The Next 100 Seconds

8 November 2020 (Wall Street International)* — “Having children showed me a whole different kind of love that I had never known,” the late musician Scott Wieland said. “It was something that had always been missing. Complete love. I would die for them.”

Comedian Martin Mull had a different view: “Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.”

Most parents probably would agree that having children is both of those things. What having children should not be is a reason to regret bringing them into this world, or a reason not to have them at all. This has become an issue in public discourse recently because of global climate change.

Ash Sanders, a contributor to the Internet news site BuzzFeed, says she decided 12 years ago not to have babies. “I did not want to bring a person into this world to generate tons of carbon,” she says.

“I didn’t want to raise a person who would push another animal out of its home, or put island nations underwater…. I was supposed to look at a baby and see a child of God, a cooing joy bundle, a future missionary or a father or a grandmother. I was supposed to feel joy. But instead I felt grief. And anger. And nausea.”