Why not having kids is my gift to the environment

Last week, I wrote about my struggle between embracing a vegan lifestyle for the sake of the environment and my love of a good spaghetti bolognese. Apparently, I’m not alone in this as my Twitter feed became a confession box of wannabe but failing vegans. One of them, however, noted that dropping meat from my diet wasn’t in fact the best thing I could do for the planet. If I really wanted to prove my eco-credentials then the simplest way to do that, involving literally no change to my lifestyle, was not to have kids.

Last year, researchers from Sweden found that one fewer child per family would have the same effect on the planet as 684 teenagers deciding to become serious recyclers for the rest of their lives. This piece of knowledge has cheered me no end, thank god I’ve finally found a legitimate reason to be able to say, “I don’t want children”.

It is a sad fact, acknowledged amongst child-free women of a certain age, that saying you’re quite happy keeping your home a toddler free zone is a somewhat controversial opinion. At a very young age I knew I didn’t want to have children; I was horrified whenever anyone gave me a doll (why on earth would I want a doll when I could have a book?) and frankly terrified the first time my mother signed me up to babysit the neighbour’s two-year-old. The evening ended in me calling my mother and her settling him to bed while I hid downstairs. My biological clock is on permanent snooze and yet this lack of interest in children seems to make others view me in a way that they simply wouldn’t if I was a man.

The reality is that a lack of desire to have children doesn’t make you uncaring; I nurture friendships, ideas and my rather needy dog, but I have no desire to add children to that list. And now, thanks to the ever depleting ozone layer, I have a legitimate reason not to.