I’ve been doing a lot of research for an article for the newspaper about the environmental impact of buying a new, energy efficient device compared to buying a used, less efficient device. But that’s not what this is about. I am APPALLED at all of the recommendations I’ve run across to stop having children to reduce your footprint.
One American child produces 20 times the carbon emissions as one child in India.
The recommendation is for Americans to have smaller families…for you and me to have a smaller family. TL’s got four kids. Her family almost never travels, uses a car, a heater, or the AC. She grows a great deal of their food and uses almost no chemicals in the home. She hasn’t bought a new outfit in the last decade and hasn’t bought a new house or car…ever. But if one of these ‘environmentalists’ saw her at the park, what would they be thinking about her and her decadently large family?
No, people, if you’re concerned about the environment, LOWER YOU STANDARD OF LIVING. If you lived like people in India, you could have seventeen kids (2+17=19) and your whole family will be consuming less than your neighbor’s ONE average American child.
I resent anyone who sees past or future human beings as vermin sucking up the resources. What gives you the right to be alive? Ya know, suicide would dramatically lower our environmental impact as well, maybe we should start recommending that!
And is this really MY generation saying this crap? We who have that massive, looming bunch of retirees about to enter the social security system…the retirees who didn’t produce enough of us to support them in their old age? Wait, we must be waiting on euthanasia to take care of that right? Why should that invalid eighty-nine year old lady keep sucking up resources? Shouldn’t she just do us all a favor and choose to ‘die with dignity’?
Here’s another way to look at it. What if there were a family whose children each spent their days burning 10 acres of land? Would you say, “GOSH, I wish the Joneses would have had one less kid. Think of all the forests that would save.” Seriously?
It’s utter NONSENSE!
People are our greatest resource.
Be an environmentalist. Lower your standard of living, have seventeen babies.
Ivory
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Wow–I wholeheartedly agree with you–thanks for the voice of reason!
@Kate-Lets take a wait and see attitude on consumer changesdue to the economic downturn.
I’d like to site as my example my Grandmother (who passed at 46 days shy of 101, bless her). She lived through the great depression, and brother we don’t no what hard time are. But because of that experence she had a “use it up, wear it out” attitude, and that lasted her whole life. “Don’t throw that away, there’s still good in it!” I see those habits in my Mother as well, who passed them on to me. Now granted, I was never as strict with my habits as my Grandmother was, but anyone who listened to the stories of their grandparents, and what they went through during the depression has got to hear some of those echos now.
There are things that I am doing to cut costs as well as reduce my footprint that I will continue to do after things get better. I honestly don’t know why I wasn’t doing them before (Making my laundry soap? $1.74 for 104 loads? I was nuts for ever buying Tide!) And I will continue to do that after things get better, beacuse I want the money I was spending on Tide to take care of me when SSI runs out (but lets not go there!)
While I agree with most of this post, I just dunno….
I’ve always liked this blog because of the absence of the eco-hype and/or political stuff. There are so many other blogs out there that cover this area. Just my opinion, but the absence of this is what has made your blog special to me, and it is why I always come back for more ideas/tips on living a life of substance and frugality. I love love love all the gardening tips, craft ideas, recipes, carpentry projects, and health/beauty stuff…. but honestly I can do without posts like this one.
Sorry, just an opinion of a devoted reader!
Ivory, you’re my hero! Have you ever seen the movie Idiocracy?
I’m probably going to get run out of here, but I just want to point out a few things. I live as green as possible. My husband and I chose not to have any children and we live way below our means on a small homestead and grow most of our own food. There are to many people on this planet. Sorry, but that is the truth. Lowering your standard of living and going green is not going to help. Factory farming and other evils of our modern life style have grown out of the need to keep up and feed our outrageous population. Do away with our factory farms and 2/3s of the worlds population will starve to death. Yes, scientist have already calculated that. We have surpassed peak oil so that may already be decided for us. When the crash comes, there will be lots of dead folks. Oil fuels every aspect of modern agriculture from pesticides and fertilizers to the machinery it takes to get the food to the super market shelf. Without this giant agricultural machine, the world population will starve. We are like rats that have raided the grain bin. We reproduced more than we should have when food was plentiful and now there is not enough to sustain us all. This applies to all our world resources.
I went to an interesting speaking engagement by Alan Weisman who wrote “The World Without Us.” He suggested the one child per family approach and said that within a few generations we could be back to manageable numbers. I agree with him. I am torn though because I feel that people should have the freedom to decide their family size. On the other hand, if we keep going the way we are, we a destined to fail. It may already be a mute point with all that is going on now. As George Carlin always liked to say,”The earth is going to shake us off like a bad cold”. Hope this is not to gloomy for you, but it’s something to consider.
The elitism really boggles my mind. You want your children to live like children in India? Are you seriously saying that? You want them to grow up with no eduaction, struggling to find food, and quite possibly never living to adulthood? Because that’s what you’re saying. The reason they use less resources is because they can’t afford it or access them.
How about instead of spawning as many children as you can, have a couple, and then go out and help children in need. Adopt or foster needy children.
Because as “green” as you want to claim to be, every child you have will grow up, need a house to live in, and food for the rest of their life. Imagine that exponentially across every family out there. So yes, children are the future, but our planet is already in dire straits, why stress her more by over-breeding?
Amen!
I wonder if those who talk “population control” have ever seen the joy in Baby’s face when Big Sister comes home from school? Or heard their toddler tell a nonsensical knock-knock joke? Or simply had a family snuggle-up at home on a rainy Sunday?
Makes you wonder what kind of a life they live.
I was born in the seventies…when the ‘back to the land’ movement was pretty strong, add that to the recession at the time and circumstances were very similar to now. I will never share this overwhelming guilt that seems to beset people over carbon dioxide. The fact is that people are the caretakers of the earth and carbon dioxide is necessary plant food. To worry so much about our children’s ‘carbon footprint’ that we have smaller families is a neurotic insanity that will not benefit our culture, our nation, or the earth. For every thoughtless consumer should we not raise two or three well-trained conservationists? Maybe our kids will be the ones who invent ways of living cleanly that we can’t even imagine yet…if they’re trained from the time of their birth to think that way. The second law of thermodynamics dictates that everything runs from order to disorder…it is our job to keep things ordered.
People are a resource, but we are over populated, and no quantity of cloth diapers and growing one’s own food will made a child’s environmental impact become zero. I would advocate adopting if anyone wants a large family.
The more eco-children we have the greater chance they will care for our earth. I say eco-minded individuals have children so the ones who could care less about the earth don’t be exceeded. Imagine if every couple out there that has no care for the earth has 2 children. And eco-friendly couple has none. Hmmm, there seems to be no one to care about it in the future. Sounds scary…raise eco friendly kids. I also live in a teeny tiny house with a family of 5.
Over populated? Are you serious? Let’s do the math. Take the population of the world. Now, calculate he land area of the state of Texas. Now, pop EACH person into that land area on their OWN slightly less than quarter acre. Now, exactly how much room do we actually have left over? On the entire planet ? Now, which one of my grandchildren would you suggest I give up? Which one would you choose not to have been born? We do not have a over abundnce of population. We have an under abundance of intelligence.
Having addressed that, I also agree that I enjoy this blog for tips and ideas on how to be more frugal and crafty. I’ll get my “green” agenda elsewhere should I care to. Your blog, your right, your opinion. But I’ll be skipping those posts from now on
Children are a blessing, an inheritance. So you should have as many children as you can take care of. And you should be responsible with them and teach them to be responsible. Teach them to care for the children in India, so maybe they will grow into adulthood. We aren’t over-populated, we’re under-interested. Under-interested in caring for our earth and caring for each other. When we decide it’s better to kill each other than take care of each other, we become about as civilized as bugs. We should consider others better than ourselves, that would solve a lot of our global problems. Ivory, I think your blog is one of the most honest things I’ve read on the internet. Thank you.
You are SO RIGHT. Why aren’t I reading and hearing more common sense like yours??
While we’re on the subject, I love the site. Good work.
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Geez, I subscribed to this to get tips on gardening and raising my chickens–this is very insulting, and also has that agree-with-me-or-else tone. Sorry, ladies. You’re free to think and say what you want with your site and blog, but I didn’t sign up to be told off. I’ve never understood why population control is seen by some as a sin against the planet, but the meat grinders of war are not.
Thanks, but I am outta here.
i totally agree on the principle…except for the statement about having seventeen children. i know you are probably being a bit silly there, but i feel like having as many as SEVENTEEN children even with low standards could be just as bad as having one kid with higher standards.
but on the whole i agree with you that it’s not about whether you have four or five children verses one or no children – it’s about your standard of living and the thoughtfulness with which you live.
ps – will we get a blog about your research on energy efficient machines versus old less-energy efficient ones? or will you link to the article you write? i would love to know what your research turned up….
How is this common sense? It more closely resembles an emotionally charged reaction thinly disguised with logical fallacy.
Comparing population control to mass suicide is insane.
Furthermore, the use of the ‘fuzzy’ feelings associated with having children as a justification for rampant breeding baffles me. To quote “BrownThumbMama”:
“I wonder if those who talk “population control” have ever seen the joy in Baby’s face when Big Sister comes home from school? Or heard their toddler tell a nonsensical knock-knock joke? Or simply had a family snuggle-up at home on a rainy Sunday?”
What does this even mean? What does this stuff have to do with facing eventual water shortages and catastrophic resource scarcity? I doubt smiles and snuggle-ups will feed your grandchildren in twenty years.
First comment. Coming late to the dance. Cheers, Ivory Soap, Cheers, I say. Just as it is not my business to condemn those who choose not to have children, neither is it their business to condemn my family for how many we have. For the record we chose to have just two, our decision for our own reasons.
Some of us have faith in something bigger than ourselves, that all will turn out all right in the end. Some of us realize (Blessings on you, Brown Thumb Mama.) what a precious gift each and every child, each and every child is.
If those of you so concerned about hoarding and stintingly parceling out resources are so sure fewer children are the way to go, you might find that your time is better spent not nagging responsible adults and trying to make them feel so horribly selfish for bringing more people to love into the world. Perhaps you would be better served by petitioning your public schools to quit teaming up with Planned Parenthood in teaching that sex is a party game. Perhaps you could speak to teens, especially young men and get them to take responsibility for their actions. Perhaps you could work for welfare reform so young impressionable girls aren’t paid to have babies they can’t possibly provide for. Just a few suggestions.
It’s funny. Those who make a lot of noise and a run around in their private jets pretending to be green and making a lot of money from it, might I add, get a great deal of recognition and hero worship, while those like Ivory and Tomato Lady living their quiet (okay, maybe not so quiet in their cases) lives get scolded and chastised for telling the truth.
Gee. Good thing no one feels strongly about this issue.
The planet is not overpopulated. It isn’t. The resources we ALL need are there. The problem is how we are choosing to use them.
Children are not the problem. They are a gift. Ask any parent who has lost a child.
It is impossible to imagine someone who is alive and who you have taken care of not being there. Of course no one should make you feel bad about them being there, and that’s pointless, anyway.
However, otherwise this is a bit ridiculous. Not every family with many kids out there is conscious of the environment and reusing and recycling, and I agree with Jeanette about the India comment sounding pretty elitist. There are so many kids out there stuck in orphanages until they grow up, why NOT encourage people who want children to at least consider adopting? It can be a difficult process, yes, but it makes sense to do it. You can just as easily adopt 17 children and raise them to be conscious of the environment — easier in fact — that giving birth to all of them. In fact, I find it saddening that you seriously seem to suggest that — having children takes serious toll on the parents, particularly the mother, both physical and emotional. Have you ever heard of the Quiverful movement and the woman that got out of it? She was told about the same thing as you are saying, except in her case she was told the children would be “the Lord’s army”. So she had a bunch of pregnancies, one of which nearly killed her, each with more complications. Her eldest daughter had the burden of most of the raising because her mother was tired all the time. So, no, it doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, it sounds like idiocy.
I’m sorry to read this — your blog seemed nice, interesting, and reasonable — until now. Equating the suggestion to use birth control and not have many children with suicide is ridiculous. It seems that you are using your children, or perhaps children in general, as a political tool more than anything else. No one is suggesting that you should kill off children or view them as vermin. All that is being suggested is not having 17 kids — and I imagine the availability of birth control is better where you live than in India. /That’s/ why people in more technologically (and pharmaceutically) developed countries don’t usually have 17 kids.
First, great blog all-around.
Second, there has been knee-jerk emotionalism and arrogance on both sides of this argument since Thomas Malthus published his _Essay on the Principle of Population_ in 1798 right on up to here and now.
For those strongly advocating population control, I have some facts and questions.
Statistics are beautiful and misleading things depending on what you add or subtract from the sample.
the American – as in “born here in this country to citizen parents”- population is shrinking every year. The total fertility rate in the United States estimated for 2008 was 2.1 children per woman, which is roughly the replacement level when you add childhood and infant mortality. Add death due to war, crime, natural disaster, and plain old accidental death of young adults, and it is actually negative growth. The same is seen throughout the developed world.
The American Immigrant (documented and legal) population is what is swelling the US population rolls. The illegal immigrant population swells it further, but obviously can only be estimated due to the nature of being undocumented.
logically then, Third world countries appear to be the engines for population growth in the US.
Statistically, people/households with higher income, higher education, better healthcare – and that bigger footprint Al Gore is so concerned about – have fewer children and wait until later in life to have them.
That said, what and who exactly do you advocate for population control?
Are you going to tell Third World countries they have to curb their population because it is too high and adding to the US and world population and therefore over-stressing the planet?
How would this then be enforced?
War?
Biological Agents?
Are you advocating that just US citizens stop breeding or adhere to a 1 or fewer child policy so there is still room for others to emigrate here to escape the poverty and overcrowding of their homelands?
Close the US border or place quotas on how many immigrants can come into this country every year?
Gene-splice sterilents into common bacteria and release it into the water supply or distribute as a vaccine? (which the WHO has invested research into. Google the Philippines lawsuit where the vaccination program sterilized 3 million unknowing Filipino women)
Lobby to put BPA back in baby bottles and other plastics?
Outlaw fertility medicine and research?
Practice eugenics by screening folks genetically or by income or race?
(Oh now THAT’S c can o’worms!)
Educated people love to tout the ‘have no or fewer children’ line for ‘everyone’ but who really gets to pick and choose who breeds in that perfect world?
Interesting questions when you also consider that folks who outbreed the population control advocates inthis country will have the numbers to out vote those self-same control advocates as well. If the population control advocates manage to force the point, their views will probably wind up having to be enforced at gunpoint or with China like penalties, ie. forced abortion, tax penalties, etc.
How about those who are childless and consume huge amounts of resources?
Or the rapidly growing baby-boomer aged population without the younger base to tax for their care?
How should they be handled?
Tough questions with no good answers IMHO.
Personally I think /Nature/God/FSM/Who or whatever deity/ will institute stronger and unavoidable control measures…oh wait! That’s called disease, dioxin, famine, and disaster.
Wow! I read every comment. A little behind due to the holidays.
I would just like to say that I don’t think Ivory meant that everyone should have 10kids, just that if you do choose to–that is your right. Hers was a response to the suggestion that ‘good, earthy folk’ would never dream of having more that 2 children!( And by the way, not everyone in India lives in poverty. The point was that most Indian families do not have 3 tv’s, 4 cell phones and a freezer full of frozen dinners!)
There are about a thousand things that you can do to reduce your ‘carbon footprint’ that are more effective that not having children or reducing the # of children you have. A lot of people think that having more than two kids is selfish and irresponsible. Not true–We are talking about people who plan to have these children–not the women in African tribes, or even our poverty striken inner-cities.-
Secondly, I have done research on adoption. People love to suggest we should all adopt those poor children with no parents. Do you have any idea how much this costs? Try 20K and that is not international. Also know that the available children in my area are minorities. And guess what? DHS frowns upon inter-racial adoption, though I would welcome any of these children. I could go on…
Just my thoughts.
Has anyone watched the Jesse Ventura show on true tv? Many eyes would be opened to the truth of the matter about government and the green movement. Being born in 1951 I grew up on the coat tail of the depression. I too learned that we need to be frugal. However I feel that I have earned the right, in my advancing years, to have my modern conveniences. After living a life scrimping, saving, and doing without so others could live the high life, without reguard to my feelings or needs, what I would say is get over yourself to those complaining about her post. I grew up without indoor plumbing so had to walk a hundred yards to the outhouse to relieve myself. I stood on the back open porch to bathe out of a wash pan even in frigid weather. Washed clothes with the washboard and washpot.We plowed the ground with a mule, planted and grew our own vegetabables and butchered the meat we raised and smoked it in the smokehouse. We were self sufficent but for a few staples. We ground corn to make cornbread.Those people need something besides a handout to take care of their problems. Unless you have walked in the shoes of the one who wrote the post do not critisize what she wrote and maybe you do need to read elsewhere if you are so intimidated by her post. The world is so full of complainers yet it has a deficit of people willing to do what it really needs to make a difference in our world to make it a better place to live. Find the info that Jesse Ventura has shared and then lets hear from you. Ivory and T. L. I apologize for cackling like an old hen but they got my hackles up. Don’t change a thing about your blog as it is awesome as is. Best wishes to all.
“In the so-called “New Europe”, the situation is even gloomier. According to UN projections, Latvia will lose 44 percent of its population by 2050 as a result of demographic trends. In Estonia, the population is expected to shrink by 52 percent, in Bulgaria 36 percent, in Ukraine 35 percent, and in Russia 30 percent. In comparison with these figures, the projected population decline in Italy (22 percent), the Czech Republic (17 percent), Poland (15 percent) or Slovakia (8 percent) looks like a small decrease. France and Germany will lose relatively little population, and the population of the United Kingdom will even see a slight growth — thanks to immigrants.”
(from
http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/2005/how-will-the-human-race-survive-low-birth-rates/)
scientific studies have been done showing that once the birth rate drops below 2.1, the worlds population will begin to decrease, since not all people born make it to adulthood. this could wipe out much of the planet’s population within just a few generations. have babies for the sake of humanity.
I have read through all of these comments and I must say this is certainly a heated debate. As for the impact a post like this causes for the website…I think that everyone is free to speak their mind. It’s your website and whether I agree or disagree with your statements does not take away from the other amazing information that you have provided for each of us to use to improve our own lives.
My belief…God gave us the command to be fruitful and multiply. I don’t remember him setting a minimum or maximum on that request. Each family has the right to choose what is best for them. Children are a huge blessing if they are wanted. If you don’t want kids, don’t be foolish enough to go down the path that leads you to that end result. Whether you have one child or 10 it doesn’t matter as long as they are all well loved.
As for the whole “save the earth” thing…I’m not really on board with that near as much as many people. I’ll do my part to make my life safer from chemicals and walk more than drive a car, but my reasons behind it are not based on trying to save the planet. Same result in the end, but different motives. For me it’s about making better choices for my family, which in turn is better for the earth.
For those people who didn’t like this posting…well you don’t have to read it, or agree with it. Be thankful for the great tips that have been shared and let this one go. It’s no big deal. I think that people who flip over this post are simply angry about having these views posted. In my opinion…use your right to free speech while you can cause its gonna be taken away some day!
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