“Maybe it’s a good thing, then,” my friend said to me in my kitchen last week. “What is?” I replied. “Maybe it’s good that we’re in our 30s with no money and no prospect of having a family. At least kids is one thing we don’t have to worry about underachieving on. We’ll be childless for the environment, instead.”
She had been reading out sections of David Wallace-Wells’ viral New York Magazine essay, The Uninhabitable Earth, out loud to me in bursts for a good half an hour preceding our conversation, and it was steadily scaring us both half to death. “It is,” I promise, worse than you think,” it begins. “If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today.”
Thanks to student strikes and Donald Trump, climate change is once again firmly back on the news agenda. More than ever, it seems, young people are determined to make a difference. And among them, a growing group of people in the UK are stirring up much-needed conversation around the impact of having children on the environment. A UK-based Facebook group, Birth Strike, has been quietly growing. But what are their reasons for eschewing parenthood to save the world? And, crucially, can it create real change?
“I was sterilized aged 26 because of my research on climate change”
Ruth Sanderson-Dredge, 29, is an animal behaviorist from Lincoln
“I guess you could say that there was no lack of maternal instinct from me. I was always playing with dolls when I was little. Everyone said I was very nurturing; I started an animal rescue sanctuary at age 12, while living in Hong Kong. To be honest, for years I really just assumed that I’d have kids because… That’s the way life goes.
“But as a teenager I became increasingly concerned with the environment. I went vegan and then I met and married my husband aged 19. Immediately people started asking me (never him) when we were going to have kids. I found it disconcerting. My husband wasn’t wedded on having kids but he wasn’t wholly against either – I think if I’d really wanted them, he would have had them with me. But the more we thought about it, the less it made sense. Even if we had a child, they would probably end up being the opposite of us – kids rebel. I certainly did; my dad used to be a climate change denier who ran an airline. Plus, how could we bring another person into the world when it’s in this state – it scares me most that we don’t really know what’s coming when it comes to climate change. We decided to remain childfree.
“Friends and family were reassuringly supportive. My mum didn’t ‘get it’ for a while (in fact, she thought it was ‘crazy’ and she just couldn’t relate) and my dad just told me to what would make me happy; he didn’t care. It was strangers who were the problem.
I would say very plainly that we’re not having any, but they’d tell me I’d be such a good mum, despite not knowing a thing about me. And nor did they know that I wasn’t saying that because I wasn’t able to have children.
“Three years ago at 26, I got sterilised due to our views on the environment. I’d been struggling with hormonal birth control for years and years – I reacted really bad to it. My husband was willing to have a vasectomy but there was a medical reason that he couldn’t at the time. Plus, I realized though that I wanted to take control of my own fertility and my own body. I really felt uncomfortable with still being able to get pregnant.
“Over the years I raised it with doctors, some of whom completely ignored it and some who were openly hostile. Male doctors were very horrified and women were dismissive and said I would grow out of it.
Finally, years later, I met a female doctor who I liked and who seemed to understand. I’d written a letter to explain my reasons, at the top of which was climate change.
I also told them I’d suffered depression in the past, too, and anything else that I could think of to convince them. But she was kind and supportive, and said that my reasoning and my decision about my own body was completely valid. It was a relief.
“I still get asked questions about babies now, but when people ask me, if I really don’t want to talk about it, now I just tell them I can’t have kids. Then they squirm and find themselves unsure what to do. I don’t mind that.”
“It annoys me that people don’t make more of an informed choice about having kids”
Sophie Milano, 27, is a beauty and massage therapist living in South Wales
“I’m not against anyone having children, it’s everyone’s individual choice, of course. But I wish more people would think a little more carefully and make a fully informed choice about whether they do want kids and what that looks like – even adoption would help to save the planet.
“For me it has been an easy decision to make. I never really wanted kids that much – though I considered it with my ex, when the relationship ended it coincided with a huge upturn in publicity around climate change. I realised I was glad I remained childfree and made my choice then. My mum is not really bothered, she just wants me to be happy. I worried about the impact on her – all of her brothers and sisters have got grandchildren now and she’s the only one without. Because I’m an only child I thought it would be nice to give her a grandchild. But we’ve had conversations and she understands the reasons that can’t happen.
“Other people have more difficulty understanding it. When I tell people that I don’t – and won’t – have kids because of climate change, the most frequent response is that it’s every woman’s right and choice to have a child. People who don’t have children always have legitimate reasons for that, and are often grilled for them. But people who do have children don’t have to provide a reason. We’ve been socialized to believe that women should have kids at certain age – that women should aspire to have a family. I just don’t believe that’s true.
“People now say that they worry about what’s happening in the world and with our future, but I don’t often see it translate into action. I worry about the huge amount of damage we’re doing and that we’ve already done, not only to wildlife but to our own futures. Is there going to be a future for our children’s children. I think it’s completely terrifying that maybe there won’t be a world to inhabit in the next 100 years or so. What’s the point in having children, if that’s the case?"