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"Want to wreck the environment? Have a baby."

What a stupid statement.

All that junk they claim is damaging to the environment is due to our consumerist culture and the parents who don't know any better. Not the baby's fault.

Disclaimer - I haven't read the article yet.

Having a baby might not be bad for the environment. But procreation is exactly whats causing overpopulation, which clearly is an environmental issue. I'm not advocating any 'one child' type policies, but I would not feel comfortable from an eco standpoint having 5 kids, like my parents did.

Babies don't kill environments, parents do.

They should know the responsibilities that come with pulling the trigger.

Wait a minute, I have to point this out: the title does not imply that babies themselves wreck the environment, just that having one does. I'm a little stymied by your comment, art - are you saying that it is parents-and-only-parents-nobody-else that are wrecking the environment? Or just that in this particular subject area, it is parents wrecking the environment and not the kids.

I have a kid and in some ways his presence in my life has led me to environment-wrecking behavior. Every once in a while, I put his stool in front of the sink and let him play with running water. It doesn't go on for hours, just 10 or 15 minutes, but still. Makes me feel like an enviro-jerk.

Then again, it balances out. I use cloth diapers, always use cloth shopping bags, and I walk or take public transportation because I live in Brooklyn (by choice, partly because I want to not be car-dependent).

Before I had a kid I would sometimes take an extra bag to pick up garbage while walking in the park. With the kid there have been times when I have accidentally littered because I had my hands full with him. While I feel bad littering, I feel as though I paid it forward a little bit with my prior acts. And I still pick up garbage and throw it away when I can.

This is turning into a diatribe, which I didn't mean for it to be. Goodness knows, everyone is entitled to their opinion, I just felt that some of the opinions posted above didn't address aspects of the issue that I've thought about.

The lead to this article didn't bother me. It was catchy, and the end of the paragraph made it pretty clear that it was meant to be tongue in cheek. But...

I think "eco-parenting" -- or whatever you want to call it -- is a fine idea. But articles like this, which seem to imply that households cause the bulk of environmental harm -- more so, say, than corporations -- kind of get my goat. I have to tell you, when I read about the gazillions of gallons of oil that are still in the ocean after the Exxon disaster, it makes me sigh a little bit when I compost a wee little G diaper.

So I read this:

In fact, new parents are the leading edge of environmental awareness, says Alan Greene, a pediatrician at Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford and author of Raising Baby Green. "I've seen a dramatic increase in parents taking environmental responsibility for their children in the past 15 years."

And my immediate thought was: Maybe they should appoint new parents as CEOs to all the companies most responsible for environmental damage. Or, more realistically, maybe part of the "green education" that parents are giving their kids should include lobbying corporations to clean up THEIR act.

Oooo, isn't that a controversial title!

Anyway, I did read the article and like Stephanie said "a lot of people have identified having a child as a main reason they decided to go green". That's what I got out of it.

However, I would like to respond to another comment. The world is for people and not vice versa. I grew up in Canada (well, for 7yrs. of my childhood) where we talked about taking care of the environment long before this eco-chic started. So it is ingrained in me and really something I believe in.

However, the world is here for our use. We should not be limiting the number of children we have, solely based on worries about overpopulation. We should take care of the earth, but not have fears control our lives.

K, I disagree. The attitude that "the world is here for our use" is exactly the kind of thing that got us where we are today. If we all operated on the assumption that our duty is to preserve the world for our children's children's children, we'd probably be a lot better off.

The idea of having five kids is something I find appalling on it's own merit, though. I would never, ever be able to do it simply because I wouldn't care to. The concerns about overpopulation simply reinforce that fro me.

Er... that sounds like I think no one should have five kids. I meant that it was appalling for me, personally, not anyone else, although I have difficulting understanding the drive to have huge families.

"The world is for people and not vice versa."

Wow. I really don't think so.

Overpopulation? What about keeping our US numbers steady? To do that, households do need that magical 2.1 children per. In case you hadn't noticed, we're not doing that. Look at places with serious dwindling population problems -- are Germany, Russia, France overpopulated? Not according to their demographers. Their governments are subsidizing parents to increase numbers back to health for the future and future generations.

I wish people would stop throwing around "overpopulation" when countries need to be considered on an individual basis.

Re: environmental impact, you can have four kids and reduce their impact whereas a family with just one child or two can be extremely wasteful, even more so than a larger family. Come on.

Re: having large families, you know, Tiamat, do you have children? Or do we throw our freedom away and be exactly like the Chinese with their one-child policy and harsh enforcement tactics? Do you really think Americans would want to be like that?

Genxmom, did you read my second comment? I fail to see how I sounded like I supported the single child law.

I also don't understand why countries with dwindling populations don't just allow more immigration. Yes, it has its problems but paying people who have already made their choice doesn't seem like a rational idea to me.

Of course I don't believe that only parents are responsible for destroying the environment.

But when you think about it, every human being that has been environmentally destructive has had a parent.

It's a ridiculous title for an article. Just as my broad statement is ridiculous.

Parents do have a lot of responsibility though. They can guide their children in the right direction when it comes to the environment.

I remember reading another article about cloth v. disposable dipes that put it in a friendlier format -- that to some extent, the biggest environmental impact comes from the decision to have a child, not what kind of diapers you use.

Those kinds of statements don't bother me. They're true, but not particularly useful. I'm still motivated to use cloth (because it somehow makes sense to me that a resuable object is better than a disposable one, and who knows, maybe I'll even go diaper free with subsequent children), think about how many resources we use as a family, etc.

Re: environmental impact, you can have four kids and reduce their impact

Not when they grow up and become good little consumers like the rest of life. When considering a person's entire life and all the resources that person will consume, having more than one or two children is incredibly bad for the environment (and the longevity of our species), especially if you live a Western lifestyle.*


*And even the most conscientious Westerners still live unsustainable lives.