dependent on us addressing this issue and if we can 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 towards 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 having kids when i 1st met lonnie she kind of told me that having kids wasn't something that she was really that interested in 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 biggest decisions that we've made no regrets really really happy to be childfree by choice raising a child can be stressful so for mouse them poor. i think another one of the plus

side says 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 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 that i didn't get to have that now so this is timbo tim is our 3rd child he was found by kiwi my husband in a parking lot he was about 2 pounds skin and bones 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 since. 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 the spared by solar we're going 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 know who to believe. sumo to. be good. believe. this to. where.

the. the always. 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 sit 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. the most the thing and again it goes back to that whole idea that there's no reason or more kids world i feel like bringing children of the world is suffering of the world and we will take things that are really need love to give. knollys a minute 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 10 yeah that's really i wish to have that's really meant to spend money on think 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 give me the 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 going

to have a lot of babies. i think there's some return all instinct in women because they definitely quincey 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 what 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. more time to write songs to make music i

do i think it makes a difference i think this is this community right here in longmont colorado to religion and. i have some friends that really. time to make it's overwhelming the way that they feel about when we get together on stage and jam and stuff. and that that's so worth it to me right there. was the. that's her 10 months old we were out of care and you don't want. 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 for 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 evolved in 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 your stand in a bath of warm water with a little bit of sugar and they just keep reproducing and put it out alcohol and

till they have polluted their environment so much that they die it's kind of sad that we don't have any more control over our selves in our environment the little one cell the store going isn't. working one says it exists to the. zoe my god daughter and i have been taking care of since she was just a few hours old she's like the best thing that ever happened to me in my life she's still a big part of my life although she and her mother have gotten their own place to live and gotten on with low. which was our plan always but you know after a few years of being here when they left that was a bitter sweet bitter because.

centuries of chinese history to me is nothing unless perhaps it's 2 years of donald trump with another round of terrorists being added to the us trade will this last week china strategy of waiting out the enemy likely to work with the current american president. during the great depression which i'm old enough to remember there was most of my family were unemployed. and it wasn't it was bed much worse subjectively day but there was an expectation of the things were going to get better. there was a real sense of hope. there isn't today today's america where shaped by the 10 principles of concentration of wealth and power. reduced democracy attacks. engineer elections manufacture consent and other principles

according to. one set of rules for the rich. that's what happens when you put. is dedicated to increasing power for itself just as you'd expect one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about the modern civilization of america. ok who ready are these 2 in the report. that was weird. when you were her children i would not worry 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 person. of half.

bottles.

we met in 2001 here in the united states at work and was no 1st so at 17 years i decided to have children when i was in my early fifty's my culinary didn't go the right way. 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 feel that having a child would be an obstacle rather than help. these are all waiting pictures and. if you do it you. will go. i still love you of course. it 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 countries 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 think it's a lifestyle and it's very expensive to raise a child human states if you want to give good indication it's that list of will indulge me that. i think of the so that not to have children in my twenties when i realize that life was thought. that suffering in some form is a guarantee to everybody well happiness is not and you just did not want to bring your life into this world. i don't know that i regret it. but you 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 we'd be exceptional parents but i think it's harder today to not work as a one because i think the cost of living staunch some much but it was covered with the national board work 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. having one parent home seemed to be a lot more what better behaved better communicators just seemed to be a little more balanced i think because they had 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 pauses unemployment or career changes and geographic location moves 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 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 debility 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 having children i think really you know have a good by our selves and we're able to strengthen that and put time and energy into each other without having to have you know needing to put time and energy into the children as well. my name is low. and i have a master's in psychology and since. 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 the freedom in my life to create the life that i want and have the adventures of. the career that i've pursued i feel 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. the title is the fact or fiction childfree couples are happier than a couple of kids. used to be. a big debate. there isn't one. that's my. asking the question why does society find the child free choice so hard to accept that 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. and listen just means the x. 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 in our like our social and cultural hardware of what we're supposed to be in supposed to do that people think. these beliefs are true 3 powerful assumptions 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. and what i found from reading what has already been study is 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 to try to become a mother for a number of reasons of course one reason was a lot of pressure from it was also i don't really want any major change in my life. and i started thinking what would be at least one good reason for me to create another school in this world into this world. to mean 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 and. i wanted to share with my child the only spiritual things. 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 actually that's unusual decoration and creates previously i used to leave mostly for myself and now i get the chance to you. to give 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. with me because. of a lot of happiness and lots of fun. there is. much more low in our house right now and one of our favorites she is the most precious thing ever and. i feel the same.

said she stressed to us take this or that the british and the bill a bunch of. us to. stop the show so he or she then the statistic is he's a cia bush quote oshawa. i thought which she never happened and i know what you mean the member states to check are more linear or ship. or to close any sort of your might your bone structure be. it to mr ellsworth support or until put them to spirit or does it seem to be arguable that it's a student actually the person the person has to be wrong or should stop them spinning. expressed she. joined me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guest of

the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. survival guide.

repatriations look at the rest a 70. bill of the 7 kaiser report. headlining this morning the u.s. state department confirms it to broadway but the captain of the radio. at the center of a diplomatic route so they could seize the. rights continue in south africa with foreign owned businesses. but we hear from people. you trust everything you. do you think it's going to get i'm listening. to. the construction of a fence around the u.s. embassy in jerusalem. claim its view. i come out my house and i want to be able to see the view over the desert i don't want to look at it big.