People have a lot of strong feelings about themselves and other people having babies. It's such a personal act to birth a baby. Raising up a human has a huge influence on the world and the future.
Is it a good idea to encourage other people to have babies? Imagine pressuring somebody into having a baby and then they do, but it was a bad fit for them. Or imagine telling them they shouldn't have had one. What are they supposed to do, put it back? What a nightmare!
Or, imagine talking somebody out of having a baby, and then the world misses out on one of the most needed resources right now: responsible humans who can face and solve problems, using whatever leverage they have to change the trajectory of the collective human actions for the better?
So, I hesitate to have an opinion on whether or not people ought to be having babies. I have been re-writing this post all week! But, having the ability, I did have to make that decision for myself. I structured my whole life plan differently because of my decision. So, here's my thinking process for that.
You can't control the opinions of who you raise. You can do your very best and raise them with the values that you care about, but ultimately that kid will roll their own dice. The current economics and culture both encourage unsustainable practices. There is a good chance that children will get swept up in the main culture. Is it possible to raise a baby in the US without causing more harm than good to the environment? I think it's extremely unlikely. Almost every system we have is built on broken backs and bad environmental choices, or recycled leftovers from that same bad system.
However, the only way the culture will change is with younger generations adopting systems more aligned with stewardship of our communities and environment. The more privileged you are, the more resources you are likely using up when comparing per-person around the world, but also the more power you have in swaying the culture that you are living in, if you can use those powers for good. I think that can more than balance out.
So, I conclude that it's reasonable to go for it, if i feel strongly that i want to take on that important burden. But only if my circumstances give me and my child good odds. I didn't get told the full story of the physical and emotional sacrifice that is being made in the birthing and responsible raising of a human. I understand now that we are discouraged from telling that story. I didn't have the support I needed, and I didn't understand that was how it was going to be. If there is not enough, you have to choose between you getting what you need and the child getting what they need. And sometimes there isn't enough even for that. Those can be dark times. It would be very hard to raise a baby the way you want to, if you don't have the energy, money, and community support you need. One other person is not enough help in my opinion, especially if that person hasn't been around children before, and/or has other priorities taking up a large portion of their time. I think it's good to budget at least 10 years of not having another important project, unless you have daycare and full support from another responsible person. Then another 10 years of half a project. It's important to look up the health risks. Giving birth has a higher physical risk of mortality than being a police officer, and even if everything goes fine there are costs that are hard to avoid. You might reasonably expect to lose one tooth per child.
If you want to encourage babies in general, my feeling is that the best way to do that is to create a supportive environment, where emotional and physical resources are provided, with existing safe communities of care for both parents and children, with transparently communicated values around parenting styles to know if that environment is a good fit.
For anybody considering raising a kid but not sure, a long-term commitment to be a chosen auntie or uncle to somebody else's baby might be everything you wanted without the full burden. If you are shown to be reliable and share values, especially parenting style values, I can see that being extremely rewarding for everybody.
What happens if we start to have fewer children in the world? The current economic system is built on infinite growth and breaks under sustainable systems. There are serious issues with stock markets and social security systems depending on infinite growth. It's not surprising to me that a lot of people who depend on the current economic system would be upset to think about declining populations. Last year i spent some months in Japan in the countryside. Many of the countryside towns are drying up. As the population rate declined, younger people moved away to the big cities, and the retired folks there are gradually passing away. Beautiful old houses in the countryside are available for very low prices (to a trusted person who speaks Japanese), but almost nobody wants to live in a town without a proper grocery store or hospital, far away from the train station, with every third house vacant and falling apart, when they could live a quick walk to a 30 minute train ride to Tokyo. And many of these abandoned houses are full of 40 years of household items, like furniture, towels, cookware etc. I imagine if there was a permaculture craze in Tokyo, and suddenly the young people wanted to go back to the towns and clean up the older houses and turn the vacant lots into gardens together! These are already walkable shaped communities. It's not a declining population causing the problems that I see. It's our reaction to a declining population, and the lack of systems that work under sustainable practices that seem to be causing the problems.
In a declining population, there are fewer new resources coming in, but there are more already existing resources to (potentially) distribute to fewer people. In the US, what is preventing a lot of folks from older generations from passing their homes to younger generations? Many from the older generations are selling their homes in order to afford elder care, which can be $11,000 per month for very basic memory care, when a person is still able to mostly care for themselves. Some people need jobs and homes, and other people need quality elder care and community support. That could be a good match. The people who need elder care need qualified, trusted, pleasant, and patient individuals to care for them, and a community to exist together with. We would need training and systems of creating community. It's a systems problem, not a population problem.
I'm not worried about the world having fewer babies. I would be thrilled to see more of that time and energy go to the kids we have now, and to not have as many people struggling to provide. I care more about babies being an intentional and supported decision than the number of babies, large or small.
