Customer Reviews

Maybe One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single Child Families

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Bill McKibben has written a book that is not only much needed but a wake up call to those who care about the entire earth environment and what effect multi-child families have.

As the mother of one child, a son who is now raised and responsible and happy I am always looking for books that dispel the myths about only children being selfish, spoiled, maladjusted loners (the authors words). The author doesn't just talk theory. And he walks his talk, in sharing the personal choice and experience of having a vasectomy.

His work is thorough in showing how misplaced and out of context religious admonishments to go forth and multiply are. How we no longer need large families to work the farms much less the nine month school year. That we as a society need to rethink what children should be to society at large and get over the whole lug headed logic that as women we are not complete unless we reproduce and do so more than once. Or that real men are only the ones who create an heir, and usually a male one at that.

I also appreciated immensely his challenging people to stop seeing a child as a hobby and start looking at the child as an individual with rights and that an only child that is reared with a mindset of personal responsibility is the best future citizen. And the fact is as his work shows, is this. Todays family with more than one child is the very family who succumbs to guilt buying. Over consuming and children with poor health i.e.obesity and altruistic thought that is not embraced but if taught is done so out of guilt feelings.

the book is split into four sections. Part One: Family Part Two: Species Part Three: Nation Part Four: Self. And am so grateful the author has noted the works of Granville Stanley Hall who was born in 1844 and would go on to John Hopkins and do some earthshaking research as well as create the first research university in psychology.

Maybe One by Bill McKibben

The importance of this book to the near future of the United States is hard to exaggerate. It is a must for every young American, and everyone who cares about the quality of human life and of the environment.

McKibben's premise is this: if large numbers of people choose to limit their families to one child, the maximum population of the United States will be lower by a critical amount.

Most environmental thinkers recognize the central role of population growth in environment issues, including in this country. The United States is the third most populous country in the world, and the fastest growing industrialized nation. Bill McKibben has the courage to tell the truth: the only way to limit population growth is to choose small families. Deciding how many children to have, like it or not, is more than a private decision. It is very much a decision that will effect the quality of life of all Americans over the next 100 years.

McKibben gently demolishes long-held beliefs in the poor adjustment of only children. He also argues against legislated population control, though one might make the case that such measures may become necessary if voluntary family limits fail.

McKibben's relaxed, peppy style makes this book accessible to everyone, and his topic is the most important one for contemporary America.

This is a fine book that gives a measured, objective (as much as possible) analysis on the decision of whether to add another human being to the surface of the earth. I'm constantly amazed how often population is neglected entirely (or casually brushed off) when discussing policies from urban sprawl to species loss to global warming. Of course population isn't the only factor (wealth and lifestyle are obviously key as well), but who can seriously question that our environmental impact on the earth would be more manageable if we had fewer people? Think about your average day....waking up and showering, eating breakfast, driving to work, etc. Go out and surf the Internet and start calculating your individual environmental impact (there are a host of useful sites out there). The coal burned to light your house, your office and all of the places you visit during the day. The metals, woods and plastics harvested, processed, stored and shipped to build your home, the appliances within it, your automobile, your consumer electronics, books, dishes and your clothes. The water, herbicides and fuel used to produce the food you consume. And don't forget waste. Start adding up your sewer impact, the amount of garbage you generate week after week, month after month. And don't forget the garbage you contribute to at work, the park and the restaurant. And so on.... The final toll is staggering. Simply in terms of home electricity use, for example, the average American household will easily burn more than 300 pounds of coal and generate more than 600 pounds of atmospheric CO2 per month. Then start multiplying these numbers by 280 million (Americans), and (although using different and lower multipliers) 6 billion+ human beings.

The inescapable truth glaring through this sort of calculation is that unless you manage a SuperFund site, you are not likely to make a more environmentally important decision in your life than whether to add another human being to the earth (and if so, how many). Perhaps McKibben's book will help reduce the ridiculous spectacles I see where a bountiful family of multiple children scamper from a monstrous SUV (with Earth Day bumper sticker) at a recycle site, offering some newspapers and crushed cans and then hulking home (after gassing up, of course), beaming and self-congratulatory at what they are doing for the earth compared to their wasteful brethren in, say, India. You can reuse and recycle to your little heart's content and not come close to having a fraction of the environmental impact of not having had one of those children-particularly American children.

Now at this point someone will usually ask "but what if that child not born had grown up to be another Ed Begley, Jr or John Muir???" Of course it's just as likely (that is, unknowable) that the child will be another Rush Limbaugh Julian Simon, arguing that ultimately human ingenuity will always find a way out of our problems (since it always has in the past). The fact is I fear Simon may be right (at least on this point). Humans probably will find a way around most if not all of the limitations on human growth and continued happiness. Unfortunately many of those "limitations" will be much of the rest of the ecosystem. If you live comfortably in a human-centered worldview where humans properly exercise dominion over birds and the fishes, then stay tuned, you're going to love the next few hundred years. If, however, you value other components of the ecosystem other than humans (or acknowledge their right to exist whether we value them or not), Simon won't have much to tell you. You can't get something out of nothing. Each of the 240,000 new humans added to the earth each day aren't eating nothing or building their homes from nothing or fueling their fires and cars and machines from nothing. They will get these things from something, and that something is the rest of our ecosystem. The plain fact of the matter is that as human population expands, other components of our ecosystem contract. Humans are rapidly converting earth biomass to human biomass. If you like that state of affairs, keep on truckin'. Otherwise read McKibben's book and take some meaningful action to work to an alternative...

Maybe One is an important book that is sure to ruffle a lot of feathers. Bill McKibben's background might for some evoke a walking contradiction and, indeed, his argument for single-child families could perpetuate that image. However, I prefer to view McKibben and his "argument" as complex, not easily lumped into a neat category, and willing to be unpopular--compelling qualities in both books and people. I have recommended (highly) this book to friends who, like my husband and me, have determined to raise an only child and whose decision has been met with disbelief or disdain. I have also praised it to people in my life who have been unsupportive of our decision to have one child. So if McKibben had simply taken on the role of only-child cheerleader, I must admit that I would be first in line to buy Maybe One if only for a validation of my own life choice. But McKibben is not in the easy business of validation. His scientific, historically grounded appro! ach is first and foremost about irrefutable consequence, whether the reader has ten children, one, or none at all.

An environmental writer tends to think about the future more than most of us. His stock in trade is what is happening to the world around us and the probability trends describing what is to come. But that investigative concern is heightened by having a child - it becomes much more personal. Bill McKibben is just that kind of environmental writer and his young daughter inspired the research that led to this book.

Unlike many environmental books this one is a quick and easy read. It touches on the personal, social, economic, and ecological aspects of starting a family that all of us should discuss. The book keeps a positive tone even though the facts presented warn of a future few parents would wish on their child. The book is both educational and a call to action on a personal and societal level.

The theme of the book could be his statement that we may live in a special time. "We may live in the strangest, most thoroughly different moment since humans took up farming 10,000 years ago and time more or less commenced. Since then time has flowed in one direction - toward more, which we have taken to be progress. At first the momentum was gradual, almost imperceptible, checked by wars and dark ages and plagues and taboos; but in recent centuries it has accelerated, the curve of every graph steepening like the Himalayas rising from the Asian steppe. We need to see if we're finally running up against some limits."

McKibben thinks part of the answer to our growing population will be to encourage single-child families. With additional children there's a dilution of family resources. "Money, yes, but more important, the parents" time and emotional and physical energy."

In many ways smaller families will be benefit us all as we move into a future of population pressures, overconsumption, environmental degradation and climate upheaval. This is especially important for Americans because of their much higher ecological impact. "We need in these fifty years, to be working sim! ultaneously on all parts of the equation - on our ways of life, on our technologies, and on our populations. It's a point in time poised uniquely between hope and fear. It is possible that we face unavoidable calamity, but it's also possible that we'll see remarkable change."

As McKibben examined the current environmental predicament, he found that the perpetual expansion in the size of our economies is at least as damaging as the expansion of our poulations. Costs to the government for the elderly's aging, dying, and retirement will become unmanageable in the next century. Though he reluctantly deals with immigration he recognized that "it's clear that no more than a tiny minority - one half of one per cent, maybe - of the world's poor people will ever get to live in the United States, even if we double our immigration levels, even if we decide our borders could contain half a billion people." However, to benefit the environment it is best to stabilize the number of people living in this super-consuming nation. "Wildness doesn't disappear in a day. It erodes so slowly that you don't notice it going. But it does go."

His conclusion is that because there are so many of us, and we have done such a poor job of planning for our numbers, we no longer have the luxury of not planning. "In a crowded world, not planning has as many consequences as planning. No decision any of us makes will have more effect on the world (and on our lives) than whether to bear another child. No decision, then, should be made with more care."

This book is exactly what I was looking for. As an environmentally minded person I have been struggling with the issue of having a single child. The first few chapters let me release the fears that only children are odd or different and actually gave positive traits that can prevail. I encourage anyone struggling with this choice to read this book!

Being an only child myself (born in 1964) I was relieved to find a book that debunks the myths about single children. But more importantly, McKibben writes about how we can curb our impact on the environment by only having one child.If we really care about the environment and future children, we must take this step.An important book which every person considering parenthood should read. Now!

Both a personal decision-tree and a careful policy analysis, Bill McKibben's look at family size, population growth, resource depletion and the next fifty years is thoughtful, readable and reassuring for those confronting a decision to parent. The author has once again claimed my "book award," and remains in my view one of the best, most insightful, and most balanced thinkers about the human condition. He is stellar. (See my reviews of McKibben's THE END OF NATURE, Random House, 1989; THE AGE OF MISSING INFORMATION, Random House, 1992 ; and HOPE, HUMAN AND WILD, Little Brown & Co.,1995) Confronted with the personal choice of whether to parent an only child -- the hand's-down obvious ethical maximum family size if we hope to fashion a future that humans will want to live in (my opinion) -- McKibben and his wife first wanted to know the facts about only-children. There is a pervasive bias against only-ness, they wondered about the basis for the folklore, and they absolutely wanted to do what was best for their daughter Sophie. Well, whaddya know? Every story about solo children being selfish, unbalanced, poorly socialized misfits can be traced back to one 19th Century doctor who wrote the first book in what would later become the field of child psychology. His work was based on anecdotal reports from teachers, and (surprise, surprise) he was from a large family and had a large family and believed that large families were splendid. Even into very recent years, writers in popular magazines quote Granville Stanley Hall's findings. The truth turns out to be quite different. Extensive research throughout the 20th Century consistently provided evidence that only-children are average in most ways with a few very notable exceptions. They are statistically indistinguishable from people with siblings in happiness and depression, career choices, political views, longevity, freckledness, etc. and etc. However, they are more likely to be read-aloud to, speak earlier and gain vocabulary faster. Later, they score higher on aptitude tests, get better grades, are more likely to go to and finish college, participate in more extracurricular activiities, and they are more likely to appear on the cover of Time Magazine. They exhibit higher self esteem, and, perhaps most surprisingly, are more patient waiting their turn and more willing to share. In other words, G. Stanley Hall had it almost exactly backward. Only's are mostly normal, but enjoy distinct advantages in many areas considered important in our culture. There is no outcome basis for electing to have a second child to provide a sibling for the first one. Having settled the question of what was best for his daughter, McKibben goes on to explore the possible solutions to the crisis we now confront. World food production has peaked and is declining, oil will soon do the same (U.S. oil production has peaked in 2000, and will drop off dramatically in the next few years) - not to mention the fact that we are churning out carbon at a rate far beyond the biospheric capability to absorb. He notes that the "new" pollution of greenhouse gasses is unlike the old-style pollution of soot or toxic waste. Greenhouse gases still emerge when our current technological systems work perfectly, stacks scrubbed, catalytic converters in place. And though oil will decline, coal will be an enormous temptation, particularly in China, as the world joins us in technocracy. We will soon have less of everything except atmospheric carbon. At the same time, population will probably almost double by mid-century, though the birth rate is slowly falling world wide. But the effect of small statistical changes in birthrate can be staggering. Right now, the U.S. is hovering just above replacement level, slightly over 2 kids per family. At that rate there will be 400 million Americans in 2050. If we could bring the average down to 1.5, our numbers would reach a lower peak before then and we would return to our present population of 270 million at about mid-century. The difference in crowding, sprawl, pollution, energy use, food production, wild land preservation, traffic, room on the dance floor -- name your favorite topic -- will be simply enormous. Persuasive, gentle, thorough -- this is the perfect gift for a wedding or a first-baby shower. Share it with a friend.

Certainly, I am not making my reproductive choices based off of one book, but it has helped lifted fear from me of wanting just to have one child (a decision we are making for our family--not so much the rest of the world). I really appreciate how McKibben has delved into the history behind the "only children are spoiled weirdos" bias, and it's been uplifting to read the evidence of how that is certainly not true. While the book is certainly not the be all or end all to deciding whether or not to have more kids, it is a very interesting read.

The subject of McKibben's book--overpopulation and the consideration of voluntarily limiting family size to one child--is a sensitive issue that often comes fraught with emotion. However, McKibben treats the subject with thorough, fact-based logic. He understands that it would be easy to argue that overpopulation leads to environmental issues, and from there that having more families with only one child would really help to solve this problem. But he also understands that children and the decision to have them are not always logical, that children are deeply tied into a person's emotions; so he covers many other aspects besides simply overpopulation.

First of all, allow me to dispel some misconceptions. McKibben is not arguing for a "one child per family" law to be put in effect, as in China. He is only asking more people to consider having a single child in order to minimize the population problem. Secondly, he is not arguing that this needs to be permanent; he mentions at one point that the book should be written in "disappearing ink," because in 50 years it will be irrelevant, either because the population will have peaked and we'll be forced to deal with the problem or people will have decided to have less children and the population will have ebbed.

Both of these points are brought up in McKibben's introduction. From there, he moves on to dispel certain stereotypes about only children. He traces the idea that there's something abnormal about only children back to its source, to illustrate the misguided prejudice that started the idea. As he mentions in this part of the book, most people have a second child because they don't want the first one to be an only child. (Note: all of McKibben's points are backed up be extensive research; each chapter has roughly 50 sources, all of which are listed at the back of the book.) As an only child, I appreciated his discourse on only children, and how they are perfectly normal; as always, it comes back to the parent(s). Multiple children can easily be more spoiled than an only child, and it's up to the parents to prevent it. (After all, a lot of the ideas about only children being spoiled seem to be based on the fact that the parents don't have to support other children, but if a family is extremely poor, an only child still wouldn't get everything s/he wants; and in wealthier families, multiple children could easily be spoiled.)

McKibben also addresses the issue of whether or not overpopulation is even a problem, and other issues surrounding it, such as immigration. (As a previous reviewer pointed out, this last issue probably deserves more attention, especially now; keep in mind that his book was published 11 years ago, though.)

I think one of the greatest things about this book is that McKibben practices what he preaches; he has only one child, and after her he got a vasectomy to ensure that she would stay an only child. He isn't standing on some pedestal telling everyone else that THEY need to stop having so many children. He believes in the issue enough to practice it himself. He also doesn't condemn anyone for having multiple children; ultimately, he just wants people who are considering kids or who have one already to seriously think about keeping it to one child for the sake of the earth, our only home (currently--I'm sure we'll make Mars hospitable SOMEDAY).