents.
“One of the best predictors of how expensive carbon emissions will be is how rich you are,” Reeder said.
For example, the United States emits 123 times more carbon dioxide emissions than Ghana, according to the Global Atmospheric Research Emissions Database. Adjusted for population, this means that the average American emits more than 12 times more into the atmosphere than the average Ghanaian.
Childbearing may have the biggest impact on the climate, but when it comes to actions people can take to reduce their personal contribution to global warming, having fewer children is often not discussed.
Researchers who study climate change and family planning cite two reasons.
“If a person tells you that they're expecting or that they're pregnant, the immediate reaction is to offer them some support, congratulations, things like that,” said Trevor Hedberg, a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Arizona.
Another factor, Reeder said: The impact of childbearing is sometimes linked to talk of overpopulation. The environmental movement in the 1970s expressed concerns that there were too many people on the planet, leading to racism and eugenics, causing strong backlash.
Ash Sanders, 43, knew from a young age that she didn’t want to have a child. Then she got pregnant.
“I didn’t want to add another person into the world and have them have a bigger impact on a world that was already overwhelmed and stressed by the number of people that were here,” she said.
Sanders, a freelance writer who covers religion and the environment, wanted an abortion but felt pressured by her Mormon upbringing and her father to have the child. She said she was called a bad person because she didn't want a child.
She gave her child up for open adoption and sees her regularly. Today she feels conflicted about her decision.
“I feel guilty for bringing her into this world. I mean, she loves the world, she's a happy kid, she's really cool. 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 parenting 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 all the other problems we have now existed back then,” he said.
Plus he just didn't want children. So he had a vasectomy and did not regret his decision. His decision not to have children and his concern for the environment coincided.
That's not the case for Reeder, a bioethics professor who spent years studying these influences and still longed to become a father.
“Having children is a deeply meaningful and important activity for people. It also comes at a high carbon cost,” he said. “So how do you weigh these things?”
For Reeder, finding that balance meant having only one child.
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Ed: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of the subject's name to Trevor Hedberg rather than Hedbert.
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