When my husband and I married, we kept going back and forth about whether or not we wanted biological children. Every year, we’d say, “Well, maybe next year,” until we realized that something about having biological children together felt wrong (for us, personally).
This visualization [https://www.visualcapitalist.com/animation-population-growth-history/] from the American Museum of Natural History explains our reasoning well, and watching it actually helped shape my decision to not bear children.
Jordan and I want children, but we also don’t want to contribute to the unsustainable swelling of the human population. We made that choice less for us, and more for future generations.
Firstly, we want to be part of curbing population growth by not bringing more people into the world.
Secondly, we want to adopt, bringing into our lives, hearts, and home a child (or children) who have been left behind. We believe that there is a child out there just as beautiful and capable of being unconditionally loved by us as a child that we could make together.
I have four sisters, and none of us share the same combination of parents and not all of us are even blood related. But we love each other more than anything in the world, and our bonds are not, and have never been, dependent on shared genes.
I believe continuing this type of family dynamic is my path, and I look forward to finally meeting my son or daughter, who is out there somewhere now, waiting for our paths to merge.
Submitted by Emily Engel.