Namrata Nangia and her husband have been toying with the idea of having another child since their five-year-old daughter was born.
But it always comes back to one question: ‘Can we afford it?’
She lives in Mumbai and works in pharmaceuticals, her husband works at a tyre company. But the costs of having one child are already overwhelming - school fees, the school bus, swimming lessons, even going to the GP is expensive.
It was different when Namrata was growing up. “We just used to go to school, nothing extracurricular, but now you have to send your kid to swimming, you have to send them to drawing, you have to see what else they can do.”
According to a new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN agency for reproductive rights, Namrata’s situation is becoming a global norm.
Loss of biodiversity, climate change, more extreme weather events, ocean acidification, Gulfstream collapse, microplastics in literally everything, the rise of fascism, constant wars/oppression/genocides, everything being politicized and radicalized, capitalistic exploitation of consumers in every market, the mega-rich using their money to cause misery for profits, even more than I can think of right now.
Want more reasons why I don’t want to raise my children into the world we are heading towards?
One could argue that the Internet and how we are now so interconnected is the cause of a lot of these things, but I think the biggest reason for it all stems from a lack of compassion. Compassion for fellow humans, compassion for fellow living creatures, compassion for the planet at live on.
Like, I hate to talk shit about capitalism, because it is much more efficient at improving people’s lives, but basically every issue you describe is a result of capitalism.