“For me the fundamental issue is one of what, for lack of a better word, I’d call planetary responsibility. I don’t care if it’s a poor single mum or Melinda Gates: I don’t think anyone has the right to make reproductive choices that result in overpopulation,” says Peaco Todd, a cartoonist, who lives in Boston. “There are too many people already and the planet just can’t support more of us. The result will be dwindling resources, vanishing habitat, all of which will cause unimaginable harm and suffering.”

Suleman is not the only woman whose reproductive choices are inciting eco-anxiety. Last November, Alex Kuczynski wrote a cover story for The New York Times Magazine about hiring a surrogate after multiple miscarriages and the failure of many rounds of in vitro fertilisation. The article reeked of class privilege, and not only because the author noted that she and her successful investor husband spent $25,000 to rent the womb of a less economically advantaged woman, who hoped the money would help pay for her children’s education. But it wasn’t just the references to her holiday homes or her twice-daily Bikram yoga sessions that hundreds of commenters on the Times’s website castigated Kuczynski for.

“You’d think with nearly seven billion people on this planet, a couple might think of it as a blessing that they can not add any more ‘consumers’ to our Earth’s already overstretched resources,” said one.

Of course, Kuczynski, like Suleman, is an anomaly. (Women who make use of fertility treatments may have some means, but most don’t own a Steinway piano.) But the reactions to both of their stories illuminates a conversation that is happening about the relationship between women’s childbearing choices and the environment. It’s certainly not uncommon to hear women in their twenties and thirties say that they are not sure they want to have children partly because they’re worried about being earth-friendly.

In February, a group of eco-activists and concerned scholars joined together for a Global Population Speak Out. The Global Footprint Network is one of many environmental organizations that tracks the overpopulation issue. Last year, in the best-selling The World Without Us, Alan Weisman suggested that we cut the birth rate to one child per couple for at least a few generations. And though these discussions have happened in the past, the current targets are not always the usual suspects — women of colour and poor women — but also middle-class and white women.

At the heart of these debates are a number of questions: What is the relationship between individual women’s reproductive decisions and environmental degradation? Can we really help save the planet by having less children? Or is this just a modern form of green-washed eugenics? And in what ways does the rhetoric and ideology of population control affect women?

Westerners have been debating overpopulation in earnest since Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb exploded on the scene in 1968; that best-selling book claimed that humans were far outpacing the earth’s natural resources, and that unless population was massively curtailed, hundreds of millions would soon die of starvation. At the time, population growth was the highest it had ever been in human history. Today, population growth has slowed and some countries, like Japan, now have below replacement-level fertility; plus, better agricultural technologies have made Ehrlich’s worry about mass famine moot. Still, the statistics sound dire: About 6.7 billion people live on the earth today and that number is expected to go up by three billion by 2050.

“There is a lot of research showing a connection between population and a variety of environmental problems,” including greenhouse gas emissions (especially carbon dixoide), deforestation, depletion of fisheries, and loss of biodiversity, says Richard York, a sociology professor at the University of Oregon who researches these issues. “The consumption of energy and materials is fairly closely linked to population — although there are many factors, especially economic growth, that are also important — and thus in general population plays an important role in resource depletion and waste generation.”

York doesn’t use the term “population control” because “it sounds of something coercive and nefarious”; nor does he advocate the kind of coercive measures that have given that phrase such a bad name. Indeed, global attempts to control population have a sordid history that includes forced abortion, sterilisation, and infanticide. The most well-known example of population control’s unintended consequences is in the case of China, where many families have aborted female foetuses in order to comply with the nation’s one-child policy and the culture’s preference for males; the country now has a deeply skewed gender ratio. Still, York, like many other scientists and eco-activists, believes that the relationship between overpopulation and environmental degradation needs to be discussed.

But Matthew Connelly, a professor of history at Columbia University, and the author of Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population, disagrees with the fundamental premise of population control — or whatever you want to call it — not to mention its rhetoric. The issue, he says, is not influencing how many people there are in the world, but how those people are living. “It’s not a population crisis, it’s a consumption crisis,” he says.

According to the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College, industrialised countries, with only twenty percent of the world’s population, are responsible for eighty percent of the accumulated carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere. The U.S. is the worst offender; in 2002, it was responsible for twenty tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per person, compared to only 0.2 tons in Bangladesh, 0.3 in Kenya and 3.9 in Mexico.

Connelly notes a study that found that large households generally consume less than small households. “That is the thing we should be worried about,” says Connelly. “Instead of launching a campaign telling people to try to have fewer kids, we should point to fact that we now insist on having more bathrooms per household than people.”

It certainly made sense for readers of Kuczynski’s Times article to assume that her offspring would be a participant in this flagrant culture of consumption that celebrates ten-room mansions and thirteenth birthday parties more ostentatious than most weddings. In that sense, the commenters who lambasted the author as an environmental menace were correct. And, in fact, the consumption issue explains why discussions about population control are focusing more and more on Americans, including those that are white and middle-class.

York adds that we should think about the global consequences of reproductive technology in terms of consumption. How we prioritise resources “is a legitimate issue to be concerned about,” he says. He wonders about “all the research and money that go into increasing fertility for a handful of rich people. It’s a question of whether this is a good use of the world’s resources.”

A question that many of the country’s singles and gays who want to have families, or the 7.3 million people in the U.S. who are struggling with infertility, would probably rather not think about.

It’s easy to see how the moral condemnation lobbed at the uber-privileged Kuczynski or the mentally unhinged Suleman could quickly translate into a more general critique of many women’s reproductive choices — and it has. Certainly, the rhetoric of personal responsibility that many proponents of environmentalism use to make their point sounds eerily familiar. The idea that women who have not followed the laws of biology — that have dared to put off childbearing while in pursuit of a PhD, a corner office, the right mate, a nest egg — are selfish has been around at least since the backlash to the second wave of the women’s movement. The ideology of population control is “a way of blaming women,” says Betsy Hartmann, director of the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College.

And this time, some of the same race, class, and gender-sensitive Americans who enthusiastically voted Obama into office are among those doing the finger-pointing. After eight years of an environmentally tone-deaf president and a runaway big business culture that has our country’s finances in ruin, they now see an opportunity for change. But this new frugality isn’t just directed at Wall Street minions or banks, but is being projected onto the bodies of individual women — those who have more than one child; have many children; or want their own genetic children, whether via reproductive technology or not. (“The vanity of having a baby who is genetically attached to the parents who raise it escapes me,” said one Times commenter, typical of the many who seemed to think that all families who want children should adopt.) They are looked upon by some as not all that different from overpaid executives looking to use taxpayers’ stimulus money for a joyride on a private jet, embodiments of a bloated age of conspicuous consumption we would rather forget.

Of course, not everyone thinks that a thriftier approach to childbearing is the answer. “Why do so many people remain convinced that it is the job of infertile couples to ’save the world’? The only thing that’s smug is someone with biological children insisting that others adopt orphans or not add to the population problem,” said one Times commenter. Hartmann agrees that there is a pernicious effect to shifting a social issue like environmental degradation onto individual women or couples. In fact, focusing on controlling births “is diverting attention” from enacting other policies to improve the environment, she says.

And though they may use different language to talk about it, many population control advocates and adversaries agree on some of those measures. Like many other concerned scholars, York thinks that the best ways to reduce population on an international level are to improve the status of women and give them more access to education and to paid work; to improve health care, which would help reduce the infant mortality rate so that families didn’t feel they need to have so many children; and to ensure that everyone in the world has access to safe, effective, affordable birth control. All of these measures have been shown to lower fertility rates without state coercion.

Connelly agrees that, globally, we need comprehensive reproductive healthcare. He also notes that infertility is a huge problem in the developing world and believes that treatments should be government subsidised and more available globally, so that people in all societies have equal access to choosing when to have families. And he notes that the Byzantine rules governing adoption here and abroad put off many of those who might want to otherwise; making adoption easier is an issue he thinks could bring people on the left and right together.

Hartmann suggests enacting a sane environmental policy, which would include putting caps on carbon emissions, shifting from private automobiles to public transport, bringing back local agriculture, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, and making investments in alternative energy. “People concerned with the environment need to get involved in pressuring the administration to enact good policies. There’s a real political opening with the new EPA director and the administration’s decision to get involved again in international climate policy.”

She also suggests that we focus not on limiting how many children individual women have, but on raising those children in a green way. “We should try to have a more positive attitude: yes, have children, but have a more healthy environment, a more sane lifestyle.” That’s a solution that sounds down to earth.

Talking with the Chicago Tribune, Don Demaree of the Center for
Consumer Credit Counseling says some (not all, he’s quick to add) of the larger families have cottoned on long ago to frugality – be it by buying in bulk or finding free entertainment for the family.

So what else do the big families have on those of us with just one or two kids?

1. When they buy in bulk, the family actually uses it all. Some things never expire – like nappies. But those blocks of government cheese are likely to turn hard before we plow through them in a house of just three, and a giant bag of chips goes stale before we’re down to the crumbs – and there goes our money, down the drain.

2. Built-in entertainment. My grandmother once told me parenting seven was easier than parenting one because there was always someone else for the kids to play with or at least someone else to keep them out of her hair. Which leads me to…

3. Built-in babysitters. In big families where the ages range (this obviously won’t work for those octuplets!), there’s less of a need to hire a babysitter if a parent has to get a second job or Mum has to go back to work.

4. Hand-me-downs. Most of us still have to go out and buy clothes for our kids. Big families do too – but they get a lot more use out of them than the rest of us.

Of course all families have it tough right now. Having a big family might well be harder – because when the breadwinner loses a job, there are a lot more mouths who depended on that bread. But with all the bad news, it’s nice to have a little good.

Image: BigFamilies.ca

The septuplets — my heart skips a beat whenever I look at that word — appear to be healthy, as is the mother. Doctors did the c-section in her eighth month because of "pressure on her kidneys." Seven kids? Yeah, I can see how that might cause a little pressure.

The most pregnant woman I've ever seen in person was a woman who was overdue at 9+ months, with triplets. She looked like she was going to give birth to a Buick. I can't even imagine what seven kids looks like.

According to the article, "Egypt's health minister said the babies will get free milk and nappies for two years," which is a nice gesture. Nappies and food bills for seven kids, plus the three they already have? Oy vey. Good luck to all.

Source/photo: Boston.com (thanks to the reader who sent in the tip!)

Sorry folks, America no longer corners the market in having ungodly hordes of children. Though we have the oft publicised Duggers and their 17 child brood, a woman in Canada just upped the ante by giving birth to her 18th.

Suck it, Duggers!

“We never planned how many children to have. We just let God guide our lives, you know, because we strongly believe life comes from God and that’s the reason we did not stop the life,” said Alexandru Ionce, the proud papa.

One piece of advice for child number 18: hurry up and grab a deli counter ticket so you can get in queue to spend a little quality time with your parents…in 2025.

Here’s the question to you folks: how many children is too many? At what point do you have so many kids you’re doing the rest a disservice because you can only spread your attention around so much.

Photo: AP

I married young, before most of my peers, and by age thirty I had three children. Despite the fact that larger families were rather out of vogue, as well as the subject of criticism and ridicule among many of my socially conscious set, I wished for more children. But with some trepidation, we took steps to make sure there would be no more babies. This decision made sense logically;  I secretly feared our marriage ultimately wouldn’t make it, and single parenthood is hard enough with even one child. In my heart, however, I continued to long for a larger “bunch.” I felt in some primal way that my family wasn’t quite complete.

I found myself sidling up to the mothers I’d occasionally meet at the park or ABA meetings or at my kids’ schools — mothers with four, five and six children, and asking about their lives. Were they happy? Did they ever feel overwhelmed? In fact, I found that these mothers-by-choice of large gaggles of children were some of the most serene, self-actualised people I knew. Their lives had a clear "centre," and it gave them a sense of direction — a North Star, if you will.

But in a culture where approximately 2.1 children-per-mama is the statistical norm, even my three children — born in fairly rapid succession over only six years — stirred some comment. "Don’t you two know what causes that yet?" people would ask me and my husband. Even with three, we had to buy a "big family" vehicle — the dreaded minivan — and we no longer fit in restaurant booths for four.

But I will tell you from personal experience that it is not always afforded that kind of respect. While we do appear to have a pop culture fascination with big families — witness the interest in the Duggars and even the Jolie-Pitt brood — our focus is somewhat akin to the way one would observe a circus sideshow act, complete with requisite smug ridicule. In fact, many of the people I know personally who make it a point to actively support reproductive rights don’t seem to believe that those rights should also extend to actual reproduction; this is especially true for pro-choice folks who seem to believe I am committing some kind of heinous eco-crime by giving birth.

There’s no question that more people potentially have a larger environmental impact. For me to deny this would be intellectually dishonest. However, it’s simplistic to suggest that a world full of tiny families — or even zero population growth — would offer the answer to all the world’s woes. And until the earnest parents of only one child who lecture me about my family size start using cloth nappies (I do), or move from the car-centric ‘burbs to an urban neighbourhood that allows them to walk most places (I have), or  join the local food co-op that supports sustainable, organic agriculture (I’ve belonged since university), well, I suggest they reconsider their holier-than-thou criticism.

Don’t misunderstand, I am certainly not claiming any prize for exemplary green living, but I do notice that large families seem to be an easy target for criticism from individuals who should take a hard look at their own environmental footprint before worrying so much about mine. I believe that one of my primary responsibilities as the mother of all these children is to teach them to be conservationists in their own lives. And a large family — where people simply have to share, make do with less, and live with hand-me-downs — offers a perfect laboratory for imparting this mindset.

Beyond worrying about the environment, critics of larger families also seem to focus on the idea that children with many siblings miss out on parental attention. I’m not sure this is such a bad thing. While children certainly need and thrive on appropriate levels of parental involvement and attention, our twenty-first-century belief that the relationship with one’s parents is the only family relationship that really matters to children is questionable. In today’s smallish families, mothers and fathers alone are expected to be everything to their children: providers, nurturers, playmates, educators and more.

In larger families — particularly larger families that are also lucky enough to have cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents in the mix — children get more attention from more people, all of whom love them and share a bond with them. I frequently tell my children — as my parents told me — that their brothers and sisters will be there for them long after I am gone; it’s the relationship likely to last longer than any other one they have in their lives. This is a gift I feel proud to be offering my children, even if it does mean that I have less time for individual flash card drills.

Whether we remain a family with four kids, or end up with one or two more, I am happy with my choice to become mama to many. That doesn’t mean I don’t have days when I am very tired, or days when I wish I had more money to spend on things like pedicures for me rather than another pair of soccer cleats. I sometimes wish I had more time to write and fewer loads of laundry to wash. And don’t even get me started on what it’s been like parenting my eldest through adolescence thus far.

Raising a bunch of kids is hard work. But it’s the best, most satisfying work I’ve ever done. And for those of you who may be considering making the same choice — and it is a choice — I say go for it. Deciding to give birth to another baby is an exercise in optimism. Big families may be old-fashioned, but so are plenty of things that the modern world could use more of, like an abiding faith in the future. It’s not crazy to embrace chaos for the sake of love.

Photos: Richard Wain of Dam Design