Shall we all stop having babies?

Despite the resurgence of Covid-19 with its danger and inconveniences, other questions which dominated the news last year are also back.

Migrants are in the news again and so is the environment; Extinction Rebellion are protesting, and David Attenborough is on TV. My column isn’t about any of those issues though. Instead I want to write about a movement which is growing precisely because of all these very difficult things: anti-natalism (not antenatalism!).

You might have not heard that word before. It describes the idea that it is wrong to have children on the grounds that it is always a duty to prevent harm and pain, but it is not a duty to create joy. Given that to be human is to suffer, it is then best not to bring any more into the world. That’s the philosophical version, but there are also plenty of people who are anti-natalists (or, more positively, ‘child-free’) for environmental reasons. If babies grow up as resources-guzzlers in time of climate catastrophe, they believe it’s better not to have them. Better even that humankind becomes extinct, than that we continue to mess up the world for all the other species which exist.