Northwest Environment Watch in Seattle, Wash., isn’t
very big at 1,400 members and five staffers, but its reach is
ambitious. In less than four years it has published five reports,
including The Car in the City, Stuff, and the latest and perhaps
most provocative, Misplaced Blame: The Real Roots of Population
Growth, by Alan Durning, founder of the group, and Christopher
Crowther, a research intern and graduate student in demography at
the University of California, Berkeley. In searching for the main
spurs to the area’s population boom, the authors found the easy
answers, the ones we heard during debates over welfare reform, far
too easy. Teenage girls don’t fall into a cycle of poverty because
they have babies too young, they found; they’re poor to begin with
and often sexually abused. The result: “Women who live in poverty
have about twice as many children, on average, as more affluent
women.” Making women poorer by denying them reasonable aid is
punitive and self-defeating, the writers conclude. They also say
the real causes of the region’s growth are our half-hearted efforts
to provide contraception and abortion help, generous government
subsidies to new industries and new residents, and the continuation
of too-liberal legal immigration. The 94-page softcover book is
$9.95 from Northwest Environment Watch, 1402 Third Ave., Suite
1127, Seattle, WA 98101-2118 (206/447-1880).
*Betsy Marston
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Don’t blame women.
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