Should We Have Kids?

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

In the past few years climate change has become a significant issue around the world and has led so many of us to re-consider the effects that our actions have on the environment. This is evident in the uptake of households recycling and the increase of people opting for vegetarian and vegan diets. Young people have led the way in terms of emphasising the extent of the ‘climate crisis’ and fully embracing the values of an environmentally-conscious lifestyle.

However, one of the main factors contributing to climate change is global overconsumption. Rapidly declining birth rates of the past ten years, in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, could suggest a reluctance in young people to have children in the current climate.

There has been much evidence illustrating how birth and fertility rates have decreased over time. According to The National Records of Scotland, there were more than 42,000 births in 2019, which was lower than the birth rate of the previous year. In 2019, Scotland had the lowest birth rate since 1855.

Figures from the World Bank show how the birth rate in the United Kingdom has declined from 1.92 births per women in 2010 to 1.65 births per women in 2019. The Office for National Statistics found that In England and Wales, specifically, there were more than 600,000 births in 2020 – a decrease of 4.1% from the previous year.

As well as this, feelings of uncertainty and anxiety are more apparent in young people with relation to the choice to have children. In 2020, a study from the academic journal, Climatic Change found that almost 60% of young people were “very or extremely concerned about the carbon footprint of procreation”. It also reported that around 97% of young people were “very or extremely concerned” about the “well-being of their existing, expected or hypothetical children in a climate-changed world.”

Dr Calum MacLeod is an independent sustainable development consultant who has previously worked in environmental strategy for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and has taught environmental policy courses at universities across Scotland. He is in little doubt that the anxiety among young people about climate change is leading some to reconsider whether to have children or not. 

He said: “In the early 1970s, academics and policymakers were convinced that a so-called ‘Population bomb’ of overpopulation would lead to environmental disaster. They were half right in that the growing human population is causing ecological crisis because of unsustainable industrialisation and over consumption which, as we head towards COP26 in Glasgow, has left the planet teetering on the edge of climate catastrophe.

“It’s therefore unsurprising that today’s increasingly climate-conscious young people are questioning whether they want to have children in the mid of the climate emergency that is engulfing the planet.  That also highlights the central importance of the idea of ‘sustainable development’, which means that the needs of future generations are not compromised by the actions of the present generation, as a way of shaping more sustainable behaviour, both now and in the future.”

So, as mass over-consumption continues to propel the impacts of climate change, it seems that young people are right to question their role as potential procreators.