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Rachel Ries’ decision not to have children evolved slowly and through many of the typical reasons, including relationships and career.

But when the 37-year-old Minneapolis singer-songwriter wrote about it in an online testimonial two years ago, her rationale was nothing less than global climate change. “I have no confidence I’d leave my daydream children or grandchildren with a hospitable home on this planet,” she wrote, “and I can’t abide that.”

Her mother, Shirley Ries of Freeman, S.D., was stunned. “I couldn’t even read that article again, it made me so sad,” she said, recalling how her daughter often talked about wanting children. “She would be such a wonderful mother.”

Although Shirley Ries and her husband say they fully support their daughter, they and others agree these can be strange and sorrowful moments for grandparents-not-to-be these days.

It’s hard to know what to say to our adult children when the apocalypse is part of their family planning.

An increasingly big worry for ‘baby doomers’

Fears about climate change are probably not the main reason U.S. birthrates have declined during the past decade, particularly among those under 30. The 2007-09 recession’s lingering effects and burdensome student debt have no doubt played a bigger role.

But at least some of our adult children — maybe more than we realize — say worries about a world disrupted by a hotter climate are causing them to rethink having children. Some have named these reluctant millennials “baby doomers.”

“I’m not sure whether the trend is growing, but the amount of conversation about it sure is,” said Meghan Kallman, a postdoctoral research associate in sociology at Brown University and co-founder of the Conceivable Future project, which calls climate change a reproductive crisis.



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The nonprofit, created in 2014, doesn’t discourage people from having children, but instead creates opportunities for people to express anxieties about the question, in living room forums across the country or on its website, where testimonials range from women with kids pondering their futures to men in their 20s contemplating vasectomies.

A grandparent’s dilemma

Where does that leave grandparents? Josephine Ferorelli, the group’s other founder, says many of these young people are highly conflicted. On the one hand, they are angry at their parents’ generation for creating the climate change crisis. On the other, they want to see their parents become grandparents. “They’re pulled in both directions at once,” she says. “It’s never a totally antiseptic decision you make without the involvement of your family.”

But involvement is limited when it comes to the decision itself. Although I’m nearing the typical age of a grandparent, having grandchildren is decidedly not my choice to make — a fact I knew even before temporary U.S. immigration policy declared grandparents are not bona fide relatives. Our adult children own their reproductive choices.