Guest Post by Laura Carroll, author of The Baby Matrix

Why We Need to Challenge the Pronatalist “Offspring Assumption”

On June 22-24, 2012, the Rio+20 Conference occurred in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Government delegates from all over the world talked about findings from an analysis done by a group of international scientists that deserve all of our attention. The scientists report that the Earth is in a "critical transition," and reaching a "tipping point" when it comes to irreversible destruction of the global environment.

What are the problems that are bringing the mounting pressure on the Earth's environmental health? "Unchecked population growth, the disappearance of critical plant and animal species, the over-exploitation of energy resources, and the rapidly warming climate."

And if it continues the way it's been going, according to the lead scientist Anthony Barnosky,  the Earth could reach this tipping point at a "time scale of a century or even a few decades."

As David Perlman writes in the San Francisco Chronicle article, "Close to the Tipping Point of Warming, " the problems include:

• "Rapid growth in the world's human population - to 9 billion by 2050 and possibly 27 billion by the end of the century - is quickly consuming available resources."
• Fossil fuels are being burned at a "rapidly increasing rate."
• Vast"dead zones" in the ocean (where there are no fish) are growing.
• Loss of biodiversity on land - "40% of Earths land mass was once biodiverse, and now, it "contains far fewer species of crop plants and domestic animals."
• Loss of animal and plant species - we are seeing more extinctions than ever before.
• The impacts of the rising global temperature - in the next 60 years, it will be "higher than it has been since humans evolved."

To slow or reverse the critical transition we are in, the scientists urge "international cooperation to slow population growth, curb dependence on fossil fuels, increase the efficiency of food production, and manage both lands and oceans as reservoirs of biodiversity."

What do we need more of at an individual level?  
When it comes to decisions to bring more children into the world, as David Paxson, President of World Population Balance, insightfully puts it, we have to come to terms with the fact that we are now in a time where "a person's biological right to have children must be mediated by his or her social responsibility not to have too many."

As the Offspring Assumption chapter discusses in The Baby Matrix, given the population and environmental realities we face, it is time to challenge pronatalism's assumption that we all have the right to have as many biological children as we want.  We need to shift from a mindset that adulates the birth if another child, to one that hold couples who choose to adopt, or have one or no biological child in the highest regard. Why? Because they are doing their part to mitigate the catastrophic impact of a rapidly growing population on resource decline, rather than what they might personally want first.

The Baby Matrix also address why we need to do some serious rethinking about the supposed problems with having only one child and negative myths about adopting, and how policies need to change so that rather than encouraging births, they provide incentive to reduce biological births.

It's time to shift away from pronatalist offspring assumptions that harm our society and natural environment. Each person's existence has an environmental impact, which affects other humans and other species. We've reached a time, even the tipping point, to where it is up to all of us to choose reproductive action that lessens that impact.

Laura Carroll is the author of The Baby Matrix: Why Freeing Our Minds FromOutmoded Thinking About Parenthood & Reproduction Will Create a BetterWorld. She is also the author of Familiesof Two: Interviews With Happily Married Couples Without Children by Choice and Finding Fulfillment From the InsideOut. 

In addition to writing nonfiction books, Laura has worked as a business and litigation psychology consultant, and used her expertise in behavioral sciences, psychology, and communications to advise business, legal, and nonprofit professionals on their communications strategies and goals. She has appeared on a variety of television shows, including Good Morning America and The Early Show, and been a guest on many radio talk shows to discuss social science topics. She reviews nonfiction books and more at LiveTrue Books. She lives in San Francisco.

Learn More about The Baby Matrix:

• You can purchase The Baby Matrix online for $15.95 on Amazon. Click Here
• Get your Kindle copy for $11.99 on Amazon. Click Here
• Laura's website: http://lauracarroll.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/LauraCarroll88
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