I wouldn’t consider myself a Democrat, though.
I’m registered as a Democrat so I can caucus. I’ve talked to people where I mention not wanting to have kids and a guy said, ‘That’s very selfish of you.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t understand why it’s not selfish for you to have children.’Ĭlare Malone: How would you identify yourself politically?Įmily: Extremely liberal. Once you have kids, you fit into a different category.Ĭlare Malone: Don’t you feel like you’ll be treated differently if you decide not to have kids, though?Įmily: Even telling people you don’t want kids, they treat you a certain way. Up until then, you have all the same opportunities that any man would. And the idea of being female in a world where women have kids and then they drop out of the workforce or they make less money - women are treated differently once they have kids. We also have a pretty bad history of severe depression in my family, which makes a lot of us not want to pass on our genes. I know it had some extremely detrimental effects, like people getting rid of their female children.Ĭlare Malone: What do you think it is about not wanting to give birth? Is it something you’re afraid of? Is it just the climate change threat?Įmily: Climate change is a huge piece of it. The only country I’ve heard of that ever practiced something like this was China with the one-child policy. I share it as a personal belief, I wouldn’t share it with anyone as a political belief, because it’s got a lot of holes in it. But we just live in a society where people are pushed to be greedy, and I think greed pushes us to do what we do, and we’re having a negative impact.Ĭlare Malone: Who have you shared this no-biological-children opinion with?Įmily: I do a podcast with some friends and we talked about having kids at one point. I don’t believe in an inherent badness in people. In general, the average person is more good than bad. Pursuing medicine, I’ve been volunteering in an ER, and oh my god, the nurses there are the most incredible people I’ve met. But in terms of, what is our purpose here? It seems to be a very destructive one at this time.Ĭlare Malone: Do you see any good in the world?Įmily: Oh, absolutely. And there are people who are concerned about it, there are plenty of good people. All I see these days is that we’re just causing a lot of destruction. And I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a strict nihilist. I don’t think there’s a moral imperative to have children.Ĭlare Malone: Why do you think you’re a nihilist?Įmily: I just see less and less purpose to why we do what we do.
And also people who I talk to who want to have kids, they don’t have a good reason. I think a lot of people aren’t ready or fit to have kids. I think that having children can be immoral for a lot of reasons. We have physical proof that we cause a lot of harm to the planet, and I think the statistics show an imperative to reduce the footprint of our population, which has grown so fast. I understand people’s desires but I would say over the last four or five years as my friends have started having kids, I more and more think, ‘Why are you doing this?’Ĭlare Malone: So you would adopt and raise a kid, but you think having a biological child is immoral?Įmily: In some ways I really do. That’s a political view I could get behind. I think politically in the last few years I’ve fallen more toward, like, China had a one-child policy. I would still say we have a biological imperative to reproduce, so I don’t hold it against people that they want to have kids. There’s a group on a subreddit of people who were very willing to share that they felt like having kids was one of the worst things. I canvassed with a group, and I found all the groups I could - Physicians for Social Responsibility, and then some groups on Reddit. I had a general sense of anxiety about climate change. I’m also very, very interested in the sciences.
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