Paper short abstract:

We explore (re)imaginings of reproduction and kinship in relation to climate change. We analyse interviews and textual materials regarding people's reconsiderations about having and raising children in the Anthropocene from Global North organisations such as BirthStrike.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we explore (re)imaginings of reproduction and kinship in relation to climate change. Here, reproduction is centred as both an imaginative act, and one contingent upon particular future imaginaries. This paper draws upon analysis of interviews and textual materials from particular organisations and forums in the Global North such as BirthStrike, Conceivable Future and No Future No Children which gather pledges, declarations and testimonials asserting people's reproductive intentions as statements of concern about climate crisis. Out of this material, urgency, precarity and windows of time - from 'biological clocks' to the time left to save the planet - emerge to generate new reproductive imaginaries. What happens to reproduction when the horizon of a liveable future is seen to be so radically destabilised? How do people imagine family life and their children's futures in relation to their expectations of what climate change will mean? How do these imaginings express concern about future life in the Anthropocene? Participants share a bedrock of common concerns - existential anxiety around an uninhabitable earth, species extinctions, water and food shortages, societal upheaval, conflict and forced migration. However, from these shared worries, a wide range of different responses and reconsiderations appear; from re-thinking the very local decision of whether to have children, through to organising politically and socially to enable more liveable futures. A shared concern for reproduction thus generates new and diverse visions: of the roots of the crisis, its solutions, and what agency and practise might mean in this imagined future.