Young adults say race, climate fears prevent them from starting families: ‘Shameful to want to have children’
Some liberal Gen Z and millennial people of color told a gender studies professor that their concerns about race and climate change are preventing them from having children.
The Los Angeles Times highlighted research from UC Riverside associate professor in the department of gender and sexuality studies, Jade S. Sasser. Sasser also hosts the “Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question” podcast. One 26-year-old Native American woman named Melanie told the professor she “struggles with whether it’s morally OK to have children.”
“With climate change, we’re the driving force of things breaking down, but then also, the planet’s going to do what the planet’s going to do… So… it almost feels, like, kind of shameful to want to have children,” she told the academic who wrote the piece.
Some respondents to the survey argued that environmental concerns make them wary of creating more humans, and might opt to adopt or foster children instead. (iStock)
The piece also highlighted the plight of a 23-year-old Mexican American woman named Juliana, whose friend circle “is mainly composed of queer and transgender, anti-establishment artists.”
“Her friends cite environmental and mental health concerns. Their anxiety tells them that they can’t properly take care of themselves, much less a child,” Sasser wrote. “They also struggle, as trans and nonbinary people, with the issues of access to fertility centers and the need to use reproductive technologies that feel out of reach.”
Nonetheless, she is reportedly questioning what the future might be like for her hypothetical child of mixed-race with her White husband.
The professor wrote, “In 2021 and 2022, I conducted a series of interviews on this topic with millennials and members of Generation Z, all of them people of color. Some grew up in low-income families and neighborhoods while others were from the middle- or upper-middle class. Some of them identify as queer, or their close family members and friends do, which shapes their sensitivity to discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.” “These interviewees have more climate change knowledge than most people do. All of them are college-educated; most of them either grew up or have lived for some time in Southern California; and most have taken environmental studies classes, either as undergrads or in graduate school.”
Sasser also spoke to a woman named Elena, who is from a Salvadoran immigrant family. While her mother was one of 12 children, her wariness of having her own children was reportedly “sparked by environmental studies classes.”
“[I] started feeling like having kids is definitely not a sustainable thing to do… I don’t want them to grow up and have to leave their home because of sea level rise. Or be worried because of really weird weather patterns,” she said.
Other respondents argued that racism makes them wary of having offspring, arguing they would grow up dealing with oppression. (iStock)
She later added, “I know that things aren’t going to get better. So why would I want to put a child through that? Even when my sister gave birth to my nephew, I was like, Why? They’re going to go through so much.”
Rosalind, 38, a Black woman of Caribbean origin living in Southern California and working as a scientific researcher said that racism is her primary concern when it comes to having kids.
“With all of the anti-Black violence, and the police violence against us, it just seems so unsafe. And I see so many of my friends who do have children that are constantly stressed because of this, especially the ones who have teenage boys who are taller than average,” she said. “They send their kids out there and then just spend their time worrying about whether their child is going to be targeted or harassed in some way, or potentially killed. I just don’t think I have the disposition to put up with that kind of stress.”
