Registered User
Over Population
There are so many other ways to minimise our impact on the land than to reduce the amount of children we have. I get that it's one way...but the thought of little souls not being able to see this beautiful planet before its made compulsory to use cloth nappies or to own electric car (they were just first examples that popped into my head) is very sad.
We are stopping after 2. But not for environmental reasons.for sanity reasons lol.
BellyBelly Member
I think to worry about the number of children is a bit silly. What matters is that each of us are raising children that are productive, intelligent, thoughtful, generous, and that have the desire and motivation to make society a better place to live. People with those kinds of character traits have the potential to change lives, help the environment and do amazing things.
That's what is important. It's not about the number.
Registered User
Actually from a biological/environmental perspective, it is totally about the number. John Q Citizen requires X litres of clean drinking water per day and X litres of clean air per day and X amount of nutrient rich food per day. The finite resources of the planet absolutely care about the actual number. Your 1, 3, 9 or 17 children could all be fabulous souls, productive and caring and live as sustainably as possible, but if they need to share access to limited water with 10billion other people, none of their best traits will solve that dilemma.
BellyBelly Member
It could very well be one of those 1, 3, 9 or 17 children who grow up & DO in fact solve those dilemma's though..
Personally if Australia ever brought in a limit on the number of children a family could have, I would vote against it. I would hate to think of how things would go when there was a limit on children. Some of the things I have read/seen about in countries where this is enforced, makes me sick to the stomach.
Registered User
I do think about it and I do believe that one day there could well be a cap on the number of children we have (... not necessarily in my lifetime though).
Having said that, no ... it didn't impact on our decision to have three children.
But just to reflect on politics of not-so-old ... anyone remember that famous/infamous quote about producing children: "One for the dad, one for the mum, and one for the country". That came with the baby bonus, approx 8-9 years ago. So the idea of curbing the population apparently isn't a main concern for our "leaders".
Registered User
WHAT IS REPLACEMENT LEVEL FERTILITY?
Replacement level fertility is the number of babies a female would need to have over her reproductive life to replace both herself and her partner. Given the current mortality rates for women aged up to 49 years in Australia, replacement fertility is estimated to be 2.1 babies per woman. Since 1976, the total fertility rate for Australia has been below this replacement level. Even if female mortality declined to zero for women until the end of their reproductive lives, the replacement level would still be 2.05 (1.05 male and 1.0 female babies) – higher than the total fertility rate of 1.89 babies per woman for 2010.
In a nutshell, if you take immigration out of the equation, we actually have a declining population in Australia. Looks like Aussies are already doing their bit when it comes to population control
Personally it never really entered my mind to limit the number of children I had for this reason. If it had, I probably could have justified it by saying I was having my sister's share of children because she never wants to have her own, lol. With Australia's current fertility rate being only 1.89 children per woman, I guess one could argue that having 3, 4, 5, or more kids really is only "using up" someone else's allotment of children to replace adults (as a previous poster suggested is what is ecologically allowable...).
Registered User
Yes, it was a consideration of ours. The planet can only carry so many humans. I guess this is on my mind more than most because I work with wildlife, but I just see it as a reality of living within a finite ecosystem. For what it is worth, no I am not enforcing population control on other people, and yes we do try to reduce our ecological footprint in other ways, including small fuel-efficient car, insulation, solar power, compost toilet, water tanks, vege patch etc. It is one part of the whole picture and I think it is really still a taboo subject for a lot of people.
Registered User
.Personally if Australia ever brought in a limit on the number of children a family could have, I would vote against it. I would hate to think of how things would go when there was a limit on children. Some of the things I have read/seen about in countries where this is enforced, makes me sick to the stomach
This raises a good point. What's the next step from a policy like this? A ban on Ivf and other reproductive medicine? If you lose a child at birth or shortly after, it still counts and you cannot have another one even if your still short of your 'allotment'? Would people be willing to agree to gender selection reproductive medicine so I could have my boy/girl combination of kids if I'm only allowed two? I would want to contribute a boy and girl to the population for reproductive reasons; what happens if the balance of men vs women (which is apparently already out of sync) becomes even more pronounced? Hello end of the human population, it would make a great plot for a sci-fi book
I certainly think quality of people should count in something like population control. I also think that no government is at all equipped to regulate a really unfathomable and unfeasible law such as population control/ family size limiting.
BellyBelly Member
Hmmm...yes "fabulous souls"...that's exactly what I meant..
2013 BellyBelly RAK Recipient.
This thread has got me thinking over the last day or so and I think Freya raised some valid points re: what would happen with IVF Medicine and gender selection if we were restricted to x number of children etc. What would happen if you had your 'allocated number' of children, but fell pregnant with multiple babies on your last pregnancy, tipping your number to 3 or 4 children? What happens if you've reached the 'quota' only to fall pregnant again, unexpectedly? It would seem that 'accidental' pregnancy would be ok, but not if you 'planned' to have more than 2 children. I just don't think policy to restrict pop'n growth is the answer or would even be accepted in this country.
You could argue that if everybody turned vegan, we wouldn't be relying on the vast amount of land and water needed to raise stock for our consumption. I've read that with the increasing economies in India and China and their adopted Western diets, that the demand for red meat is only on the increase. It's just not going to be sustainable, yet if we dropped red meat altogether and invested the land and water to growing grains/vegetables etc, there would be far more food available for the world's pop'n.
Also, who here decided to have children, just for reproduction purposes? To carry on your genes and continue the human pop'n? I think most of us in this day and age and country decide to have children for our own reasons (excluding surprise pregnancies here) - wanting to experience being parents, having a baby/babies, wanting siblings instead of an only child etc. Did anybody think, we'll have one to replace mum and one to replace dad to maintain pop'n size?
I think it's easy to say "let's limit how many children we have", when you're happy with having 1 or 2 children, but how would people feel if our Govt said that you could only ever have 1 child? Or some people weren't allowed to have any children? I think if the decision was taken out of our hands and we were dictated to re: size of our families, people would quickly argue the other way: how dare we be told how many children we can have?
Anyway, the OP has generated some thought on the topic. I'm not sure if any of our comments have altered the way that KAM views it: Just pick the arguments that you like the best to support any further argument with DH
BellyBelly Life Subscriber
I'm not sure if anyone's said we should control other people's reproductive rights? In any event, it's certainly dicey territory and liable to get people upset! And little wonder. From some of the responses in here it seems many people take offence at the suggestion someone else might decide how many children they can have.
Obviously some people are taking some personal responsibility for their own contributions to this issue. I understand that. I wouldn't support social engineering to restrict reproduction, though.
Growing crops takes a lot of land - calorie for calorie, meat uses less. We could probably stand to eat less meat, though, yes
2013 BellyBelly RAK Recipient.
I guess i just forwarded the vegan argument as I think this would have more of an impact on reducing waste of resources than capping your family:
It takes, on average, 28 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of meat protein for human consumption, [whereas] it takes only 3.3 calories of fossil- fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of protein from grain for human consumption.
—David Pimentel, Cornell University
In response to KAM's OP: "Is it really something we should be thinking about?" - I'd say - if you really wanted another baby, I believe that there are other ways of reducing our impact on the environment/resources which could counteract the impact of adding one more child to your family.
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