Hoping for A Big Family in the Midst of "Ecological Crisis"
Why Two Environmentalists Love Children and Want More of Them
Something that unites my husband and I is how comfortable we both are being people of perplexing duality. In highschool, we were both “high performing” students who preferred to hang out with the “wrong crowd.” In college, we were both wholesome nerds who adored Greek Life and all the parties entailed. We both have played classical instruments in band or orchestra most of our lives, and we have a lot of opinions about and love for rap and hip hop. As Catholic converts, we are very comfortable with Eastern religions and draw a lot of inspiration from them in practicing our own faith. Another duality we share is that we both majored in something to do with the environment and… we are not at all worried about having a big family. In fact, we deeply desire one. Today, I want to talk about why.
My husband majored in Environmental Engineering and minored in Environmental Science. He is now a utility arborist for a lovely co-op electric company and gets to spend his time learning about trees and keeping the power on. I was a professional gardener for about 5 years and did street tree trimming for 2. I double majored in Environmental Studies and Christian History Theology, and I minored in Geology. Unsurprisingly, a lot of our courses overlapped. We also did a semester of intentional living that was mostly focused on Environmental Philosophy, where we gave up our phones to live in a cabin without internet. In our tiny mountain cabins we read, chopped wood, and milked goats all day.
While neither of us are by any means experts, I do have faith that our degrees gave us the tools to think critically and to read research well. I also went on to get my master’s in Ethics and Moral Theology, so I gained more skills in reading and distilling research papers. I enjoy staying abreast of various academic topics. In our free time, we love reading natural history, we are big Wendell Berry fans, and last year I very much enjoyed Jake Bittle’s The Great Displacement. We recycle, we compost, we cloth diaper, and last year, I began only buying my clothes from American shops on Etsy. All of that being said, I have yet to come across a compelling reason why those of us who live mindfully should be limiting the size of our families for the sake of the environment.
Part of the pleasure of raising a family is instilling your children with the values that you believe make life beautiful and worth living. This will happen whether you consciously do it or not. Why? Because children will not do as you say, but as you do. You may say your family values are one way, but if your child observes your behavior is contrary to that, then that is how they will behave. If that outcome is undesirable, they may spend a lot of time in adulthood trying to undo that damage. Some people may say this is indoctrination, but that implies that human persons are perfectly neutral balls floating in space waiting for an idea to uniquely intrigue them and that should have nothing to do with their environment or how they were raised. In reality, if you as a parent are not instilling values into your child both by word and by example your child will seek that guidance elsewhere.
Honestly, in a way, that’s what happened to me. My parents were atheists and they wanted to leave religion and morality up to me. The basics of my moral education included no lying, no stealing, and obey the first time you are asked. Everything else was up to me to find out. Desperate for guidance, I was fortunately an avid reader and began studying world religions. After studying the major religions and dabbling in paganism, I found myself baptized in the Catholic Church at 19 years old, and I haven’t looked back since. I know that will be horrifying to some people. But part of the reason I ended up on that path was because I was looking for guidance my parents wouldn’t give me… and I ended up doing exactly what they wanted to avoid.
So anyway, my husband and I delight in the idea of raising children who will not just enjoy the outdoors as we do, but they will want to protect it, as we try to do every day. And as children often do, we pray that as they grow and learn, they will outperform us and outshine us in our efforts. We pray that they will be inspired by all the intentional lifestyle choices we made to lessen our impact on the environment. That composting, recycling, gardening, mending, and buying as little as possible will simply be normal to them. That they will grow up with farmer's markets and CSA’s as a rhythm, not a luxury. We pray that eating strawberries in December (out of season) will sound weird and unappealing. We pray that they will be able to feel the difference in quality between fast and slow fashion and will save up for the “slow” option every time. And we pray that after we have formed them in this way and they go out into the world and likely stray, that after their period of rebellion, they will return to this lifestyle because it will feel like home. We pray that someday they will come to our house and tell us that solar panels are actually, like, so inefficient compared to some other technology they think we should have and will help us acquire.
In our education, we did not encounter any compelling evidence that the answer to the ecological crisis is to have fewer or no children. None. Whatsoever. And if there were any such evidence, I find it hard to believe that we would allow the likes of Taylor Swift to have the carbon footprint from one year of jet fuel alone that is equivalent to 1,800 times the annual emissions from the average human and 576 times the average American. That’s one year of one celebrity’s activities. We’re not even talking about the emissions from all the celebrities who flew private jets to the SuperBowl, or March Madness games, or the Grammys, etc. But me, who cloth diapers and has one single pair of pants, is supposed to forego childbearing for the sake of the environment? I don’t think so. In fact, I will rebel against that by raising my own little army of environmentalists who will inspire their future friends and spouses by how easy it will be for them to live simply, even beautifully, with less. Perhaps one of our children will even become the lawyer or politician who will finally make it illegal for celebrities to traverse the country by private jet just to perform private errands.1 Or perhaps we will raise the chemical engineer who may completely restructure jet fuel so it is harmless and renewable. But frankly, even if we don’t raise heroes, average every day people are not the problem. Corporations are the problem, and the undying support we give them feeds the fire. I’m tired of hearing from people who buy frequently and unthinkingly from Amazon and use ChatGPT that too many people are the problem. No, the problem is that too many people are living a throw-away, disposable, use-it-and-lose-it lifestyle, and they hand over the majority of their income to corporations dead-set on poisoning them and the world they live in.
The truth is, my husband and I choose to live this way not because we are scared of some vague and looming “ecological crisis”. We choose to live this way because the effects of the alternative are immediately visible in the world we live in, here and now. I cannot even begin to imagine the number of disposable diapers just sitting on God’s good green earth somewhere, yet to decompose for 500 years2 To believe that all of the birth control that most women are on can be fully filtered out of wastewater is asinine. It is no coincidence that we are experiencing a fertility crisis in this country. It is no coincidence that cancer and heart disease are on the rise. I am not even 30, and I have watched green spaces disappear all over the country. I remember the stars being so much more vivid when I was a child, and I remember the air smelling better! There is nothing like walking by a river and suddenly noticing an unnatural oily sheen in the water coming from a dubious source. We also honestly believe that living more sustainably is more lovely and enjoyable. For example, I find the process of folding our organic cotton cloth diapers to feel so right and honestly spiritual. I do not feel that way when I touch a plastic based disposable diaper. Most importantly, we believe the Earth is a gift from God, and we have been called to steward it well, not to neglect or abuse it. Our children will grow up with that narrative written on their hearts.
Let’s compel people to care about the environment because it’s the only home we have here and now, not because it may come to an end in the future. Let’s stop saying that straws are the problem and get real: the celebrities, politicians, and corporations who are somehow the exception to every rule are the problem — and they are trying to convince us we are by telling us to stop reproducing and instead focus on working working working… for what? Oh, right, for them. I care for the earth because God asked me to steward it. To me, that means I need to take responsibility for the parts that God has made my business, and just like how I steward my family’s health and wellbeing, I also need to steward to health of my portion of God’s creation.
We also recognize that we are not perfect “environmentalists” — it seems each year we learn about a handful of practices that we either never paid any mind to before or overlooked or simply weren’t as environmentally friendly as we thought. Imagine my devastation when, after I washed all of our brand new cloth diapers for the first time as a first time mom, I realized that they were 100% polyester and not only would they also lay in a landfill for hundreds of years just like a conventional diaper, but also this plastic would be pressed against my baby’s most delicate parts for the first year of her life.3 Until that point, in my pregnancy madness, I just didn’t think to seek out a completely natural fiber diaper. *Cue existential groan*
Anyway, I think a big part of changing our global situation is to raise children who care. Children who have hope. Children who come from a stable and loving home so that they are better disposed to be brave and creative and enterprising. Children who have a deep and unshakable moral conviction that we are responsible for the most vulnerable around us, including the earth that God has asked us to steward and protect — and including the poor, who suffer the most from our environmental abuse and neglect. The problem is not too many people in general, the problem is too many people living lifestyles of over-consumption while they worship at the thrones (pockets) of celebrities and corporations who poison us while we pay for it. If the average American cut their consumption in half, we would be in a much better place. But we wouldn’t get far enough, even then, without holding corporations responsible for their contribution anyway. I hope that one way or another, my children will be a part of the solution to that, even if it’s just by the example they set for their peers. We hope to be a part of cultivating a culture of life, generosity, and abundant love. We are not interested in contributing to a culture of death, hopelessness, and despair. We are also not interested in surrendering and abandoning the earth to the offspring of people who don’t care about any of this.
I hope that my post is a catalyst for you to ask some hard questions about this topic. Like: are your fears about the environment grounded in real research you’ve read and read opposing responses to? Do all of your environmental practices “make sense,” or are they shame based? And what is one easy swap or change you can make to lessen your environmental impact? Even if you don’t believe in the concept of climate change, I argue that it doesn’t matter: our abuse and neglect of the earth actually has consequences that we can see today.
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Aviation represents 2.5% of the world’s carbon emissions (and likely much more in non-carbon emissions) yet only 1% of the world’s population are responsible for about 50% of all aviation emissions. Moreover, private planes are up to 14 times more polluting, per individual, than commercial planes and 50 times more polluting than trains, according to reporting by Transport and the Environment…Adding to the madness, the majority of flights taken by private planes are for distances under 750 km. (Carbon Market Watch)
To be transparent, we don’t cloth diaper 100% of the time, so we contribute to this!!
I suffer from a number of chronic illnesses that are, in part, the result of exposure to endotoxins and other hormone disruptors in childhood, so I felt especially stupid at this point.