New research will ask Australian women if climate change and its impacts across the community will influence their decision to have children.
The national study is seeking input from mothers and potential mothers about how the impacts of climate change, including Australia's recent bushfires and major floods, is shaping their feelings about child-bearing and motherhood.
"We are living through an era in which climate-fuelled crises increasingly demand our attention," Flinders University researcher Kris 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."
Professor Natalier will work on the project with Professor of Emotions and Society Mary Holmes from the University of Edinburgh and University of Tasmania historian Carla Pascoe Leahy.
"We are already seeing rising numbers of women deciding to abandon or postpone their desire to have children," Dr Pascoe Leahy said.
"Others have decided to limit family sizes and still others who are already mothers reconsidering the best ways to raise their children for a future climate that is uncertain as parenting practices are disrupted by disasters that up-end everyday family life,"
Prof Natalier said government policy and media coverage had focused on the impacts of climate change on health, illness and death, and the economic ramifications on employment and working conditions.
"But we seek to document, measure and find responses to the profound changes occurring at a community level," she said.
People wishing to take part in the study can contact carla.pascoeleahy@utas.edu.au or Kris.natalier@flinders.edu.au
Australian Associated Press
