Reply to Parents of 3- do you wish you’d stopped at 2 or 1

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There are a great many very thoughtful comments here from people who sound like they have their parenting priorities straight.

But still, no mention of any moral obligation to consider the number of children brought into this world with an eye to the climate crisis and the future those children will endure.

I understand that many of you already have the children and nobody is asking you to regret them. But to have a multiple page conversation about family size with discussion only about financial issues and parental bandwidth v parental joy etc. and not any discussion of this massively important issue . . .

How can you say you put your kids’ best interests first? If this issue doesn’t even come up on this conversation, then certainly it is not foremost in how you are choosing to live your lives or teach your kids to live theirs.

Please, convince me that I’m wrong here.

It seems to me that the folks with the most skin in the game  - the most offspring and potential for further generations of progeny - should be the most deeply invested in trying to fix things and give them a future worth having.[/quote]

I’m a mom of 3 and i will say that the environmental impact of adding another child crossed my mind. But, I am an only child with no cousins. My family of origin’s carbon footprint so to speak is already much smaller than if I had a sibling who had 2 kids and cousins who had 2 kids and so on. So I felt in the scheme of things having 1 more child so that my family isn’t super teeny (once my parents are gone my DH and kid are it for me) isn’t the worst thing in the world. DH does have one sibling, and a cousin with 2 kids each, but that is it. We aren’t from some huge families to begin with.

I also try to make environmentally sound choices elsewhere. We live in a walkable area and do not drive a lot. We have a smaller home and try to minimize consumption of one-time use stuff (e.g. asking for and gifting things in my Buy Nothing Group). I’ve been blessed with a lot of friends who give us some really nice hand me down clothes and when I buy nice things for my kids I hand them down as well. We fly on a plane maybe once every year or two. We have a pollinator-friendly yard with native plants and solar panels and an EV. We do not spray pesticides like those mosquito sprays. We compost our food items and buy eco friendly where we can (e.g. bamboo instead of plastic).

We aren’t perfect by any stretch. But as someone with 3 kids, I am very invested in the future of our planet. [/quote]

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