In 2023, I thought a lot about if the childless owe less to the planet

Published on 20 December 2023

When did I give up caring about the planet?

Until 2023 I was always the person who cared. I was the person who would struggle home juggling her shopping in her hands instead of getting a plastic bag; who would be thirsty instead of buying a bottle of water; who would go on a quest to find a natural deodorant that actually worked. 

I suspect it was partly due to my upbringing. I grew up in the eighties, raised by a mother who already had reusable bags, separated recycling, washed out margarine tubs to use as tupperware and kept us busy soaking old newspapers to squash into grey, soggy bricks for our wood burner. I have memories of health food shops in Brixton, cherries eaten greedily straight from the brown paper bag.

Recently though all that changed when I decided not to have children. That decision seeded a thought: maybe now I bore less responsibility than others? Maybe my sacrifice meant I could do what I wanted?

No desire to reproduce has ever gripped me, no pangs of longing have troubled my womb. I have never heard the tick of my biological clock – it stopped before I ever had the chance to entertain the idea of kids.

So I gave up on the idea of scooping toothpaste out of a jar – what was the point after all? Plus it never really tasted nice anyway. Thoughts of travelling to Europe by train instead of plane were forgotten with a few clicks on Skyscanner. If I had given up the joy of family life so others could have an earth to live on, why shouldn’t I hop on planes, dine on steaks, dress in fast fashion and live my best wasteful life? I had a choice not to reproduce and I exercised it, but I also had a chance to compensate and I took it.

In my mind, the weight of responsibility had shifted to those with children. Their selfish actions to bear kin granted my selfish actions to be frivolous. Alongside that was a daily drumbeat of bad climate news and the dwindling hope that we could change the outcome. The story we have written ourselves is unlikely to have a happy ending. I won’t be around to see it and neither will my unborn children, so what is the point, why should I care, why do I care? If I still care, do I?

I let the doubt, the doom, the decay get the better of me. I retreated into treats, habits rolled over from lockdown but here to stay, satisfying myself with small consolations.

But in truth I also worried a lot. Could I really absolve myself of responsibility for the earth? Surely I needed the human race to continue so there would be people to work in the shops, bars, restaurants, hotels I would visit in my old age, staffed by other people’s children?

Slowly those little behaviours have started creeping in again. The deodorants, the toothpastes, the reusable bags. And that’s when I realised: I do still care. Just because my impact on the planet will be less significant than others, doesn’t mean I can live comfortably knowing I gave up, that I was as bad as the rest of them. 

I understand now that what I have given up is not caring about our world. It is feeling responsible and capable of changing the actions of the many. It’s out of my hands, but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying. I will always try. Having said that, I also won’t beat myself up if I do get on the odd plane, shove my shopping in a carrier bag or quench my thirst conveniently with a plastic bottle of water from the station. I have made a momentous, brave and loving decision not to bring another human onto this struggling planet and for that I will grant myself some grace.    

But forgetting about the next generation isn’t right. They deserve to live a happy life alongside all other living things – the animals, birds, insects – who have become helpless victims in our destruction of the planet and her resources. We all deserve some hope for the future and we all have a part to play in it. And who knows, perhaps together – with time and respect for one another’s choices – we might just get somewhere.