Is Parenthood on the brink of extinction?
With global warming and climate change rising at record speeds, the desire to have kids has dropped drastically on our Earth.
By Karla Pastrana
April 22 is Earth Day, the day we discuss the fact we’re harming our planet through global warming and climate change. Both crises negatively impact people’s health, but today we should shine a light on the negative impact it has on people’s lives, which is increasing as the years go by.
That negative impact is causing people to ask themselves whether they should have kids due to all the environmental problems.
We’ve been warned about climate change and global warming for many years since 1896 by the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius’ calculations. Arrhenius’ calculations showed that the increase of carbon dioxide could make the planet warmer. Hence predicting that humanity could negatively change nature’s behavior, according to Live Science.
Arrhenius was correct because 2024 was the warmest year ever recorded on Earth, according to the National Occupation Research Agenda. Scientists began recording the world temperature since 1850 and they’ve never seen the planet reach 2.32 Fahrenheit which is above the 20-century average. 2024 broke the prior record of 2023, when the temperature reached 2.12 Fahrenheit. This continued the ten-year record with each year breaking the previous record.
The places that faced the highest temperatures were Northeast North America, Japan and the Arctic.
To no one’s shock, 2025 is continuing this trend by breaking the temperature record with the hottest January ever, according to leading international datasets from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The month had reached 35.15 Fahrenheit above the pre-industrial level, even though 2025 is the year of La Niña which brings cooler temperatures, according to the?C3S.
Still, very few places like far East Russia, Greenland and Southeast of the U.S. hit the lowest temperatures ever to be recorded.
The East side of the U.S. has also experienced climate change as seen with Tornado Alley expanding deeper into Eastern states like Philadelphia. While this past winter the Southeast had seven inches of snow in places that barely or never got snow before.
These changes are happening in an unpredictable manner that The New York Times has released in an article titled “How to shop for a home that won’t be upended by climate change.” The article discusses the type of protections insurances provide towards natural disasters and how to check if a drought could affect your water supply.
Not only do we need to worry about going into debt to buy a house, but now we have to worry about legitimate survival as if we were in the hunting and gathering era again. This conversation shouldn’t be happening since we’ve known about climate change and global warming for a long time.
Due to all the trouble, people are questioning whether they should try having children. In 2024 the Pew Research Center asked 770 survey takers between the ages of 18-49 whether they wanted children. Of the group, 26% stated they didn’t want children due to environmental concerns.
Similar data was also seen in another study conducted by The Lancet Planet Health which surveyed 10,000 youths between the ages of 16 and 25 years in ten countries. They found that 84% of the survey respondents were either moderately or extremely worried about climate change. Half of the 84% in the study said they felt other negative emotions like helplessness and guilt while more than 45% said their feelings on the topic negatively affect their daily life and functioning.
The majority of these studies cite the environmental crisis as a reason to not have kids, as many claim it’s for moral reasons. In an interview with LA Times, Professor Heather Houser of the department of Environmental Studies at the University of Texas said that environmental justification has moved from the overpopulation focus to moral and philosophical questions.
Professor Houser states that people are now asking whether they want their kids to face the same natural disasters and how they would get their kids through it. Houser acknowledged that every generation faced different crises like wars and economical disasters, however, the current and younger generations are facing a never-before-seen crisis that is out of humanity’s control.
Another study done by Morning Consult reflects that 33% of survey takers listed climate change as their reason to have fewer kids or none at all.
I would love to say I’m one of those people but I’m not. I’ve never been the motherly type, as I’m more of the older sister. I fully realized that while working in childcare during the summer, and although I don’t plan on having children, I am an aunt.
I look at my niece and wonder how I can help her survive this fast-changing world when I and other adults don’t even fully understand what’s happening because we’ve never faced a crisis of this magnitude before. We have no references to help guide us but ourselves.
UW alumni writer Miranda Schmidt has not only asked how she can help her child get through this new world, but also asked herself in her early 20s whether she wanted to have children.
She questioned if it would be fair to have a child in an era where we are finally finding out the impact of climate change and global warming. This is an idea that she explores in her book “Leafskin,” showing the impact on Portland, Oregon, where she lives.
“Years ago, we didn’t need to ask ourselves if we needed an air filter here in Portland. But now we need to have one because the wildfires are becoming a common summer phenomenon,” Schmidt told The Ledger.
Over the past summers, Schmidt has experienced the anxiety of wildfires polluting the air quality. While in the winter, she worries about the new winter storms that enter Oregon and Washington, consisting of windstorms to ice storms. In the past, both summer and winter phenomena were a rare occurrence, rather than having them yearly.
Schmidt’s anxiety only rises more at the thought of her child having to grow up through tough times.
“Kids need to worry about things I didn’t have to worry about during my childhood. Compared to the current world my childhood now looks peaceful when there was also other crisis happening,” Schmidt said.
As a summer camp counselor, I have to check the air quality and see if there is a heat warning to protect the kids and teens while doing outdoor activities.
We check this throughout the day because sometimes the heat can go up drastically. When there is air pollution from fires, we have to stay inside all day or if there is a heat warning, we only go out in the morning with the kids and stay inside in the afternoon.
I don’t remember having to stay inside for many days due to air pollution or having a time limit to play outside due to experiencing a heat wave in my childhood. The only thing I had to worry about as a child was to stay hydrated and avoid sunburn. Kids now worry about their health and safety in levels we didn’t.
Older Gen Zs were lucky to have a somewhat normal childhood but the youngest of our generation and those after have a more complicated one. The irony is that these kids do want to play outside but they can’t go out due to safety concerns. I don’t blame those who chose not to have kids not to because I wouldn’t want to bring a child into this world.
To make matters worse, not only is the climate making people think twice about having kids, it is also negatively impacting birth rates as seen in 2018. The heat wave that hit the U.S. in the summer of 2018 caused the birthrate to drop 0.4% for 9 months, according to a study conducted by UCLA researchers.
That same year, UCLA also found that women are vulnerable to the hazards of climate change and global warming which can make it difficult to conceive a child due to hypertension and other elements. In another study conducted by Chinese scientists in 2021 found that climate change was associated with a 20% increased likelihood of infertility.
Things don’t look too good for humanity, but there is still some hope, as we can still do something to help both the planet and humanity.
“Connectivity can help us. Being connected to the more than human world… those nonhumans around us is what will help us understand what we’re losing and what we need to do,” said Schmidt. “I wrote [Leafskin] as a hopeful book. There is a lot of difficulties the characters face but there is hope. What comes out as ‘how do we live in a world that is destructive?’ To ‘how do we create life that brings brightness in a challenging era?’ Creation in destruction.”
The only way we can really help the planet survive is if we stop seeing ourselves as the superior beings of the planet, because at the end of the day, we’re at the mercy of nature no matter how advanced we become.
Nature will always find a way to put us back in our place. We also need to put aside our differences to survive and thrive. It will be hard right now with the current division going on around the world, but we the people can at least pick up the slack politicians refuse to do due to differing ideologies.
Schmidt isn’t the only writer who believes we can still save the planet, as CNN’s Chief Climate Correspondent Bill Weir, also said something similar in his book “Life As We Know It (Can Be): Stories of People, Climate, and Hope in a Changing World.” In a 2024 interview with his colleague David Allan, Weir spoke of what must be done to save Earth, not just on Earth Day.
“The fight has just begun, and so much can be saved. And so much is worth saving. That’s the ethic I’m trying to pass down to my kids: to be clear-eyed about the challenges, but full of courage and hope for the solutions,” Weir said.
