A new research is seeking to find out how climate change influences reproductive and child-rearing decisions, focusing on whether Australian women consider the world a safe and promising place for children and the next generation to flourish.
The study will also be seeking input about how the impacts of climate change, including Australia’s recent bushfires and major floods, are influencing the feelings and potential decisions of women about childbearing and motherhood.
According to Flinders University researcher and ‘Maternal Futures’ chief investigator,Professor Kris Natalier, the 2022 pilot study also aims to reflect upon reproductive and child-rearing sentiments, decisions and practices in the “age of climate change.
“We are living through an era in which climate-fuelled crises increasingly demand our attention,” Natalier said.”For women who foresee a future in which climate change accelerates and disasters worsen, it has become increasingly problematic to bring new life into this troubled horizon of crises becoming even more frequent and elongated.”
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Natalier is expected to work with University of Tasmania historian Dr Carla Pascoe Leahy to develop a conceptual framework for further studies.
In her reaction, Leahy said that the framework has been tested through analysis of testimonies from women whose fertility decisions were unsettled by climate covered on the US Conceivable Futures website.
“We are already seeing rising numbers of women deciding to abandon or postpone their desire to have children,” she said, adding that the study will seek to assess and measure the links between environmental studies and family studies and help quantify the flow-on effects upon society and family of the climate crisis.
Story was adapted from News Medical Life Sciences
