Yay for kids! A.K.A. I get my rant on...

I found this post a while ago, while we still lived in Utah. So here you go!

I was listening to NPR, as I am often wont to do, and a program came on that completely sent me over the edge. The interviewer, whose program I often enjoy and find very insightful had chosen what I felt was a topic that was, well, certifiably insane. That's right, me, with my decidedly liberal-for-Utah-and-therefore-conservative-by-any-other-standard self was actually annoyed by something that I had heard on NPR. I usually reserve that kind of outrage for Shawn Hannidy (or however you spell his name) and the like. But the interviewer had chosen to speak about a study that stated that the best thing we could do for the environment by having fewer children. I understand the logic under which they are operating, but what I heard was: "Blah, blah, blah, SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT BY GETTING RID OF OURSELVES."

What about biking to work? Taking walks instead of watching TV? Growing a garden? Teaching your children to take care of their surroundings and not waste things? Buying things with less packaging and reusing things to reduce waste?

NO. We should save the environment by getting rid of more of those nasty polluting humans. Let's keep our huge, excessive houses, our gas guzzling cars, and all our toys that use the worlds resources, let's just fill them with LESS PEOPLE. Yeah, that is totally selfless.

It was more than I could stand. After reading Heather Armstrong's (writer of dooce.com) sincere, irreverent and yet beautiful account of giving birth for the second time, it stung to hear childless (no-one with children called in with those comments) callers ranting about how irresponsible it was to have children in this over-crowded world .

Wait, What? It's irresponsible for two teenagers to have sex and create a child, yes. But having children will never be environmentally unsound. Though I am still scared of passing all my neuroses down to another generation, I still believe that the most beautiful thing you can do is create, love and raise a child. Why? Because I have had a child and God was there, and it was beautiful. I never knew I could experience that much joy. Jeff and I thank God everyday for our son and how he brightens our lives. I understand we should only have the amount of children that we can handle raising. But isn't that the point? Bringing up a generation to make better decisions than we did? I will never believe that the best answer is to get rid of the rising generation, or deny ourselves of the very thing that brings us closer to God. So, and you won't find me admitting this often, (sigh) sometimes NPR can get it wrong.