For 27-year-old Amanda Porretto, starting a family is far from certain. As the average age of first-time mothers in the U.S., she feels social pressure from her family — especially her father, who wants grandchildren — but she’s unsure about bringing a child into a world threatened by climate change.
“Some people think it's bad not to have a child,” said Porretto, who works in advertising. “I just don’t think I need to bring more people into a world where there’s already so much to fix.”
An increasing number of young Americans share Porretto’s hesitation. Studies show that concerns about global warming and its future effects — from extreme weather to resource scarcity — are influencing decisions about parenthood.
A 2024 Lancet study found that most people aged 16 to 25 were “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change, and more than half said it made them hesitant to have children. A Pew Research Center report from last year found that adults under 50 without children were four times more likely than older adults to cite climate change as a reason for delaying or avoiding parenthood. Another study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this year found over half of respondents said climate concerns made them question having kids.
Climate impact of having children
The link between parenthood and climate change extends beyond fears for children’s safety to concerns about their carbon footprint.
“Having a child is by far, by orders of magnitude, the most carbon-intensive decision a person can make,” said Nandita Bajaj, executive director of Population Balance, a nonprofit focused on human environmental impact.
Johns Hopkins bioethics professor Travis Rieder calls this effect a “carbon legacy.”
“You’re not just engaging in carbon-expensive activities like buying a bigger house or car,” he said. “You’re also creating someone who will have their own carbon footprint — and possibly more children — for generations.”
Quantifying a child’s environmental impact is complex, he noted, as it depends on factors like lifestyle and wealth. For instance, data from the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research show that, per capita, the average American emits over 12 times more carbon than the average person in Ghana.
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Why it’s a difficult conversation
Despite its large impact, procreation is rarely discussed as a climate issue. Experts say this is because pregnancy is typically seen as a time for celebration, not criticism, and because such discussions often evoke controversial debates about overpopulation from the 1970s that were tied to racism and eugenics.
Climate factors into personal decisions
For some, like 43-year-old writer Ash Sanders, climate change was central to her decision not to have children — though life took a different turn. When she unexpectedly became pregnant, she felt pressured by her Mormon upbringing and her partner to keep the baby. She later chose an open adoption.
“I feel guilt for bringing her into the world,” Sanders said. “She’s happy and amazing, but I still feel guilt all the time.”
Juan Jaramillo, a marine biologist, said environmental concerns influenced his decision as a teenager in the 1970s to never have children. “Pollution and other issues were already serious back then,” he said. “It just didn’t make sense to me.”
For Rieder, who has studied the ethics of reproduction and climate, the issue was deeply personal. “Having children is meaningful and important — but also carbon expensive,” he said. “The question is how to balance those two truths.”
For him, that balance meant having one child.
Source: AP