Why Have Kids? Because They Can Help Solve the World’s Scariest Problems

As the Los Angeles Times and others fret over whether the prospect of cataclysmic climate change is enough to halt having kids, their commitment to net-zero emissions is threatening to leave us with net-zero humans — and the resulting lack of children may be to our detriment in the face of this once-a-generation challenge. 

Far too often these days, we allow our (and I use the pronoun our loosely) collective neuroses to determine our social policy, leaving us with notions like the one recently at issue in the L.A. Times, whether having children is “shameful” in an era of climate distress. The piece, an excerpt from a book released over the summer, is a collection of interviews, mostly with college-aged and recently graduated students, who agonize over having families, even though most of them feel the urge, after being, apparently, bathed in apocalyptic — largely apocryphal — predictions of fire, brimstone, burning trees and boiling oceans. 

I am, notoriously, a believer in environmental stewardship — so much so that I’ve built my and, notably, my children’s lives around Pope Francis’ instructions in Laudato Si. We live in communion with nature, growing food and reducing our carbon footprint on a sustainable urban farm. But even I can’t argue that fewer humans is somehow the Earth’s net gain — and for two reasons: one, the studies cited as rationale for limiting our procreation in the service of our climate are largely misread, and, two, humans aren’t simply another consumer good we can just give up in order to save our planet. 

As Catholics, we see love as a verb, and our happiness and holiness are a byproduct of that love and not of our very human fears. Children are the most visible product of love, and raising children is essential human work we should welcome, not deny or degrade simply because we cannot guarantee the next generation a perfect life. 

Most articles arguing that having children is a net negative for the planet cite studies like this, from Environmental Research Letters, which drill down into how individuals impact the climate crisis and which accuse children of having a greater impact on the environment than other “lifestyle choices,” like owning an electric car, eating a plant-based diet, or taking one fewer transatlantic flight per year (if you’re in the habit of taking more than one … ever).  

But even Vox Media and The New York Times, neither notoriously a right-wing publication, were forced to admit that those studies are hopelessly flawed, as they fail to take into account both lifestyle and policy changes over time, instead assuming that humanity’s carbon consumption, as it is, is how it always will be. 

Simply put, per-capita carbon consumption in the United States has been on the decline for nearly 20 years. People are living greener lives, whether by intention or accident, as household products become more energy-efficient and methods of energy production have diversified. We use more alternative fuels, we recycle more, we conserve energy, and we make small changes to lessen our environmental impact more naturally.  

Founders Pledge, which helps entrepreneurs in the tech industry determine the most effective ways to conduct charitable giving, also discovered that those studies don’t consider changes in national policy, which has trended towards environmentalism even when climate-change skeptics are in charge. Although America isn’t a signer on the Paris accord, it consistently hit climate-efficiency goals under both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And industries themselves are setting benchmarks; automakers are meeting the market by producing more electric cars, and household appliances are more energy-efficient than ever. For Americans, the data shows an even more promising environmental future: While we may be the world’s largest per-capita consumers of carbon, the United States accounts for only about 15% of total global carbon emissions.  

When it looked at what made the biggest individual impact on climate, Founders Pledge discovered that giving $1,000 to an effective environmental charity or investing $1,000 into a promising environmental venture had a much bigger positive impact on the environment than any lifestyle choice — and far and away more impact than forgoing a family. 

Even Founder’s Pledge fails to consider the value of human capital. When a life is not welcomed into the world, it is one fewer life charged with facing a crisis head-on. When generations have been faced with life-altering challenges, they’ve risen to meet them, and it rarely matters whether they’ve had a privileged upbringing. Every fewer child is one fewer scientist, one fewer engineer, one fewer teacher, one fewer mother — one fewer human to solve, not shy from, a crisis. 

When considering whether to take a leap into a sustainable life, my husband and I did, in fact, consider whether our kids might be faced with a crisis in their lifetimes. The world is, after all, a scary place, and while we live in a time of great blessings, we live in a time of great danger, too. 

We thought, though, that learning the basics of a sustainable lifestyle was valuable to them, no matter what their vocation. If they are to face a climate crisis, they already have the skills to live in a way that gives them some freedom from supply chains. If society eventually collapses, they can handle everything from food production to veterinary medicine, so they won’t have to fight to the death over a can of tuna (unless, of course, they want to; apocalypses do provide their own opportunities for martyrdom). 

If our lives only get better, those skills come in handy anyway. People should know how to grow food and fix machinery, even if, one day, one of my children gets a calling to religious life. It makes them better equipped to serve the poor, to feed their communities, and to care for themselves. 

After all, humans matter. And even if the calculus said that not having children was the key to saving the planet, humans would still matter.  

When confronted with data that suggests their family-planning-as-a-form-of-environmentalism may be a flawed project, many environmentalists in media turn to the ethics of raising a child in what they believe is a declining society, occasionally matching the neurotic panic of even non-environmentalists, who worry that we are coming to the end of Western civilization, on the brink of societal collapse and at the mercy of cultural rot. 

That gets to a deep ontological question that Catholicism often struggles with: What is a good life, and are we owed only the good in our short time here on earth? 

The answer is, of course, no. Each one of us is an individual thought of God, and our life has a specific trajectory. We’re certainly free to deviate from his plan, but he certainly didn’t promise it would be easy. In fact, he’s on record quite clearly saying it would be hard. “Holiness,” Mother Angelica herself once said, “is not for wimps. The cross is not negotiable, Sweetheart — it’s a requirement.” 

Living is a risk, just like giving us life is a risk for the God, who created us in love. Yes, we should turn to him in times of great strife, but perhaps our greatest temptation is thinking that God is the source of our ills and not our comfort in them. He wants us to turn to the love of Christ in our darkest hour. Like the environmentalists, we error in assuming we are alone and that we are the only source of rescue: that life ends with us, and that creation is so dependent on us, that our individual choices spell the difference between the beginning of the world and the end. 

Only Jesus knows that hour.  

Behind all of this terror at prospect of a warmer world is exactly this: an age where God and the inherent dignity and value of humanity is now either ignored or, worse, long forgotten. That’s why, quite simply, we might even have a discussion as to whether humanity should face extinction at its own hand: We’ve stopped thinking that humans are valuable simply because they are humans and instead view the continued survival of humanity as a consumer choice. 

Parenthood. Children. Human life. Is now a consumer choice.  

At the heart of the decision to forgo having children in service of the climate is the decision, made perhaps by society as a whole, that having children is a choice. Catholicism quite clearly says that each couple that enters into the sacrament of marriage is required, not merely expected, or allowed, but required, to be open to the gift of life. Now, while that doesn’t always mean a large family of children, it does mean that we as a society must be welcoming and encouraging of life. We make it comfortable for families. We understand that family is the building block of society and the smallest — and perhaps most effective — community to which we can turn. 

As a society, though, we’ve made having children into a lifestyle choice: Note that the studies treat having children not as an inevitability, or the essential work of the human race, but of no more consequence to life than buying a car, or owning a home, or eating a plant-based diet. It’s just one of hundreds of “lifestyle choices” by which privileged adults order their lives. There’s no thought to what would be missing, no consideration as to whether not having children would be a sacrifice — because, to the authors, it is no more important than whether a couple picks a Tesla Model 3 or a Honda Accord. 

It is, of course, the natural outcropping of an ever more self-centric society. Caring for children is the opposite of the leisure and self-fulfillment to which we are conditioned to aspire. Having kids takes away from wealth, but wealth of fortune and wealth of time. It forces self-sacrifice, it forces introspection, and it forces service: three things we are greatly hurting for today. 

But children are their own wealth — and those who fret about the carbon footprint of their progeny would do well to think of them for all they give, not for all they may destroy. If we educate our children to solve and better society, to serve the poor and steward the planet, our future is much brighter than it is without them.