I appreciate Zoe Williams’s excellent interview with Camilla Cavendish (Spermageddon, ‘greedy jobs’ and abject fear: why birthrates are plummeting – and why it matters, 17 September), but I have to take issue with one of her statements: “Of course, the climate crisis is playing a big part in that, but it still doesn’t wholly stack up – in the 80s, there was the wraparound threat of nuclear annihilation and it didn’t seem to dent anyone’s joie de vivre.”
Yes, the buildup of nuclear arms and the terror surrounding it reached its peak in the 20th century, but it was kept in check by policies of Mutually Assured Destruction: a singular launch of a nuclear arsenal would have instantly ended humanity.
As an older, childless millennial, climate change figures profoundly in my desire to not have children: the cause of climate change has been known for 50 years, it’s happening before our eyes, and there is not enough being done about it.
While it’s true that we may overcome rising emission rates with renewable energy, the current and near-future effects of the climate crisis mean we are in for a very difficult road ahead as a society – and that’s if we succeed. If I’m going to go through the financial, physical, emotional and psychological burden of raising a child, I don’t want to also have to explain to them that there’s a very good chance that they’re doomed, because billionaire, capitalist greed couldn’t figure out how to stop itself from ruining the world for human civilisation.
Aubrey Foard
Baltimore, Maryland, US
Camilla Cavendish notes that the falling birthrate is fundamentally “a story about pessimism”. I would like to offer an additional perspective we can begin to hold alongside (not in lieu of) this bleak view.
The link between women’s education and empowerment and the falling birthrate is well established. It is only two generations since contraception became widely available in western countries. It is therefore only a split second since human beings have collectively been given the opportunity to consider what other forms of joy, meaning and fulfilment are available to us as a species. While children are an enormous source of joy and meaning for many, we are now also discovering other ways to build beautiful, meaningful, fulfilling lives that include loving communities of non-biological kin, as well as deep affinity for our home and the other beings that inhabit it.
Beyond pessimism, choosing not to have children or to have fewer children might be the exact investment of hope in the future that Cavendish is struggling to see. It is not just an act of “giving up”, but an investment in the belief that the decisions we make today can create a better future. By acting now to reduce the strain on the planet while simultaneously reducing competition for future generations; by becoming more mindful of our individual limitations as potential parents as well as the systemic limitations of our circumstances; by considering deeply and ethically whether here and now is the best time to bring more people into the world; by learning to savour deep connections alongside our biological relatives; and by finding a story of hope, meaning and fulfilment beyond the cycle of biological reproduction alone, people, and women in particular, might be making hope out of the freedom that has been offered through being able to control our own fertility.
For some, choosing not to have children, or choosing to have fewer children, in order to dedicate ourselves more fully to helping, as well as savouring, the world already here, might be as much an act of hope as deciding to have (more) children is for others.
Nina Plummer
Edinburgh
