Reproductive hesitation in the Norwegian petrostate

This article responds to calls for critical engagement with the entangled politics of reproduction, population, and climate breakdown by exploring analytical avenues that refuse both the individualization of responsibility and the logics of population. Taking as our empirical point of departure Andy Lautrup’s ethnographic engagement with the eco-reproductive considerations of young climate activists fighting to end oil production in Stavanger, Norway, we ask what it means to hesitate about one’s reproductive future from a position of privilege and complicity within the Norwegian petrostate, and what an analytical focus on hesitation might contribute to discussions of reproduction in a time of climate breakdown. Proposing the concept of reproductive hesitation, we engage with instances of doubt, uncertainty, and ambivalence in the empirical material. We argue that reproductive hesitation expands the analysis beyond individualizing questions about whether to have children, redirecting attention to the ways in which normative narratives about kinship, family, and nation both shape and are reshaped through the activists’ political reflections. In doing so, we gesture towards a broader politics of hesitation—one that resists the reproduction of a harmful status quo.