I don’t like to talk about whether my pregnancy’s are planned because if you say yes then people think you are an idiot who’s promoting teen pregnancy and if you say no people think you’re and idiot who doesn’t use birth control. Also I think what matters more is that my partner and I are both thrilled to be having our second and we’ll love them unconditionally just as we do our daughter. This is the last question i will answer that asks if this baby was planned. Thank you very much :) !

These are some very interesting questions and I have thought a bit about some of these issues along with adoption before. There are both economic and environmental implications upon having children.  Overpopulation is a complex global problem and I don’t think that just choosing not to have children is the best way to tackle it.  For example I think that it’s important for more people, especially developing nations to be more educated on sex and have access to free birth control. This would help reduce the large amount of unwanted children, whose family is not in a position to support them. I think helping people who don’t want children to not have children is a far more sensible way to try and reduce overpopulation as opposed to stopping people desperately wanting children from having them.

On the other hand children in many cases provide positively to the economy. Many governments in fact are desperate to raise the birth rate and even provide monetary compensation to new parents in an effort to encourage them to raise the birth rate. In most developed nations there is a rapidly ageing population and it’s important that the younger generations have enough working tax payers to ensure that the elderly will be adequately supported.

Although I’m all for adoption, I’m relatively certain that my love and I will not be adopting. There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly unlike in earlier years there are far more people wanting to adopt within Australia than there are babies up for adoption. In fact from 2009-2010 there were only 13 in country adoptions throughout NSW (my state). 13! That is a tiny number! There were slightly more children adopted from overseas but still no where near the amount of couples wanting to adopt. Also the process of adopting is very slow and difficult. I wish to have my children young and I doubt that my love and I would even be accepted to be on the waiting list for adoption. On the of chance I did get accepted to be on the waiting list I would not feel right as there would be other people waiting for children that could not physically have their own children and I would feel as though I was taking a child away from them. It is sad that there are so many unwanted children throughout the world but at the present time the actually adoption process does not accommodate them well.

Nobody knows what the future holds and I think it’s important not to let fear of an overcrowded future prevent you from having happiness today. I mean there could be some large national disaster that wipes out half the population tomorrow (unlikely but still possible). Instead I think we all should be working today to both do right by the environment and also to raise children that really do care and want to make positive changes that will contribute to our environmental future.

Anyway I waffled on a lot but hopefully I made a bit of sense and satisfied your curiosity. I think it’s important to remember that the size of your family doesn’t determine whether or not you are an unselfish and responsible citizen.  If you desire a child and can support them I don’t think worrying about the future over population of the world should stop you. Thanks for the question : ). Xx

Sure : ). I’ve always wanted to travel and plan on travelling a lot throughout my life. Exploring the world with my children has always been my dream. My love and I are deferring school for the year and plan to return to school next year. It’s actually cheaper to travel around Asia than it is to live where I currently do. We will be travelling very slowly, staying about a month in each place, I definitely don’t want to be rushing around and catching planes/buses/etc every few days with a young baby. Plus travelling slowly lets you really get to know a place well. We haven’t mapped out exactly where we want to go yet but we’ll be trying to stay in quieter less touristy locations. So far we’re hoping to start in Indonesia, then go to Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and finish in Thailand. We’ll be back in Australia for the summer time and Christmas.