The Adoption Option

Author Stefanie Iris Weiss recently wrote a post titled My Uterus is Officially Closed for Business in HuffPost Living. Is she childfree? No, Stefanie is planning for children:

As a woman who often cries at the sight of infants and coos at her friends' little ones, having biological babies always seemed like an inevitable step. But once I fully wrapped my brain around the relationship of overpopulation to climate change, especially in the West, I made a big decision: I won't bring more kids into the world. I learned that even if I spent the rest of my life recycling, having even one child would increase my carbon legacy by 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide. I still crawl around on the floor with toddlers when given the chance, and go ga-ga for goo-goos, but my uterus is officially closed for business. I'll be adopting kids when the time is right.

When I was interviewing childfree couples and singles for the Childless by Choice Project, I saw a pattern. When I asked the question, “What happens if you change your mind and decide you do want children?” the most common response was “I am not going to change my mind on this.” The second most common response was “I/we will adopt.” This was true even for married women who were still in their fertile years and very likely could have had a biological child if they chose.

There seems to be a movement or shift towards adoption. It used to be the adoption was the last resort for infertile couples, now it appears to be both a viable and desired option for conscious decision makers who are either environmentalists or hold a strong belief that we need to take of the souls who are already on this earth. Or might there be some other motives to adopt? You tell me…

Flickr Photo by nik_donna

Population Media Center—Drama for Dramatic Change

Population Media Center (PMC) is an international NGO, and a registered charity in the U.S., which is working to educate people about the benefits of small families; elevating the status of women; encouraging use of effective family planning methods; promoting the protection of children from exploitation; and motivating behavior change for avoidance of HIV/AIDS.

The stated mission of the PMC is to: “work with mass media and other organizations worldwide, to bring about stabilization of human population numbers at a level that can be sustained by the world’s natural resources, to lessen the harmful impact of expanding humanity on the earth’s environment and to help large numbers of disadvantaged people live better and move out of poverty.”

Using the Sabido methodology, developed by Miguel Sabido when he was the Vice president of Mexico’s Televisa network, PMC works with media partners around the world to create long-running serialized melodramas, written and produced in local languages, to create compelling characters that are, in time, adopted as positive role models for the audience to bring about changes in social norms on issues that are of concern in that particular country.

In Nigeria, these Sabido dramas have been shown to be highly influential in the reduction in the desired number of children and an increase in condom use. In Ethiopia, listeners of PMC produced radio serial dramas sought HIV tests at 2.5 times the rate of non-listeners. PMC customizes the programs in consultation with their media, government, and NGO partners in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and North America to meet the particular goals of that region or country.

According to the PMC: “The programs incorporate many issues to make them reflective of life in the society rather than single-issue programs. Among the issues most frequently addressed are HIV/AIDS, age of marriage and childbearing, family size and health, contraceptive safety, self-efficacy with regard to childbearing decisions, employment for women outside the home, education of girls, ending abusive child labor, child survival, and conservation of natural resources.”

I normally don’t use this blog as a platform to highlight charities but the work of The Population Media Center is so impactful and amazing to me that I felt the urge to share it with all of you. Feel free to give shout outs to your favorite charities and NGOs here in the comments too!


Photo of actresses in Papua New Guinea recording a radio serial courtesy of PMG

I Can Better Serve the World by Not Having Children

The title of this post comes from the questionnaire I used to survey self-described childless by choice persons for the book Two Is Enough and the soon-to-be-released documentary The Childless by Choice Project. Close to half of the people I surveyed cited this as a compelling motive for their decision to remain childless.

Back in September I spend an evening with a group of Asheville, North Carolina residents who where concerned about global population. Most in the room were inclined to remain childfree because of the environmental impact of overpopulation, including a woman who really, really loved children yet had decided she couldn’t, in good conscience, have one of her own.

Recently I received an email from Joanna, who wanted to express her gratitude that she “did not cave into the pressure in society to have kids.” She is a 56-year-old woman, happily married for 32 years, and this is what she wrote:

Both my husband and I never wanted children. I have been a teacher since I was in my early 20s, and now I work for a university as a teacher mentor. I have to [say] that people without children add an enormous amount of positive energy to our society. When I was a classroom teacher, the people staying long hours in their classrooms were always the teachers without their own children. Also, not having children has allowed me the time to do a lot of volunteer work.

With the population nearing 7 billion, people who choose not to have children are helping our beautiful, natural world survive and flourish. Both my husband and I are environmentalists, and we feel so happy that we have helped the Earth that way.

I too am grateful for the opportunity to mentor two terrific young women, both of whom have grown from your typical awkward teens to confident, accomplished women (and mothers). Had I had a couple of kids of my own I doubt I would have had the time to mentor these two. But I am so glad I did.

What are you grateful for?

Earth Days

Before electric cars, curbside recycling, before energy-efficient light bulbs and wind farms there was a handful of pioneering “greenies” who wrote articles and books or worked to organize protests, demonstrations, and sit-ins for environmental issues as varied as DDT use, nuclear bombs, overpopulation, and pollution.

These efforts sparked a groundswell of awareness and political and social activism which led to the first Earth Day in 1970 and new research, initiatives, and numerous government bills which have changed the way Americans think and act as stewards of the land upon which they live.

A PBS/American Experience film called Earth Days documents the early days of the environmental movement and features interviews with activists and influencers such as biologist/Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich, Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand, Apollo Nine astronaut Rusty Schweickart, and Silent Spring author Rachel Carson.

In an unprecedented move, PBS will offer a “social screening” of this film through Facebook at 8 p.m. EST on April 11, eight days ahead of the film being broadcast on PBS American Experience on April 19 PBS 9 EST/8 Central.

I was still a kid during the 60’s and 70’s protests but, as I wrote in Two is Enough, I recall being urged to eat my veggies because there where starving people in Africa. Later, in my twenties, I would get very angry when people threw litter out of car windows and was very pleased to see that littering fines were being enforced by cops patrolling the highways in Canada.

I was recently contacted by a man who informed me of the Earth Days film and told me he had made a pledge not to have children and had the vasectomy to back it up. I admitted I was not motivated primarily by environmental concerns to remain childfree. However, I am motivated by environmental concerns to recycle, drive less, and conserve food and water.

Were you motivated by environmental concerns not to have children? If not, how has the environmental movement influenced your behavior?

The Environmental Impact of One American Child

A new study out of Oregon State University suggests that limiting the number of children you have is a way more effective action you can take to reduce carbon emmissions than other more conventional actions such as recycling and cutting energy consumption.

In the article, published in Global Environmental Change 19 (2009) researchers Paul A. Murtaugh and Michael G. Schlax had this to say, in summary:

Under current conditions in the United States, for example, each child adds about 9441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average female, which is 5.7 times her lifetime emissions.

Clearly, an individual’s reproductive choices can have a dramatic effect on the total carbon emissions ultimately attributable to his or her genetic lineage.

Murtaugh and Schlax make a strong case for smaller families, particularly in countries like the United States where one American child born in 2005 will likely produce close to 20 times more carbon emissions per capita than a child born in India.