Family Size and the Ecological Footprint

[IslandMamma]

I decided to start this thread in light of a discussion that resulted from another one on family size, and whether to "add one more".

First off, check out this link as far as your OWN ecological footprint-- it's fascinating:

http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp

That's for one person only, so figure in your spouse, children, etc. It was a real eye opener for me, and I consider myself a staunch environmentalist.

How do you feel about family size and how it impacts the environment? Is environmental impact a factor in your family planning decisions?

[Happypants]

wow, that is a cool link! i'm going to send that to the rest of my family. it's really a stab in the gut to hear "if everyone lived like you" we would need x number of planets.

environmental concerns are a huge factor for me in determining family size. ideally, for me, i would adopt, b/c i know that there are plenty of kids that need homes. but i really want to experience pregnancy and birth, so i'll have at least one biological child. i'll probably have two, and i feel ok about that. i think two kids for two adults is ecologically fair, but i'm an american, and i can justify whatever i do. just kidding. what i mean is, i'm an american and i'll be raising american kids, who will use more than their fair share of resources, just as i and dh do.

i am always striving to be more environmentally friendly, though, so if i can instill that in my babes, maybe that will be easier to justify.

[CeraMae]

Food for thought:
In a world where most parents chose to limit their family size in order to accomodate the economy. Families who had many children would populate more rapidly. Eco-friendly families would then be "weeded out" of the population whereas large families would dominate, and the whole point would be mute. Basically by process of natural selection, those who consciously limited the size of their family would die out.

[Happypants]

that is only assuming that every child from a large family in turn decides that large families are best and has more than the average number of kids. deciding how big one's family is isn't genetically encoded, so a couple could have eight kids, then those kids could grow up in a society where most people have decided to limit the number of kids and those eight kids could have an average number of kids themselves.

this essentially happened during the last century, which started out with as-large-as-possible families as the norm, but as birth control became more accessible/acceptable, family sizes shrunk when children from large familes grew up and had smaller families. now it's an exception rather than the rule to have really big families. and hopefully (ecologically speaking) that trend will continue.

[USAmma]

Eco-friendly families would then be "weeded out" of the population whereas large families would dominate

Well I think that education by those families could help "convert" other families to being more eco friendly.

This quiz was neat! I got 15 vs. 24 as the average for my area. However they didn't take into account that we use cloth diapers, recycle, and have water-saving devices on our showers. Or that we keep our theromostat up in summer, down in winter to conserve energy. Most of our neighbors have pools, SUV's and, and use disposable everything.

I did one for my SIL's house in India, and she just built a house that's really cool. Has her own solar generator to save money, and roofs that colllect rainwater and purify it to use during the drought seasons. They also have their own well, and line dry all the time. She scored a lot better than I did!

Darshani

[Aster]

I havent done the footprint test for a while. I scored a 6. Average for my area is 8.8.

Anyways, back to the discussion at hand. In large families, there's a lot of buying in bulk, handing down clothing, carpooling, getting the most use out of things possible. A lot of big fam's are pretty frugal with resources out of necessity. We always ate lower on the food chain bc it was cheaper.

Hm, i just redid the footprint test with the data that would have been valid when i was still living with my parents...i'm from a family of 11, and it gave a footprint of 3.7

So my footprint was actually smaller when i was in a big family?

ps, we're only planning on having one child...being the oldest of 9 kids really sucked and i never want to have a big family.

[spinach]

Families who had many children would populate more rapidly. Eco-friendly families would then be "weeded out" of the population whereas large families would dominate, and the whole point would be mute. Basically by process of natural selection, those who consciously limited the size of their family would die out.

In the above quote there is an assumption that children of large families will also have large families. It also assumes that there is no hope for environmetal education. I'm pretty envionmentally conscious and many people in my life have been influenced by my example or through conversations with me to become more environmentally conscious themselves. I come from a family of 4 (not huge, not small) but I believe in small families for environmental reasons. If our dd ends up "buying into" our philosophies (env, vegetarian, etc) I believe that our child (or 2 children in the future) could also influence people through example and education. Then again, she could turn into an Alex P. Keaton..

Then again, the idea of a huge family of earth-loving children is a pretty cool thought.

[lunar forest]

I scored 9 vs. 24

I'm feeling pretty good abvout myself, especially considering that they do not take into acount the many other things that we do for the enviroment, as USAmma said.

Then again, the idea of a huge family of earth-loving children is a pretty cool thought.

spinach, that is how we feel about it. I grew up in a family of 7 children. Our family was very eco friendly, and did so much more for the enviroment than nearly anyone around us (most of which were people who had small families.) We all love the earth, and animals etc., and truely feel responsablety to protect, and care for it. I certianly don't think that a big family = bad for the enviroment. It seems to be the most people in this society don't even think of the enviroment, it's just not important enough, and someone else can worry about it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that to me the number of children isn't nearly so important as how you act, and what you do, and what your children do.

[Piglet68]

The overpopulation crisis, and the impact of humans on the environment is a very complex issue. Large family size is only ONE of many, many factors. And frankly, I'm not convinced it's any more important than the others.

If everybody were having ten kids then yes, I'd say a large-scale education campaign against big families might be in order. But I bet every mama here of four or more kids can attest that people everywhere stop and comment in awe at them - that's because it just isn't seen much anymore.

And consider that in areas where women typically have tons of kids, it's usually b/c they have no access to education and contraception.

It's easy to see how a family with two kids in a 3000 sq ft home with 2 cars, disposable diapers, a huge lawn, and no recycling could easily leave a larger footprint than a family with four kids, in a 1500 sq ft apartment downtown, no car, who cloth diaper and buy everything second hand.

[nikirj]

I got a 7 - not bad, since the average for my area is 24!! (OUCH!)

My parents have a 19 - and I was kind about their car mileage and public transportation. There are 5 people living in their house now, and they produce nearly 20x more trash than we do in a week (we have 4 in our apartment).

[MelKnee]

I got an 8 vs 24 for my area.

We live on 5 acres of land. My new goal is to get my footprint down to that 5 acres.

I don't agree that large families continue to have large families. My paternal GPs had 14 kids. None of those kids had more than 4. And only a few of my generation has more than two. However, out of all of those people, my family is the only one that doesn't buy disposable everything.

[nataliekat]

Everyone keeps talking about how they and their children live. IMO, what matters is not how you and your children live when you are all in the same household.

What matters more to the environment is probably the fact that each addition to the family will have their own household when they become adults. That means more resources will be used to build their housing, and that more open space will be used to house them. For me, that's it right there. The more people, the less open space we have.

Plus the fact that they will use irreplaceable resources no matter how carefully they live.

Edited to add: We scored a 10 vs. 24. We take a lot of public transportation, but could do better on the way we eat. Something to work on.

[comet]

I'm trying to figure out why I got a 22. ???

Is it because there are only 2 in my house? Would I get a lower score if I had 4 more children? Apparently it would be a lot lower if my husband hadn't moved out.

Anyway - very eye opening!

[irishprincess71]

I haven't taken the test yet - I will later and edit to add.

But I must say that I do feel really strongly about the family size factor. Being in So. Ca. and seeing the impact of housing on the surrounding open space I am very much in agreement that more kids in the end means more housing when they grow up (although in S. Ca housing is so expensive most kids never leave home ).

That being said - I plan on having two biological children but then adopting at least 2 more. I would adopt 8 more if DH would let me get away with it. But sadly he has limited me to only 2. There are just way too many children out there without families for me to feel even remotely comfortable without adopting at least a few of them.

edit to add:

We scored 13 out of 24. Unfortunately among other things they don't take specific areas into account. Where we live public transportation is basically useless. In a 13 mile long city it can take approx. 1 hour to get from one end to the other. Not advisable with a toddler. And my dr. and farmer's markets are in other cities.

[Piglet68]

The housing issue wouldn't be such a factor if everybody didn't insist on having their own house with garage, white picket fence, and ten acres of land around them.

Not that there is anything wrong with wanting that - it's lovely, I'm sure. But in many places that's just a pipe dream. Small communities arranged in such a way as to maximize density, allow for shared green spaces, encourage walking/biking and public transporatation, etc....these types of communities can go a long way to reducing the impact of more people.

Besides, I believe that in the US and Canada and other developed countries, we are fairly close to achieving zero population growth, so I don't think a few people wanting to have big families is such an issue.

[Mommiska]

Interesting quiz. And it's amazing what large footprints all those living in America are leaving.

As a comparison - I live in Scotland. We live relatively well for our area (although our income is very small compared to what we would make if we lived in the States).

I scored 5.9, with an average in my area of 6.8. Makes you think a bit about the average American lifestyle, doesn't it (I'm American myself, by the way)?

[Paxetbonum]

I scored eleven but the average in my area is 24. (yeah, yeah, things will be different when my dh works at home and we don't have to use the car at all) I want to have a large family though so just out of curiosity I entered in the information with the necessary adjusmtends for if I have seven or more kids and I scored lower!!!

So I guess it is not the amount of people around, it is wether they are producers or consumers. A family of eco-friendly people consume much less than your average "Sprinkler city" -.5 acre lawn folks.

[zealsmom]

This is very interesting to me.

I took the quiz twice, once choosing INdia (where we use to live) and once choosing the US where we now live.

For India, we scored a 3.5.
For the US, we scored a 25.

The difference between the two is only this: the size of our home and the type of dwelling. We lived in a small apartment in Delhi and have a 2000 sq.ft. home in the US. Our habits are the same as far as buying all our food unprocessed and locally, biking for transportation, eating strict vegetarian, and having less waste than those around us (except not in India, we had eqal waste there).

The other thing that may have brought them up is that we fly in excess of 100 hours each year.

Anyway, I'm sad that we scored so high in the US even though that compared to most people we know, we are so much more environmentally conscious. Maybe it was the flying that threw us over. Regardless, I am sad about it.

[zealsmom]

Yeah, It's the flying!

I did it again without the 100 hours of flying. Brought us down to a 5! Wow! I never realized what all that travel meant!

[TEAK's Mom]

This is definitely an interesting quiz. I do think that it fails to take a couple of things into account. We scored an 11 and it said the average for our area is a 24. But, they do not take into account the fact that you cannot drive here, you must fly or spend several days on a boat. Without the flying, we went way down. I also agree that it doesn't take into account cloth diapering, recyling, breastfeeding, etc.

But, it really makes you think about family size. Our original plan was to have two children on the theory that they could replace us. But, I like the idea of raising a bunch of earth-friendly kids. Maybe the world needs my kids?