I recently read an article titled 'Breeder Guilt: Why Having Kids Is The Worst And Best Thing For The Environment'.
You can link to the original article here: http://www.babble.com/babble-voices/grow-your-own/breeder-guilt-why-having-kids-is-the-worst-and-best-thing-we-can-do-for-the-environment/You can link to where it was shared on Yahoo Shine here (this one has the user comments):
http://shine.yahoo.com/green/why-having-kids-worst-best-thing-planet-170900771.html
Overall I liked the article. The women who is a mother herself is ultimately saying she feels somewhat guilty for having children in a world that already has a 7 billion plus population. We are DRAINING the Earth's resources and we are hurting other populations or driving them fully extinct, from plants, to insects, to animals! The author doesn't condemn child birth or pregnancy, she simply says that if we chose to have children we should work even harder to reduce our footprint, after all our children deserve a healthy earth!
The term "Breeder Guilt" makes some people defensive right off the bat, and in my opinion if your overly defensive it is because you know your wrong! I'm not at all against having children, however I think its only responsible to limit the number of children we have. Even if you only have one child I think you should feel some guilt as there are so many children who need homes, and there are 7 billion people on the earth already, we don't need anymore! That guilt should motivate you to do more so that your child and your child's child grows up in an Earth that is healthy and can sustain them! As a child you got to see many animals at the zoo that are now on the endangered species list, we should be doing our part to ensure their recovery, after all it was more than likely loss of habitat or food caused by mankind that drove them their!
I found the responses to the article more telling then the article itself.
There was one comment "Thin the Herd", and sadly I have to agree with it. At a 7 billion population we need to be thinned out, we use resources and abuse the earth and its not sustainable, its not green, and its not good! Obviously I don't support genocide or anything of that nature, however I think we should all limit the number of children we have and prolonging life past a certain point when quality of life drops significantly, I nmthink people should be able to die with dignity not wearing diapers and being fed like an infant.
Another comment read, "Let's start the culling with the people who advocate not having children. Hey we have to start somewhere, and morally those people should feel obliged to just volunteer."
Umm, isn't that murder? This is an example of someone who is overly defensive, my guess would be they either have many children, many siblings, or are just against being environmentally friendly, which I completely don't understand. We all have to live in this world, we should ALL be taking care of it and doing our part!
Yet another, "It's not the number of people, it's the quality of the people. If we replaced every polluting, law breaking, economy destroying leach with a productive, caring, law abiding person, the world would be a better place."
Honestly who can disagree with this comment? The world would be a better place if that happened, still better yet with a smaller population as that would use less resources and have less of an environmental impact but I would be happy to take this alternative. We should each be raising our children this way!
The last comment I am posting here is somewhat similar to the first "I think the "greenies" should stop procreating. Set by example. LOL."
A veiled insult made to seem like humor by an LOL, classy! I honestly don't think ANYONE wants to live in a world without "greenies", a world where the air is so bad your child develops asthma and can barely breathe (already happens in the ghetto of New York), a world where nobody is worried about chemicals leaching into the water and ruining the water supply and killing wildlife, everything has a secondary effect... you may not eat bee's but they pollinate foods that we depend on!
We are the stewards of the Earth, we understand cause and effect and can understand the effects of our actions, we should be doing our part, whether that is having less or no children, teaching our children to recycle and compost etc, buying solar panels, etc. We should be reducing our footprint, and in a world of 7 billion people, we should feel some guilt for creating another.
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