Families of Two: the childfree a decade later

Seeing the recent article in Time on debunking the myths of only children, I thought of Bill McKibben who told us all about this and more over ten years ago in his book Maybe One. He talks about how single kid families can work and are necessary to help ensure we not exceed “planet capacity,” or the population that the earth can support.

This idea takes me to the issue of overpopulation. Some experts believe it’s driving many environmental issues and global warming. But other experts don’t agree.  There’s a range of expert positions. Let’s start with a most interesting one. Check out this video of Ted Rosling, Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Definitely worth the watch–

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On the other side of  the Italian catholic church and government thinking their declining population is a crisis, are the members of a group that think a declining population is just what we need..in fact, they think the best thing for humans to do is to stop reproducing all together right now to allow the earth’s biosphere to return to good health.

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) might have radical ideas,

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On May 25th Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, archbishop of Genoa, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, addressed fellow Italian bishops at the 61st plenary assembly and called Italy’s declining birthrate  “slow demographic suicide.”   “Over 50% of families today are without children,” and according to the article on LifeSite news.com,25% have only one child, 20% have two, and  5% have three or more.

A recent study by the Milan-based International Center for Family Studies indicates Italy’s fertility rate is 1.31 children born per woman. And although there are high levels of foreign immigration, the report indicates only .047 decrease in population in 2009.

Unlike most studies in the U.S. the study looked at the choice factor when it comes to being childless. It found that …

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