Ignore the distractions, focus on what’s important. We are facing an unprecedented global threat that needs priority above all the “distraction” the world throws at us.  I have always been conscious of how my decision to have children will add to the already pressing burden on nature and the environment, with species going extinct every day.

I am now 65. I never married, nor had children. My sister is 60 and she never had children either. Both of us decided in our teens that we never wanted to have children. We were raised in Louisville, Kentucky and are college educated. Our adoptive parents had “time” to enjoy their married lives for 11 years before adopting me in 1951 and my sister in 1956.

I was born in 1955 into a navy family in Nova Scotia, and into a world of unquestioned optimism where the the beacon of progress brightening the future with promises of bounty for all. The industrial revolution had matured, the green revolution was promising more than enough food, and the average family in my world was five children. Nobody worried about the consequences of our actions - the world was an infinite sink capable of absorbing the detritus of everything we consumed.

I want to have a baby.  I can imagine that baby growing into a toddler, a child, a teenager, and finally an adult.  I think about the names I might choose for my son or daughter, the books and stories I would share with him or her, and the things we would do together. 

I have a daughter and I am constantly asked when baby #2 is coming

I am 61 and never had children. In fact, I worked hard during my productive years to make sure I didn’t get pregnant. I have always believed that I did not need to add another human being to Mother Earth.

People are still shocked when they ask why I don’t have children, and I tell them “for environmental reasons.” People will laugh, and some will actually be offended. Women and men who choose not to have children for these reasons are often criticized and judged harshly by others. I still don’t understand this. Sometimes I’m called “selfish.” That really confuses me!

I’m very close to people who think it’s “powerful” to have a child. I can’t think of anything more powerful than to forego your own desires to take care of the future of our planet and our species.

Growing up I assumed I would be a mom someday, but my university studies taught me about the environmental crises plaguing Earth due to human population growth and consumption. My career has focused on the 6th Mass Extinction…

Because we love our unborn children, we are not having them. Growing up, I always joined in on conversations about how many kids I wanted in the future. I always said I wanted them because that’s what you do, and to say otherwise would have been unnatural– but I never felt a desire to be a mother emotionally.

I grew up in the 70s. I knew then we were headed for crisis. I knew when I was 15, I didn’t want to bring a child into the world unless I felt things were going to get better, not worse.

Environmental Science professors warned me in the early 1980s not to have children. They said by 2020-2030, the planet would be facing terrifying global conditions that will collapse our habitat by 2050…near term human extinction due to abrupt climate change. And here we are. I’m 54 and have no regrets.

At 21 years old, children of my own seem far far off in my mind– waiting until i finish college, until i settle somewhere, until, until, until. the problem that comes with that timeline is that cataclysmic climate change that is edging closer and closer. the change that is only becoming more real with every passing hottest day on record.

My name is Stephanie, I just turned 50 a few weeks ago and have never really wanted to have my own children.  That doesn’t mean I don’t love babies, but I’m lucky enough to have friends who’ve had them that I get to love on whenever I want.  It was just never something that was making my clock run fast. 

I stand, amazed, and touch the ache that exists in this paradox: that death can be so beautiful, that loss allows me to gently caress the bruises within me which will never fully heal, that sadness fills the spaces in the heart and allows me to swim in the full swell of being alive.