Are Climate Change and Fertility Rates Related?

Here’s a slap for all the boomers out there who are hoping to be grandparents. I’m afraid I have bad news for some of you. Things aren’t going too well on the millennial baby-making side of things. And one of the reasons will floor you.

One of my favorite parts of living in the retirement belt is the holidays, when the kids and grandkids of our friends and neighbors come to visit.

It’s kind of a joke around here if you’re from the North, which I am originally, a long time ago, like 30 years and 13 stops ago. If you have friends and family up North, live in Florida near the beach and have more than one bedroom, you better put a revolving door on your house. You’ll need it.

There are so many visitors between Thanksgiving and Easter that we now tell everyone to bring their own sheets and towels. And rent a car. We don’t pick up people at the airport anymore.

During the winter and early spring holidays, we are overrun with kids walking and biking to and from the beach and spending time with their grandparents. In many cases, their parents come along too.

It’s a breath of fresh air to have so many kids around, but based on current fertility rates and anxiety about a certain topic, they may not be in all of our futures.

Fertility rates hit a record low last year. Since 1960, the average number of children per woman has dropped from 4 to around 1.8.

Most of the reasons we have fewer grandchildren are ones we’ve all heard before: nontraditional relationships and more women choosing careers over family.

But here’s a reason I’ll bet you haven’t heard that concerns millennials and procreation.

It seems a growing number of millennials refuse to make our grandchildren not because of the cost (kids are expensive). Not because they want a career or even because they don’t like kids. No, a growing reason many won’t have children is… I am dead serious… climate change.

Before you start writing in telling me I’m crazy, I swear this is true.

They’re called “Baby Doomers” and there is a nationwide organization called Conceivable Futures that calls climate change a “reproduction crisis.”

This organization hosts living room discussions across the U.S. where men and women can share their fears and anxieties about having children in a world whose climate is changing.

Men in their 20s are actually considering vasectomies because of the weather!

Hello, is it me or has this climate thing gone way too far?

In addition to costs, careers and late-night crying, climate change is moving up on the list of reasons for not making grandkids.

If you’re holding your breath, waiting for your new bundle of joy that goes home to their house when you’re tired of them, it’s looking pretty bleak. You might want to consider exhaling.

Whatever happened to “I want to have fun for a few years first… and then have kids”?

Good investing,

Steve