I will investigate the growing phenomenon of (in)voluntary childlessness in response to climate change to show how the domain of (social) reproduction is, and will be, a critical space in which responses to the climate emergency will play out, and how the human is adapting to climate change. While many media narratives present the decision not to have (more) children as simply another consumer choice among others, my qualitative, feminist research aims to giving voice to participants’ diverse, situated understandings of their (non)reproductive choices in relation to the climate emergency. Furthermore, I aim to provide insights on whether participants are cultivating alternative practices of family- and kin-making.
My research asks how the climate emergency is changing our understandings of what it means to be human. All over the world, people are adjusting their expectations about how to live safe, healthy and fulfilling human lives in a climatically unstable future. In much political and media conversation about the climate emergency, the focus is on how to reorganise and transform our societies in areas such as energy, transport, food and housing. However, these questions often overlook the "everyday spaces" of the family and the household. For some people in wealthier, industrialised countries, the climate emergency is contributing to decisions to have fewer children, or not to have children at all. In other words, they are thinking differently about what a family, and a family life, look like. This project has two aims: first, to establish whether the climate emergency is contributing to decisions to have (fewer) children; and second, to understand whether these decisions involve alternative family structures or relationships.
