What an interesting article on fertility rates (The Henry Mance Interview, January 29). As a woman who chose not to have children in the 1980s, I was worried about global population trends and their effect on the environment even then. My husband was not that worried about having children and we both wanted enjoyable careers. Or to put it another way, I was among the first generation of women to have a real choice.
Global population has nearly trebled since my birth; we still have no effective road map for dealing with climate change: emissions are still rising and climate effects are obvious but underplayed by our male-dominated business and political structures.
The long-held desire of parents in many cultures to have boys rather than girls means there is an imbalance.
The world is a more aggressively masculine place and the worse for that.
When in the US, male power conspires to overturn long-held women’s rights so that a woman who gets pregnant in Texas cannot make a choice.
Or when a woman in India or the UK cannot walk the streets safely; when the nearly all-male Chinese Communist party puts women under pressure to have babies; and when social media encourages young men to believe that violence against women is the norm, are you really surprised that women who have had a small taste of freedom say “not for me”.
Or possibly subconsciously and collectively, humanity is responding to the fact we are now what is threatening the future of life on the planet. So in line with Darwin’s theory, we should “evolve our behaviour or go extinct”.
Lesley Ellis
Coull, Aberdeenshire, UK
