My Child-Free Choice

For a long time, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to become a parent. The climate crisis clinched my decision.

- Jenna Ross

WHEN I WAS EIGHT years old, playing with Barbies, I always imagined they were businesswomen wearing power suits and living in a big city. Barbie was the only model I'd seen of a woman whose identity wasn't wrapped up in motherhood. By the time I was 12, I dreamed of one day travelling, having adventures, owning pets. All of my life goals had one thing in common: they didn't include kids. After babysitting other people's children, I'd come home and say, "I don't want this." My family and friends told me I'd change my mind.

I went on to study sociology and environmental studies at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. I spent four years thinking deeply about the state of the Earth. In 2006, during my third year, I saw the effects of climate change firsthand when I did an exchange program at the University of Western Sydney in Australia. In one of my environmental science classes we took a field trip to the Pejar Dam, which supplies water to the city of Goulburn. For the first time in its 27-year history, it was practically empty. It can hold 9,000 megalitres of water, but it was down to just three.

We walked along the bottom of the dam, cracked and dry, where there should have been water. Hoses and sprinklers were banned, and residents were using buckets of water to shower. Until Australia, I realized, I'd only understood the climate crisis in theory. Walking around the university, I'd pass through the haze of wildfire smoke. I kept expecting class to be cancelled, but things were business as usual. These experiences opened my eyes.