Can I care about the environment and decide to have children?

I'd like to bring another persoective on the topic of how our concerns about the environment impact on our decision whether to have children or not.

Some of my clients do express fears about how having a child will impact on the environment.  Others feel that the world is in such a bad state - both in terms of environmental destruction and in terms of the geo-political situation that would it be right or fair to bring a child into the world.

Just living in the world means that often we have to make compromises around our ideals.  And making the decision to have children is no different.  When I work with clients, I facilitate them to explore whether they do have enough of a desire to have children to compromise on an issue of importance to them.  And if they do, we look at ways they could have children that would be least damaging or harmful.

The writer of this piece in AlterNet writes about how she went through a similar process.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/does-having-child-make-me-carbon-villain

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