The environmental politics of reproductive choices in the age of climate change

ABSTRACT

The ethics of having children in the age of climate change is increasingly being discussed, but the political dimensions of individual reproductive choices in relation to climate change have been almost entirely ignored. This lacuna is addressed by drawing on a survey of 607 climate leftists who were factoring climate change into their reproductive plans and choices. Using a grounded theory approach, it identifies four dimensions of the connection between reproductive choices and environmental politics in the age of climate change: the parental investment in environmental politics; children as future environmentalists; the opportunity cost of parenting; and fertility as a socio-political tool. It adds reproductive plans and choices to the range of ways in which individuals conceive of themselves and act as environmental political actors, situating these results within the scholarship on eco-reproductive concerns, environmental micropolitics, environmental lifestyle movements, green parenting, and political demography.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• climate politics
• micropolitics
• reproduction
• parenting

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the generous assistance of Wannes Dupont, Josephine Ferorelli, Leong Kit Ling, Michael Maniates, Marvin Montefrio, Stuart Strange, Yew Wei Lit, and Valentina Zuin, as well as the helpful comments and suggestions from the anonymous reviewers and the journal’s editors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.