Narratives of Reproductive Decision-Making in the Unprecedented Present and an Unimaginable Future

• In Event: 40820 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5: Reproductive Justice

Abstract

How are climate change concerns shaping young people’s reproductive decision-making? Population decline and corresponding increases in pronatalism are receiving international attention, even becoming popular talking points in the 2024 presidential election. Climate change is an existential threat to civilization and researchers recognize that massive structural change is necessary to address this crisis. As new lexicons of “climate anxiety” and “eco-grief” enter popular culture, many individuals are grappling with the impacts of their personal choices and behaviors. Increasing numbers of young people report that they are choosing not to have children, or are at least expressing deep ambivalence and reservations about raising children in the coming decades. To investigate this issue in public discourse, we conduct a content analysis of 15 years of popular news articles. Using the Factiva database, we collected all relevant news articles from the four largest U.S. newspapers by circulation (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today) for the period of time covering January 1, 2010 through July 1, 2024. Our final coded corpus includes all articles (n=86) discussing “family planning,” “having” or “raising children,” and “reproductive decision-making” in the context of “climate change,” “global warming,” and increasing levels of “extreme weather” and “natural disasters.” We coded all articles for these topics, alongside references to experts, connections to other forms of crisis (like economic precarity and rising inequality), and overall framing (pro vs. antinatal). We present major themes that emerged and areas of continued analysis, including: (1) a quantitative overview of our coded themes, including change over time; (2) how this issue is gendered, especially in regards to themes of selfishness and personal responsibility; and (3) how this issue relates to partisanship, and growing divides about how the respective political parties view the role of structural versus individual solutions to the world’s problems.

Authors

• Jamie Louise Budnick, Cornell University

• Shio Lim, Cornell University