No Future, No Children; or No Children, No Future? Or Neither? Reproductive Reluctance as a Form of Adaptation to Climate Change Futures

Fitzmaurice, Matilda (2026) No Future, No Children; or No Children, No Future? Or Neither? Reproductive Reluctance as a Form of Adaptation to Climate Change Futures. Geographical Journal, 192 (2): e70094. ISSN 0016-7398

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Abstract

Could reproductive reluctance constitute a form of ‘adaptation’ to climate change? This commentary takes younger people's reportedly growing climate change‐related anxieties about having children as a starting point for reflections on researching and making (non)reproductive futures in geography and beyond. First, it reflects on the value of a rejection of reproductive futurism, or the reduction of the future to the ‘Child’ (Edelman 2004), and the need for a new antinormative vocabulary in an era of unprecedented environmental destruction. Second, it articulates how the already vast rift between the generations has taken on geological form, and suggests looking to the deep history of the human (e.g., Clark and Whittle 2023) when thinking of how to live in the future. Third and final, it addresses the tensions between progress, reproduction and adaptation as highly contested narratives of future‐making. It concludes by suggesting adaptation as an accountable yet affirmative approach to (non)reproductive futures.