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Sparkle (4)
It would be easy for me to feel self-righteous about my decision not to breed. According to many thinkers, population is the number one factor driving such problems as global climate change, pollution, and hunger. And children born and raised in affluent nations have a significantly higher impact on the planet than those born to more modest means. As one of my blogger friends put it, population “relates to everything – including the amount of plastic crap circulating in the ocean.”
So it would have been mighty selfless of me to deny my maternal instinct for the sake of the planet, right? But honestly, my decision not to have children had nothing to do with environmental concerns. I looked at my life, my goals, my physical and emotional resources, and despite my love for cute little babies, I realized there were other things I wanted to do with my life and that bringing a child into the world was not for me.
Of course, we’re all looking for outside validation of our choices, right?
So it was with great interest that I read Stephanie Weiss’s latest piece in the Huffington Post, “My Uterus Is Officially Closed for Business and I Have No Regrets,” in which she explains that despite her own baby cravings, she’s going to adopt someday instead of having her own kids. For environmental reasons.
At first, Stefanie’s plan sounded reasonable to me. I appreciated her non-judgmental approach to the issue. Instead of turning her piece into a rant about overpopulation, she calmly explains how she’s decided to take responsibility for her own impact on the planet, without judging anyone else’s decisions. In fact, she acknowledges the pain of childless women who do want children and have been unable to conceive, but then goes on to analyze how society pressures all women to have children and states,
Imagine, for a moment, if the option of not having kids were talked about in home economics or health classes in high school, just like everything else. If all our children were truly conscious decisions, perhaps we’d have a much happier, psychologically healthier world. And that’s not even counting what reducing the population would do for Planet Earth — making all our lives, the ones we’re living right now, safer from the ravages of climate change.
So, I posted the article on my Facebook page and got some comments that really made me think. One of my friends thought Ms. Weiss’s piece was premature, since she hasn’t actually adopted a child but simply plans to do it someday.
I feel like this would be a more compelling piece if this woman… had already gone through the adoption process. The truth is, adoption is HARD. Super super hard. And expensive. Having sex is… well, free. And… pretty easy. The barriers to adoption often stymie the most well-meaning intended adopters.
Hmm… good point. I wonder if Weiss will actually follow through with her plan. Here are some thoughts from someone who actually did follow through. BlogHer CE, Shannon LC Cate, wrote me:
I won’t say I decided not to have bio children to reduce the population, but rather that I am so pessimistic about the future I couldn’t bear the guilt of bringing new people into this mess. It’s a terrible, sad way to think, but it’s truly how I feel. So when I decided I wanted to go ahead and be a parent, adoption was my go-to plan.
Adoption was the right choice to make a family for me and there is much more to it than it just being another way to have kids (which is what I thought, originally). Adoption is its own special needs parenting–even if you aren’t parenting kids with special needs, adoption has a package of issues every adopted kid has to handle in one way or another. So I wouldn’t recommend people just swap it out for birth when wanting children.
(Also, there are not enough healthy newborn infants for all the people who want them. To adopt ethically, most of the time you are going to have to consider taking the children all those other people DON’T want.) But for my family it has been an excellent fit.
Other friends of mine questioned the ethics of adoption as an alternative to bearing children (for those who
