Dean Spears and Michael Geruso's 'Beyond the Spike' challenges the assumption that declining birth rates can effectively combat climate change. The authors argue that even significant reductions in population would have a negligible impact on global emissions and temperature. Instead, they advocate for immediate and comprehensive global climate action as the only viable solution. The book also highlights that rising populations have historically coincided with environmental improvements, such as pollution reduction and enhanced water quality. By dispelling the depopulation fantasy, Spears and Geruso urge a focus on practical and impactful measures to address climate change. This perspective encourages a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between population, progress, and environmental sustainability, promoting effective strategies for a sustainable future.
Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman's "What Are Children For?" delves into the complexities of modern parenthood, exploring the ambivalence and choices surrounding childbearing. The book challenges the traditional view of motherhood as an expected outcome of adulthood, highlighting the conflicts between personal aspirations and societal expectations. It examines the cultural narratives surrounding parenthood, analyzing how these narratives influence individual decisions. The authors offer a philosophical and cultural critique of the current discourse, providing guidance for navigating the uncertainties of this pivotal life decision. Ultimately, the book advocates for a more thoughtful and nuanced approach to the question of having children, emphasizing the importance of individual agency and collective responsibility.
When did the idea of parenthood become less of a certainty and more of a choice? How have anxieties about the modern world impacted our desire to procreate and thus impacted the world’s population? Is that impact even a big deal?
Anastasia Berg is an assistant professor of philosophy at UC Irvine and co-author of the new book What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice in which she takes a philosophical approach to the question of whether or not to have children.
Anastasia and Greg delve into the shifting motivations and anxieties influencing the choice to have children, how this question has popped up throughout history dating back to Aristotle’s time, feminism's relationship with motherhood, and the potential reasons behind declining birth rates.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
When choosing parenthood feels like losing yourself
18:53: The transformation is one that really threatens annihilation of self. It's more radical than this difficulty of doing a hedonic calculation. What you are saying about the reluctance of calculating, though, I think is really important to thematize, because we see it especially as people increasingly report a conflict between pursuing what a lot of people are able to actually articulate as, like, a family goal or desire to have children and what they can see romantic relationships to be for.
Why fewer people won't save the planet
42:39: The fantasy that depopulation is going to be a solution for climate change—it's just that: it's a fantasy. What we need is immediate global climate action, and nothing short of it will make a difference.
What are parents really responsible for?
37:07 What I think people are responsible for in being parents is not that overall wellbeing. What they're responsible for is preparing, to the best of their abilities, their children for meeting life challenges, pains, and suffering. So it's not to say that you can't fail as a parent. It's not to say that we can't say that. Some people, like, should you be a parent? I'm not sure. But it is to say that judgment is not going to be based on the likelihood of your child to just encounter suffering of any kind.
Rethinking parenthood as an avenue for self-fulfillment
30:17: The question of whether or not motherhood is an avenue for self-fulfillment should give way to the question of whether or not parenthood is something of value in human life and how to reconcile it with other demands, moral, material, et cetera. And as we said, that's true at both the individual level. So, within a relationship, to try to overcome the thought that the liberal left thing to do is to put the burden of not just choice, but the burden of asking this question of deliberation, of assuming responsibility for the choice, squarely on the shoulders of women, and also socially, to try and find a way of both recognizing the unique burdens that parenthood places on women, especially in the early stages of parenthood, but also reminding us that this is a profound human question.
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unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc 
