Overpopulation leads to severe economic problems too, says Suzanne, 28, who works in marketing and has also chosen not to have children
How selfish is having children? Without doubt, our world is oversubscribed, and thinkers, including Sir David Attenborough, have highlighted population growth as one of the gravest threats to the future of our planet.
I have long taken a different view – I have decided I do not want children, due to a combination of existential fears about what will happen to our society over the 100-year lifespan of any child of mine, mixed with a long-standing belief that I am largely unsuited for fatherhood. At the time lots of friends and family told me that as I got older, the biological clock would start ticking
The charity maintains that “smaller families mean better lives for all”, and cites Thailand, a country which reduced its fertility rate by nearly 75 per cent over two generations with a targeted family planning drive, is a model we should be following. . “I just don’t feel that the world needs more people,” she says. “The way cities are expanding so rapidly produces cheap labour and keeps wages down, and that means competition for resources. It’s not a world in which I would envision wanting to raise children… I don’t want to add to the problem.”
Of course, emotional urges to have a child may always overtake environmental ones and, over the years, friends and family have tried valiantly to change my mind with the usual arguments: “Children will look after you when you’re old”, “they keep you young”, “you’ll have fun with them”. When I told my mother I was sure I didn’t want them she was disappointed, but at least my brother had reproduced, so that took some of the heat off me.
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