'Our creative impulses are so much more than they seem in a pronatalist society.'
I’m celebrating World Population Day with a toast to the waning days of my fertility, and the fact that I’ve made it through my childbearing years without being overpowered by the so-called “biological clock.” With the recent turn toward the benighted and punitive in our nation’s abortion and reproductive health landscape, menopause will come not a moment too soon.
And it was a good thing, too, as my career with conservation nonprofits exposed me to the fact that each new human born to an average American will contribute roughly 9441 metric tons of carbon to our total footprint. That means that a lifetime of the most dedicated efforts to bike to work and eat low on the food chain would be negated many times over by the act of making another human—a human over whose consumption habits I would, after all, ultimately have no control.
Until it did. Sometime in the months leading up to my 42nd birthday—perhaps it was around the time the last male white rhino was in the news, or maybe it was during the hottest July on record—I suddenly came into full understanding of what was meant by those heretofore baffling words: “” With no warning, my reaction upon seeing a small, pink bundle of unfledged humanity shifted from a low gurgle of distaste to a mildly insistent rumble of procreative hunger.
Having kids furnishes a ready-made succession of answers. Don’t know what career path to follow? Do what’s best for the kids. Stay with the guy, or leave him? Do what’s right for the kids.
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