Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future

The first book-length exploration of climate-driven reproductive anxiety that places race and social justice at the center.

Eco-anxiety. Climate guilt. Pre-traumatic stress disorder. Solastalgia. The study of environmental emotions and related mental health impacts is a rapidly growing field, but most researchers overlook a closely related concern: reproductive anxiety. Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question is the first comprehensive study of how environmental emotions influence whether, when, and why people today decide to become parents--or not.

Jade S. Sasser argues that we can and should continue to create the families we desire, but that doing so equitably will require deep commitments to social, reproductive, and climate justice. Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question presents original research, drawing from in-depth interviews and national survey results that analyze the role of race in environmental emotions and the reproductive plans young people are making as a result. Sasser concludes that climate emotions and climate justice are inseparable, and that culturally appropriate mental and emotional health services are a necessary component to ensure climate justice for vulnerable communities.

Author: Jade Sasser
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 04/09/2024
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.5lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780520393820

About the Author
Jade S. Sasser is Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside, author of On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women's Rights in the Era of Climate Change, and host of the Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question podcast.