Rocking the Cradle: New Book Discusses the Child-Free Option
What’s green about not having kids? Besides bringing one less consumer onto an increasingly crowded planet, it reduces the human footprint — particularly in terms of carbon emissions.
Karen Foster’s new book, No Way Baby!: Exploring, Understanding, and Defending the Decision NOT to Have Children, attempts to give readers a better understanding of the decision not to reproduce. Foster wrote the book after realizing that there were almost no resources that shed light on the issue, despite the 5 million women of child-bearing age who've chosen to be childfree.
Some of the statistics in the book are staggering. For one thing, Americans seem to be contributing to much of the environmental impact: “We consume about five times more resources per person than the rest of the world combined . . . and with countries like India and China trying to match our lifestyles, it does become an issue of too many people,” Foster said.
Though a great deal of child-free adults do cite overpopulation as a reason for not having kids, not all make the decision for environmental reasons. Said Foster, "I’ve found that it’s really hard to say that child-free people choose not to have children because of this or that; everyone’s reasons are individual . . . You should make the decision based on what you want in your life."
--Shirley Mak
