My Response to Donna Haraway’s MAKING KIN, NOT BABIES Proposal for Slowing Global Population Growth

In God’s will, the essence of the continued existence of living and non-living things is practically hinged on production and reproduction. While He has the power to ensure the reproduction of living things through sexual intimacy between males and females, He gives human beings the opportunity to produce and reproduce non-living objects through their instincts. In recent times, the reproduction of human beings has been more questioned because of the rapid growth of the human population, which some scholars believe is impacting the environment, especially man-to-animal living relationships. Moreso, scholars are calling human attention to the fact that non-living things, especially animals, need to be accorded the same respect they are giving to themselves.

Donna Haraway is one of the scholars who has been following this school of thought for some time. This has led her to propose that “making kin, not babies,” is partially better to make society more beneficial for both humans and animals, where humans create more relationships with animals, fostering symbiotic connections with them with a view to practicing ecological and social responsibility rather than solely focusing on increasing the population through procreation.

Like Haraway, Dow and Lamoreaux challenge traditional notions of kinship and population issues by emphasising the complex relationships between humans and their environments; however, Dow and Lamoreaux do not align with Haraway’s view of a partial reduction of the human population by halting the production of babies. Indirectly, Haraway expects the world to reduce human production by strategically or systematically halting women’s reproductive capacity while efforts are deployed to create strong bonds with animals by seeing them as crucial to human sustained existence.

Haraway specifically points out that making kin, otherwise, not babies, so as to be part of, over the next couple of hundred years, moving human numbers down, radically down. But radically down where environmental justice is a means and not just an end, so that we pay serious attention to multispecies flourishing, including issues of race and class and region for human beings, as means of making kin, not babies.

Dow and Lamoreaux oppose this view with the concept of reproductive justice, which promotes individuals’ freedom from prejudice, coercion, and inequalities to make autonomous decisions about their reproductive lives. It includes the right to choose not to have children, access to reproductive healthcare, and social and economic circumstances. In my view, Dow and Lamoreaux cannot also be exonerated from the “less baby” production idea of Haraway because the scholars speak to the idea that humans have the right to decide whether they want babies or not. This aligns more with the idea of using rigorous family planning to reduce baby production. In this regard, Dow and Lamoreaux make the case for individual decision-making, which is most likely to be supported by a capitalist system. In another way, this has the tendency to contribute to Haraway’s depopulation idea.

In all these submissions, my position is that there is absolutely nothing humans can do to stop natural reproduction if God, who creates living and non-living things, wants it. Humans can only come up with different ideas or strategies for halting the natural growth of the human population and possibly using man-made methods of ensuring the extinction of certain animals that He has informed them (humans) to protect for their own social and environmental protections towards sustained healthy living.

While I agree with the fact that we need to protect animals and foster sustained relationships with them, we also need to be cautious of animals that are likely to negatively impact our lives. For instance, based on my cultural backgrounds and religious orientations, there are animals that I should not be rearing, playing with, or eating. This does not mean working against their reproductive capacity. After all, in an interview with Paulson, Haraway says, “Nobody can be kin to everything, but our kin networks can be full of attachment sites.” With this statement, It is clear that our kinship with animals, plants, and humans should be strong enough to make society livable for everyone without being keen on reducing natural population growth.