No kids for David and Emma Pocock as conservation comes first
Rugby great David Pocock and wife Emma have revealed they won’t be having children and say that putting their energies into conservation is now more important than becoming parents.
Confidential
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Rugby great David Pocock and wife Emma have declared they would rather save the planet than have children.
“It is a decision you can’t make lightly, whether or not you want to have kids,” Pocock said.
“It is something we have spoken about a lot.
“I guess even if you look at it just in terms of an ecological carrying capacity, to take the emotional side out of it, we are way over carrying capacity at the moment.
“Someone has got to stop having kids but who wants to be told that?”
Pocock has been vocal on social issues; he and Emma refused to wed until same-sex marriage was legalised in Australia.
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He was also arrested in 2014 for chaining himself to a digger with other activists in a protest against a coal mine being opened in a forest in northern NSW.
Emma said they felt putting their energies into saving the planet was more important than becoming parents.
“I think there are a lot of people around our age who are seriously thinking, should we be having kids?” she said.
“We have been talking about it for the last nine years so it is not a decision that we are taking lightly.
“We have all these amazing kids in our lives already and things aren’t going well … the world is not in a good place and I feel like if we put all of the effort that we would into being good parents into trying to make a better future for the kids that we already have in our lives, that is a pretty good contribution.”
The couple hace detailed their views on issues such as climate change and life after sport in a new self-published book titled In Our Nature.
Pocock officially retired from rugby after the World Cup in October and is now working towards finishing his Masters in Agriculture at Charles Sturt University.
In Our Nature was born out of the couple spending a year in Africa in 2017 and is a series of essays and short stories on “rugby, conservation and belonging”.
Pocock, 31, writes about his concerns for the environment.
“We are trying to engage people in a bigger conversation around what our future can look like,” he explained.
“There is so much doom and gloom in the world … it is a lot easier to imagine the end of the world than the sideways path into the future and that is what we have to do is actually navigate a way forward.”
The couple dedicated much of 2017 to working on Pocock’s family citrus farm in Zimbabwe with 90 per cent of the property taken by the government.
“The idea of the book started after 2017 with us wanting to write down a lot of the experiences and how we felt about them to clarify our own thoughts,” he said.
“It is one thing to shoot the sh*t and say stuff but when you actually have to write it down in a hopefully cohesive way, you question things and I found that process really helpful and challenging. Ultimately the question for me is how do we build a more regenerative culture, a culture that is actually making things better for the next generation.”
Pocock said retiring from rugby was “daunting and exciting”.
“It is exciting in that I feel like I have put so much into rugby that it is time to move on,” he said.
“There is plenty of interesting stuff out there, it is a matter of shaping something and making it work.”
To buy a copy of In Our Nature, go to www.davidpocock.com.
Originally published as No kids for David and Emma Pocock as conservation comes first