Also a personal pet peeve how people just toss out the whole "Just adopt!" caveat as if it isn't incredibly expensive, time-intensive (can take years, lots of roadblocks and red tape) and doesn't come with a whole host of potential problems.

So much this. There are so many reasons people may choose not to or not be able to adopt. Someone close to me is a transracial adoptee, with a fraught relationship with her mom. She had 1 kid after tons of medical treatment, and hasn't been able to have more despite really wanting a larger family. And everyone just assumes that because she's adopted, of course she would want to adopt, since she apparently can't have any more bio kids. There's no way she's going to tell casual acquaintances her painful history of growing up one of the only POC in a tiny, very white town, or how hard her relationship with her mom is, and why those plus several other reasons have led her to decide not to adopt. So instead she deals with a bunch of people asking why she doesn't "just adopt." Sigh.

On the original column topic, I don't know how you can answer that for anyone. I feel lucky to know that I don't want kids, but every time I think about my nieces and nephews, or my friends' kids, I'm just like how do their parents stuff down the panic every time a new climate change report comes out? I'm stressed out for them and they're not even my kids!