Reacting to the bomb to come

I was doing some research at the public library the other day, paging through LIFE
magazines from 1970. Ecology—as in acid rain, etc.—was an issue of
great public concern at the time, with predictions that within a decade
people would be wearing gas masks to survive pollution. Even more
urgent, though, was “population pollution.”

I remember this, of course, and know that my generation was
profoundly shaped by it. But I had forgotten the details, and now I saw
them again. A biologist saying, for example, “Each American baby
represents 50 times as great a threat to the planet as each Indian
baby.”

A sense of dread about the future was forming already in the 1960s. Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb
in 1968 and used the image of a disease: “We can no longer afford
merely to treat the symptoms of the cancer of population growth; the
cancer itself must be cut out. Population control is the only answer.”

In LIFE, Feb. 20, 1970, Robert Ardrey wrote a
passionate and stinging piece called “Control of Population” in which he
pointed out how nature limits the number of nearly every species and
said  it was time that man [sic] did the same. We might either adapt “a
sane and humane program of population control,” he said, or face “death
by stress.”

Ardrey went on, “We must consider enforced contraception, whether
through taxation on surplus children, or through more severe means such
as conception license, replacing or supplementing the marriage license.”
Abortion should be freely available, he said, and aid refused to
countries who “fail to control their numbers.” Alongside ads for
cigarettes, Maidenform bras, and long sleek automobiles, there were
articles about abortion,  vasectomies, new fears about the Pill, and a
students’ crusade for ZPG (zero population growth).

These were topics of interest also to the church. In the
theologically conservative Mennonite denomination we were part of at the
time, a paper at a 1967 study conference addressed “Christian
Responsibility in Relation to Planned Parenthood,” which to my knowledge
came out positive for contraception. A 1973 article by David
Waltner-Toews in the denomination’s paper, “Overpopulation and
Anabaptist Values,” urged intelligent control in light of the “grim
picture” of over-population, noting that Anabaptist values such as
caring community validated such a stance.

So, we took it seriously and responded by having small families. Many
of our friends stopped at two; some of us braved three. The few couples
who had four or even more were considered very courageous indeed — or
foolish.

I’m not remembering and saying all this in order to render an opinion
on family size. I grew up in a large family and then had a small
family, and our children are making their own family decisions, and I’m
grateful for all of them. Good and faithful families come in all sizes.

Nor is my look back particularly critical, even if, as Denyse O’Leary claims in a ChristianWeek
column in 2007, “the nearly universal 1970s expert freakout on
overpopulation was simply wrong.” It may sound slightly defensive, in
fact, though I hope in an explanatory way. The point is, we who started
our families in the 70s did so within a particular milieu, one that
posited fear and urgency about population matters, an urgency that
combined with other societal changes such as the role of women and
progress on human rights. One easily forgets, until immersed for a few
hours in some artifacts of the past like magazines, how comprehensive
“current” culture was/is, how it shapes us, how we make our worlds
within it, whether reacting for or against.

History rarely consoles, I find, but is enormously necessary for
understanding ourselves and other generations. Today the challenges of
Western countries around population involve an aging demographic and low
birthrates. It’s a world my generation will have to take some
responsibility for making, yes, just as our parents acted on postwar
optimism to create the swarm of Boomers presently turning into elders.
Humbling, for all of us.

Originally posted at Borrowing Bones