Having Babies While the World Burns

Climate Anxiety and the Virtue of Hope

Photo by Zoe Graham on Unsplash

A couple of days ago I came across this note from

Griffin Gooch

and it struck a chord with me:

It reminded me of this article by Jade S. Sasser from L.A. Times entitled “It’s almost shameful to want to have children,” which is an excerpt from her book, Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future. In the article Sasser interviews Gen Z and Millennial people of color about their intention to have children given the reality of climate change.

In the interviews, people bring up many legitimate obstacles that their potential children would have to face: healthcare access, racial discrimination, climate change, low-quality education, and so on. Many of the interviewees have had difficult lives and don’t feel it’s moral to allow anyone else to suffer as they have. The most common theme is climate anxiety, which makes sense given the title of Sasser’s book. Some of the respondents refuse to have biological kids but are open to adopting. Some are willing to have a child. But the general consensus is that it’s immoral to bring new children into a world that is collapsing.

It’s notable that while among adults under 50, the majority say they just don’t want to have kids or they want to focus on “other things,” the third reason given for not having kids is “Concerns about the state of the world” and the fifth is “Concerns about the environment,” according to a Pew study. In other words, a significant percentage of adults who are choosing to not have children are influenced by the state of the world or the environment.

Which raises an important question: given tremendous suffering which a child may face in this life, and the potential they have to contribute to environmental harm, how can we have hope that new life is a moral good?