DHAKA — Jhinuk recalls screaming as water rushed into her hut in northeastern Bangladesh last August. “Four children clung, two stumbling toddlers. Fear choked me, air like ice, but I held them high, defying the hungry tide,” she says. But it wasn’t to last: “One tiny hand slipped from my grasp.” In another account from Jamalpur district, Ranu Akter remembers being so busy with housework that she didn’t notice her 7-year-old son playing in floodwater. “I didn’t notice him, and the floodwaters carried him away.” She adds, “Fear of losing children is a constant here,” noting that children also succumb to post-flood disease outbreaks arising from unhealthy environments. Now, citing heavy hearts and a desire for security, Jhinuk and Ranu say they dream of growing their families, hoping for strength in the face of an uncertain future. Research published in the journal Nature this past January suggests that Bangladeshi women in climate-sensitive regions, women like Jhinuk and Ranu, may be having larger families as insurance against increasingly deadly extreme weather events. Citing the threat of losing children to climate disasters, mothers in cyclone- and flood-prone areas are defying traditional family-planning trends, choosing to have more children as a shield against hardship, the study says. “Having more children, especially sons, gives them a sense of security,” says study co-author Shah Md. Atiqul Haq, a professor of sociology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) in the city of Sylhet. “They see larger families as a form of insurance against the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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