this is. one of the most important issues if not the most important issue that humanity needs to be talking about. and we had nobody wants to talk about it because everybody's scared to talk about it everybody knows that it's a you know an emotional issue and such a personal you know subject. and people are scared so people just don't talk about it and that's sad but. in our species survival is truly dependent on us addressing this issue and if we can't even talk about it if we can even have a conversation about it then. we're in trouble. when

i was studying biology at the university of california in san diego i had a bio chemistry professor that one day came into class and told all the students to close their books and said we're not going to talk about biochemistry today we're going to watch a film about population and i was probably about 20 years old and i remember just being completely devastated by what i learned in that film and i walked across the entire campus talking to my professor about human population and i really decided on that day that i didn't want to contribute to our rapidly growing population and really every environmental issue that we face ocean acidification and climate

change habitat destruction pollution species extinction loss of biodiversity the collapse of ecosystems all of these things are accelerated by our rapidly growing population growing up i never really was planning to. having kids but i think somewhere in my mind i always thought i was going to have kids that i was going to find a wife get married and up having kids when i 1st met lonnie she kind of told me that having kids wasn't something that she was really that interested him you know i thought that's fine i'm good not having kids and 10 years later 14 years later you know to me it was one of the best decisions that we've made no regrets really really happy to be childfree by choice raising a child can be stressful so from from our standpoint i think another one of the possible adds in our relationship we get to spend more time connecting with each other and i think that that's you know for us it's really important a relationship i don't know necessarily that one relationship or one style of

relationship is going to be better than the other because i think there's you know some people that have kids and that is their whole life and that actually brings people closer together but then on the same instance there's people who have kids and it kind of drove drives a wedge between them because they don't get to have that quality time together and that's something which they valued before they had kids and they don't get to have that now so this is tim tim is our 3rd child he was found by kiwi my husband in a parking lot he was about 2 pounds skin and covered in fleas with a big hole and an abscess in one of his rear legs and so he scooped him up and we took him to the vet and he had emergency surgery he had a really rough 1st 10 weeks on the planet but it's been pretty sweet ever sent.

currently you were actually living through the 6th mass extinction of species so we are currently driving species to extinction at a rate that's about a 1000 times faster than the natural background rate of extinction. and a lot of people are unaware of this. 5 major mass extinctions obviously the last major mass extinction on the planet was the one that took out the dinosaurs right now we're living through what they called the anthropocene in anthropocene translates to the age of man it's where the human impact on our planet is so great that we're actually changing the fossil record of our future so you know i try and reduce my carbon footprint as much as i can i drive an electric car the house that we're sitting in this paradisal or we're in and that's great and there are more and more people putting up solar panels and buying electric cars and going began and

that's all good for the planet but as long as we're still adding a 1000000000 people to the planet every 12 years i don't think that those adaptations are happening fast enough. sound sumo who knows who to believe. sumo who. would be good to go on. the new. shows this to. where.

the. you. know the. me. right back to you wrote about my dog marty at the time who passed away he made me think about family more than in the traditional sense he was a bad technically labeled a bad dog we got go and had a great relationship together and he became very happy and became a totally different dog and i kind of learned what love could do for something for someone and that was kind of has projected me to a day in my life and that song is probably my favorite song i've ever written the greatest love song i think i could ever write i mean really amounts of thing and again it goes back to that whole idea that there's no reason or more kids world i

feel like bringing children into the world is suffering of the world and when you take things that are really need love to. know listen with something else that you need to give the love to we do our own thing we enjoy our lives he plays music 4 nights 5 nights out of the week we like to sleep then yeah that's really i wish to have that's really meant to spend money on things it's very convenient to have it so it's a very small part of it but it is very convenient and the kids i got very lucky my parents are amazing people they took care of me and so will give me so much load they still get and so much that it's amazing. and i really didn't have that i had more of like. people telling me my mom telling me my grandma telling me like i don't have kids is the biggest mistake you could make you know and that probably think a part of it you know. i feel like. my own grandmother my own mom

everybody you know that was generations before us didn't have a choice and they were pressured into it it was like you had to grow up have babies there was no other there was no other option so i'm going to take full advantage of busy having a choice and not feeling like i have got to have kids or there's no other way it's a privilege really to be able to not be shunned for having this choice i know a lot of people they would feel incomplete if they didn't have kids and they get pressure from family and. just pressure from everyone around them because everyone else is having kids so there's still a lot of places mostly like smaller towns are more concerned of towns that's all going to have a lot of babies. i think there's some return all instinct in women because they

definitely quince in a while like feel this need to lake. hold a baby bird like you know that baby fever thing i feel like that's a pretty hormonal thing and it's emotional thing it's not super realistic you know there's this feeling that like the only thing you do with your life that you leave behind is your your child and the predecessors and all that and i don't i don't agree with that i think. again everything you do has an effect on the planet around you the world the people and not having kids for me i feel like a better suited for that i feel like i bring more ga a world without having responsibilities that i'm not really feeling fit to take her or fit to deal with i feel like having. more time to write songs to make music. i do i think it makes a difference i think there's this community here among them that if you. have some

friends really kind of overwhelming the way that they feel about when we get together on. and that that's so worth it to me. that's hurt like 10 months old we were at a canyon lands certain about a year and a half in like 3 that's her mom karen this is when karen's always came to live with me here in this house so it was 2 and a half from them. and they had lived here. for a half years now i do i do not have children i have never been married i've been single all my life i'm really not very relationship oriented i identify primarily as gay but even without like

a sam not very relationship oriented and i just never felt very good about the idea of bringing children into the world because i didn't feel like things were in very good shape that a life was just going to be a lot of suffering for them d.n.a. has made as very competitive by necessity that's just how species evolve and the strongest survive and oftentimes that involves unimaginable cruelty. i am sure that we need to stop it from continuing to grow because it's like you put you. in a bath a warm water with a little bit of sugar and they just keep periphery do seem to put it out alcohol till they have polluted their environment so much that they die. it's kind of sad that we don't have any control over our selves in our environment the. store going

to. work in one physics to that. i have taken care of since she was just a few hours old she's like the best thing that ever happened to me and my wife she's still a big part of my wife although she and her mother have gotten their own place to live and. life which was our plan always but you know after a few years of being here when they left that was a bittersweet moment bitter because you've become very attached to them i did. wrong.

and. betrayal. common ground. ok who are these to the board. that was weird how. would you like to have children i would not why i don't in my childhood like me because in my childhood my mother my biological mother tried very very hard to be the best parent she could and to raise me to be the best person i could be and. i ended up not liking her and i don't like her as

a person and. that inst that fact has instilled a belief in me that even if i tried the hardest i possibly could to create. a nice individual. foster. a valuable person to send out into the world. that they still would not. like me as a. half. bottles .

we met in 2001 here in the united states at work and love 1st. so it's 17 years i decided not to have children when i was in my early foodies my curate didn't do the right we. my spiritual search continued and i wanted

to have more time to change careers to find balance in life to find happiness and to find some spiritual answers for myself so i felt that having a child would be an obstacle rather than help. these are all waiting pictures. with you to. go. i still love you of course. that is. in the 3rd world but still a matter of survival a person must have many children in order for some of them to take care of him or her when they are all. in a well developed world and well developed country as there is a very good social support system so you would have your retirement the government will take care of you and you would be much better off without children you could retire earlier you would have more savings. it was so i think it's

a lifestyle and it's very expensive to raise a child human states if you want to get a good education it's a list of $1000000.00 and even. i think of the so that not to have children in my twenty's when i realize that life will start. that suffering in some form as a guarantee to everybody well happiness is not and just did not want to bring a new life into this world. i don't know that i regret it. we always have a thought that perhaps i'm missing out on something. and certainly my father says he thinks i'd be exceptional mother and me being exceptional parents but i think it's harder today to not work as a. because i think the cost of living up some much but it was covered to be punished no poured over it completely completely would you stay home and raise children potentially i think based on my experience working with children and the

children that have a one parent home seem to be a lot more what better behaved better communicators just seems to be a little more balanced i think because they have a parent they're highly involved long story short we just kind of kick the can down the road if you will you know maybe later later just never happened for us but whether it was careers or. where we've had a lot of ups and downs with careers and causes of unemployment or career changes and geographic location movers and kind of all those things just delayed the way and next thing you know you're here in the upper forty's and you're in your happy with your spouse and where you are i would say that most of our friends if they don't have children whether they're married or single most of them have dogs or cats for the most part dogs and we find that all of us think that our dogs are like our babysitter i do think that people are as there's more and more people there's

more more traffic there's more more congestion there's not as much opportunity to be out in open spaces and finding those things that i think really help us relax. for me it's being with my dog it's being outside every day and if there's less and less natural resources if we lose the national parks if we lose those open spaces that i think are key to human balance i think you will see a lot more aggressive behaviors in your ability in patients the more dense the world gets the more angry i think people get and that's unfortunate for me personally i. regretted not. children i think really you know have a good bond ourselves and we're able to. put time and energy into each other without having to. you needed to protect the children as well. my

name is laura carroll and i have a master's in psychology and since the late ninety's i've been writing nonfiction and researching the childfree choice and 2 books that i've written related to that topic. and the 2nd one is called the baby. i don't have any regrets because it's not having children has allowed me. in my life to create the life that i want and have the adventures that i've had the career that i've wanted to pursue and i've been able to do so many more things i think than i would have been able to do if they really had been at the central focus of my. title is the fact or fiction childfree couples are happier as

a couple kids. used to be. a big debate. there isn't one answer that's my. asking the question why does he find the child free choice so hard to accept that have led to my book baby matrix and 2 assumptions and beliefs that society holds that judges the child free choice where where i landed was a set of believes that have been with us for generations and it's collectively called needless and listen just means the ex saltation of parenthood. motherhood birth and putting it on a pedestal and our society has been doing that you can go back to the roman times that it's been pushed into our brains and our like our social and cultural hardware

of what we're supposed to be and supposed to do that people think these beliefs are true 3 powerful to some sions is if you don't have the desire to have children there's something wrong with you as a person there's something wrong with you psychologically something wrong with you in terms of you haven't figured out your 1st specially for women your female identity something's wrong there there's also the assumption that we're biologically wired to want children there's absolutely no evidence to support that so there is of course evidence that we have biological processes going on if for pregnancy at the time of birth but no biological processes innately that create this somehow desire to have children and a 3rd powerful one is that by raising children that's when you find true

fulfillment in life. they're all myths. in my research one thing i continue to notice is that there's pressure so it's not so much a fear the childfree have as much as the experience from others who want them to do what they did so they others loved ones their family members they can put different kinds of pressure on a childfree couples for example to make them feel guilty for not bringing grand kids onto the sea not doing what they did so that they will have a bond of even closer bond because they will have this thing called parenthood when i was researching the baby matrix i looked at the issue of what if you're old and you have no children will you be old and lonely what will life be like i. am what i found from reading what has already been study is that what people find in their

golden years or their elder years in terms of their well being what's most important that helps them have a positive well being is that they are financially secure so that when they're retired they basically have enough money to live and also that their partner is alive so it didn't really rest on. depending on their children for them to be happier in their older years.

i decided to change my mind and to try to become a mother for a number of reasons of course one reason was a lot of pressure from it was also. really one. major change in my life. i started think you would want to be at least one good reason for me to create another school in this world into this world. to me and that i wanted to raise person so to speak a new generation i wanted to raise my child from the mainstream i wanted to be progressive parents. i wanted to share with my child the only spiritual things spiritual. me and my husband felt

by they see each with a lot of struggle i wanted to share this information with my child. or. i have a. special. create previously i used to leave mostly for myself and now i get the chance you've . given advice to give. my wife. i'm going to be through with you just to get. to help people so i came to this world to be useful. because taking care of her and provided for the family. but the.

fall. there is. much more in our house right now when we. choose the most precious thing ever but. i feel the same. you know so many people referenced the marie antoinette let them eat cake and then you know historians have gone back and they said you know it's actually my cake it's brioche brioche you know that so i brought in actually my god what a mess we brought in actually this is a brioche slice there. and so this is what she suggested that the

peasants should be eating because they run out of town they say this is a. nicer version of there's a few in the cupboard let's throw that to the peasants and maybe that'll shut them up but. this is this is a stick from the water bottle phone in the stomach of the fish the brand is part of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell consumers there are the bad ones there the litter bugs are throwing this away industry should be blamed for all this waste to company has promised to reuse the plastic. that seems. essential projects funded. on the. run now the mountains of waste only grow.

the united states could potentially be smuggling weapons to militants in syria according to documents obtained by a bulgarian journalist. well the report from its asian leaders on the 2nd day of the eastern economic forum and spoke with iran nuclear deal high on the agenda. our team. speaks exclusively with the malaysian foreign minister. on the sidelines of the forum he expresses his country's concerns over the probe into the downing of flight m.h. 175 years on. some people were very quick in making this decision yes the investigation was still going on already clear with us.