Title：Young people, climate change and reproduction in Australia
Speaker：Celia Roberts（Professor, School of Sociology at the Australian National University）
Host：Lake Lui（Associate Professor. Department of Sociology, NTU）
Time：2024/11/28（Thur.） 12:30-14:00
Venue：Department of Sociology and Social Work R319
About the speech
Young people in the Global North, including Australia, are increasingly stating that concerns about climate crisis are shaping their thoughts and decisions about having children. My research team, co-lead with Prof Mary Lou Rasmussen, interviewed 36 heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, asexual, cis, trans and gender diverse Australians who were not yet parents to explore how they are making sense of relations between population, reproduction and climate. We found that young people are exposed to contradictory discourses about the importance of having children alongside environmentalist and feminist calls to refuse to reproduce to ‘save the planet’ and reduce population. Many interviewees expressed strong concerns about what their future children might face due to climate crisis, reporting that talking about these concerns with parents and peers, and ‘coming out’ as not wanting children, were difficult. This paper explores what these findings imply for feminist theorizing about reproduction, population and environmentalism.
About the Speaker
Celia Roberts is a Professor in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. She is the author of several books on reproduction, embodiment, health and feminism, including most recently, Reproduction, Kin and Climate Crisis: Making bushfire babies, with Mary Lou Rasmussen, Louisa Allen and Rebecca Williamson. She is currently also working on the translation of epigenetics into antenatal care in Australia and will be discussing this research in other talks during her visit to Taiwan.
