Joe | Every Earthling is My Family

ChildfreeOverpopulation

Jul 1

Written By Population Balance

Growing up in rural England, Joe knew early in life that he didn’t want children and felt a deep connection to the natural world. While navigating pressures to conform to “normal” life, he lost that connection in his 20s. Now, alongside his partner, he’s built a purposeful childfree life rooted in love for nonhumans — founding and managing an ecocentric journal called The Ecological Citizen and working to protect biodiversity, specifically insects, in his local habitat.

Joe (00:00):
One of the things that people often say to me when my choice to live a childfree life comes to light is, but you must have this sense of emptiness that you can't shift because there's something crucial and fundamental missing from your life. And I don't know what they're talking about if I'm going to be honest, because there's just so much beauty all around us and so many sources of enchantment from nonhuman life and so many sources of fulfillment if we have the time to stop and spend time in nature and absorb all that beauty. My family is every Earthling. So I will never run out of animal people to spend time with.
Nandita Bajaj (00:54):
That was today's guest, Joe.
Hi everyone, and thank you for joining me. My name is Nandita Bajaj and I'm the host of Beyond Pronatalism | Finding Fulfillment, With or Without Kids, an interview series in which through intimate conversations with women and men from diverse backgrounds, I explore how they are courageously and creatively navigating pronatalism, the often unspoken pressures to have children, whether from family, friends or the culture at large. In each episode I dive into personal stories with people who are forging unconventional pathways to fulfillment, including redefining what family means to them, whether that means being childfree or childless, having biological kids, adopting or fostering children or animals, or creating close-knit communities of friends and loved ones.
(01:45):
Hi Joe, welcome to the show. Really wonderful to have you.
Joe (01:49):
Thanks so much for having me. It's going to be really fun talking.
Nandita Bajaj (01:52):
I agree. So Joe, let's begin by hearing a little bit about your own background.
Joe (01:58):
Yeah, so I'm in my early forties. I've spent my whole life living in the United Kingdom. I grew up in rural England in an area called the Forest of Dean. So quite a naturey place. And I consider myself to be very fortunate in respect to having not had much direct pronatalist pressure exerted on me as I've grown up. And certainly as a young adult, I made the decision really early. I mean, I was really into the first years of adulthood when I became finally convinced I did not want to have children. I did not want biological children. Hearing other stories on this podcast and through personal contacts, I'm realizing more and more now how lucky I was to have grown up and to still be in a place where I'm not receiving much direct pronatalist pressure. Only a few years into my adulthood I got married. So I was I think 26 when I got married. My wife also grew up in the United Kingdom, but tracing her family back a generation before, her family was living in Calcutta in India. And, it is fair to say she has experienced more pronatalist pressure and obviously some of it has rubbed off slightly on me. But we've been married 17 years. We haven't brought any children into this world. We feel a solid family unit and we've been able to do that without ruffling too many feathers to put it one way.
Nandita Bajaj (03:32):
Yeah, this is really helpful background and I appreciate that you didn't experience personally any or very few pronatalist pressures, which is wonderful and reflective of a world that we'd like to see. But what was the landscape like in rural England generally outside of your family and relatives?
Joe (03:55):
So as I was growing up, the first school I went to was a Church of England Christian school, and that is only because that was the local school to go to. I'm an atheist and like with the choice to not have children, I knew I was an atheist very early in life. There was nothing I can recall that was specifically forcing a life choice involving bringing children into this world. And in general, I would say growing up in the eighties and nineties, it was a fairly liberal landscape in respect to people's personal choices were important and they mattered a lot. And not just in respect to my choice in regard to having children or not, but in respect to what education I wanted to follow, what type of career I might seek out. So it was all part and parcel of liberal progressive upbringing, which I'm very grateful.
(04:53):
What I would contrast that with though is making the choice as an individual is one thing, but trying to take a stance about human overpopulation being a major issue - that has proved to be a lot more either controversial or a subject of ridicule, I would say. But when I explain what I think about it, it may be the reasons for not wanting to bring children into the world, which is principally about overshoot and overpopulation and my love for nature, wanting to lead a life which doesn't sort of exacerbate the harms that humans as a species at causing. When I tried to explain that that's either been sort of laughed at as a bit of a silly position to take, I found or caused some angst. So making a personal choice is one thing and I found that's been respected, but trying to go beyond that and talk about this as being maybe a position that would be good for more people to adopt has not been so well received For a few years I was kind of thinking maybe I am strange having this idea, I'm going to stick with my choice, but maybe I should just let this one go.
(06:00):
But I found out about a charity in the UK, which is called Population Matters. It was such a great day when I found out they existed and I started reading into what they stood for and what they spoke about and I was like, okay, I'm not alone anymore. There's actually a lot of good sense in this idea of limiting ourselves reproductively.
Nandita Bajaj (06:23):
And how did you first arrive at the knowledge? Were you reading or was it more of an experiential thing that you were kind of seeing the degradation of the natural world around you?
Joe (06:35):
I think it came from reading first. So certainly as I was getting into my late teens, I read a lot of publications about the state of the world. I was really interested in it in a global sense. I was interested in statistics about it and that must surely have informed the position I took in my early adulthood of not wanting to have any children later on. Though that view has definitely been reinforced by direct experience. I'm now probably less interested in what the global statistics say. I'm not saying they're not important, but for me personally, what motivates me to want to live the way I do is actually direct firsthand experience. It's in part witnessing, for instance, a very obvious decline in the numbers of flying insects in the UK over the last 10, 15 years, which is attributable probably to use of pesticides to support our very large population.
(07:37):
The UK has a very dense population, so that was definitely significant. But also just wandering around and having an ordinance survey map. So the UK mapping system in my hand following a footpath, looking down, seeing, oh, in the next half mile I'm going to see some nice woodlands on my right and there'll be some open land on the left. And then encountering a huge housing estate being built. So one of the firsthand environmental impacts of overpopulation, there are more hidden impacts, which is all the additional food needed and the impacts on water and all of that. But yeah, it's very striking going for a walk and expecting from your map that you're going to be wandering past open land and then seeing housing estate, it has a certain impact on your mood and your mind.
Nandita Bajaj (08:23):
Definitely. And I think we're seeing a rise in that anxiety and grief for a lot of people who are seeing the places that they've loved disappear. I don't think we talk about that enough, the mental health impacts on us. I'd love to hear more about how you became interested in insects and nature generally.
Joe (08:47):
So that definitely goes way back to my early years on the planet. I had a relative who was really into wild flowers and I'd go for walks with them and they would introduce me to new species of flower and trees. And this is when I was 6, 7, 8, 9. In parallel, I just had an instinctive love of nonhuman life and then went to secondary school. So when I was 11 and things started to get a bit more serious, it was exams and jobs and well, I never felt any direct pressure as I've already said, that I had to follow a particular path. It was just the way that society funneled young minds towards certain subjects being more important than other subjects. And my love of nature got buried and although I had a sort of strong views about the need to protect the environment throughout my life, I think that love of nature that I had when I was 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, maybe 11, just still, it didn't resurface again until probably when I turned 30.
(10:00):
So I went maybe more than two whole decades of my life caring about the planet in a sense we needed to safeguard "resources" - that sort of thing. But having love of life really be something that guided everything I do on a daily basis - that only resurfaced again when I was in my thirties and now the last 10, 12 years I've spent catching up for lost time. So desperately trying to learn about all the nature around me that perhaps I could have been learning more about for those two missing decades. But I'm just grateful I got back to it when I did.
Nandita Bajaj (10:38):
I definitely share that remorse with you. Why did it take me so long to wake up to an ecocentric worldview? And what was it in your early thirties that woke you up to this worldview and how did that align also with your life path of having chosen to not have children?
Joe (10:59):
I think it was probably just a case of my subconscious realizing that enough is enough, seeing the way the world was going, something must have clicked when I hit 30. Then my experiences as a young child came back and were reinforced by what I'd learned since then. And of course I wanted to do something about it. So I decided to go down to part-time working something I've always wanted to do. In my case, I wanted to go part-time to allow me to return to study. So my studies has ended at the age of 21, I had a degree in zoology, so obviously I still cared somewhat about animals. Then in my early thirties, I went back to formal education on a part-time basis and studied for a Master's in Forestry and they really let me start to explore ideas about ecocentrism, biocentrism in the essays I was writing as part of the course, which was brilliant. Meanwhile, I'm getting more and more of this hard data by relearning about the state of the world's forests, which is important. But it was really having the time to spend more time walking around outdoors, seeing firsthand, getting involved in recording biodiversity. All of these things work together, but it really was this firsthand experience of the state of life on earth that probably tipped me over the edge into a hardcore ecocentric, let's say.
Nandita Bajaj (12:31):
Nice. And you said you woke up to that around the age of 30 and you had already been married for a few years by that time. What was it that brought you and your wife together? Was there a shared love for nature or philosophy?
Joe (12:48):
I think it was caring about the environment, definitely. So we met at university and some of our conversations were about that, other common interests, and probably in a way actually bonding over the fact we didn't want to have children. My wife knew at an early age she didn't want to have children either. Her reasons might be slightly different than mine, but it actually strengthened our bond. But I think the pressure shifted from being one of expectation from others to the fear of disappointing others. So that sort of playing at the back of your mind that your choices do have impacts on other people, although that should absolutely be the choice of a couple. You are aware that it will disappoint your parents, it will deprive them of grandchildren. We are both lucky in that each of us has one sibling and that sibling has gone on to have two children on both sides. And I don't know what that pressure would've looked like differently if we'd been only children or if our siblings hadn't done that. So I can only speak for what happened, but I must be realistic and say that that certainly lessened our fear of causing disappointment because at least they had some grandchildren even if we weren't contributing.
Nandita Bajaj (14:08):
And that makes sense. And so given that you've been married for 17 years and you've been leading a childfree life, what has that allowed you to do with your life, knowing from such an early age that you didn't even have to navigate this decision? How did that change your life path?
Joe (14:26):
It undoubtedly has taken significant pressures off us that would've existed. Personally, I don't mind admitting that I cope very poorly with anxiety. And separately from my decision in respect to children, I try to lead a life that keeps me away from potential sources of anxiety as much as possible. So I think it's very good that I made the choice I did, and my wife made the choice she did with respect to children because I'm not sure I would've coped at all in this increasingly complex world being responsible for the lives of one or more young people. So that's one thing. The other thing is really about what one can do with their free time. That is a very positive reality of not having children. So after finishing the Master's in Forestry, I've stayed part-time. In fact, I've gone down to working two days a week, so 15 hours. And in the sort of free time I've got, having finished my studies, I've tried to put it to some good use.
(15:32):
So one of the things I've done and continue to spend time on is co-founding an ecological journal called The Ecological Citizen, which is an entirely volunteer-led project. Its mission has always been to offer a safe space for publishing ecocentric ideas, articles that challenge human supremacy, and that feels like a really good way to use my time. But other things I've been involved in have often ended up with me spending lots of time in front of a computer. So I've got my two days a week working where I'm in front of a computer and I saw that it could very easily end up with me actually being in front of a computer five or six days each week, just doing two days working and three or four days volunteering for various projects. So beyond that, I've tried to get involved in more activities outdoors, spending time in nature.
(16:26):
So one of the things that I really love doing is recording biodiversity, especially insects. So that just involves going on a walk somewhere, it may be a nature-rich place, it may be an urban environment. And identifying the animals and the plants I've seen to species level and then submitting the data of what I saw and where I saw it and when I saw it to a national database of biodiversity in the UK. One of the things that people often say to me when my choice to live a childfree life comes to light is, but you must have this sense of emptiness that you can't shift because there's something crucial and fundamental missing from your life. And I don't know what they're talking about if I'm be honest, because there's just so much beauty all around us and so many sources of enchantment from nonhuman life.
(17:26):
All of the things that people get from bringing children into the world, I personally think are there to be got from just spending time in nature, getting to know perhaps animals in some deep way, whether that's through having pets or whether that's through getting to know the birds who visit your garden. It obviously would be easy for to just pretend that I don't have a feeling of emptiness when I do. I don't. There's just so much wonder and so much beauty and so many sources of fulfillment if we have the time to stop and spend time in nature and absorb all that beauty. My family is every Earthling, so I will never run out of animal people to spend time with.
Nandita Bajaj (18:13):
That's very beautifully captured. There is an endless source of awe and wonder on Earth. I also, I don't know what emptiness means from that perspective, and I really, really love how you've shared it. Is there anything else you'd like to add to your story that we haven't touched on?
Joe (18:37):
I'll mention one other thing, which is about insects where my particular passion has ended up going down with natural history in the world around me. And it's a relatively recent crystallization of ideas that have been kicking around in the back of my head somewhere for many years. But in entomology - the study of insects - it's been the case for many decades that there is this unquestionable truth that killing is necessary and it's done in some cases almost unthinkingly, that to know which insects are out there, which insects are in a wood, which insects are in a meadow, we have to kill them to allow them to be IDed to species level or to increase the efficiency or the objectivity scientifically of doing that. So I've been uncomfortable with that really from the start of getting into studying insects on an amateur basis, but only recently did these ideas finally crystallize, as I say, and just something I felt like I could express.
(19:41):
But writing is where I feel most comfortable expressing myself. So I was able to write an article a couple of months ago on something which I've called compassionate entomology. So it's proposing an alternative way to study insects. It's challenging the norm that killing is fine, and it's saying that as entomologists, we can be kinder and we can be more compassionate to the insects who we study. And also that I think conservation and conservation efforts in these times of mass extinction would not be hampered by taking this approach. I honestly don't think that we get that much more information that we can actually use by killing everything so systematically. And going around, making observations of live insects in the field can get us as much information as we could ever possibly use to try and stave off the extinction crisis, which is hitting insects as hard as any group of organisms.
Nandita Bajaj (20:42):
Well, I'm so heartened to hear that you are studying something that is so underrepresented even within conservation work. And I think even when we do talk about insects or the conservation of insects for biodiversity, it's always done from a perspective of what they mean for human wellbeing. And I think what you're pointing to with this compassionate entomology is what would it mean to give them the respect and dignity of which they are as worthy as we are. It's really nice to hear you're doing that, and I'm really grateful that you decided to join me on the show. Thank you so much, Joe.
Joe (21:25):
Thank you. It's been a real pleasure, and I'm not just saying that it really has, and I'm so happy that in the majority of these areas we seem to have struck a personal cord where we are finding great similarities in our experiences of growing up and then leading adult lives with slightly with views that differ from the norm. And it's just really nice to talk to other people who've experienced that and realize there's lots of us out there.
Nandita Bajaj (21:51):
Yeah, I very much agree, and I also am so grateful that you decided to share your story. Thank you so much. That's all for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. What did you think of this episode? Do you have your own story you'd like to share? Check out the show notes to see how you can get in touch with me. Whether you'd like to share feedback about the show or a particular episode, or whether you'd like to join me on the show to share your own story. I'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much again for joining me today as we collectively discover and celebrate the many different pathways to fulfillment Beyond Pronatalism. BEyond Pronatalism is brought to you by Population Balance, the only nonprofit organization advancing ecological and reproductive justice by confronting pronatalism. This podcast is produced and hosted by me, Nandita Bajaj, with the support of my production team, Josh Wild and Alan Ware.