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

by Jade Sasser

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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment

189 pages, Paperback

Published April 9, 2024

Reviews

[Ash · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so interesting. The kid question is something I think about relatively often and I still don’t have a definitive answer for myself because I see both sides. I thought it was interesting that many people that were interviewed for this book who had major climate change anxiety still wanted kids and viewed it as a beacon of hope. “What do you do at the end of the world? You plant a tree.”

However, this book also gave me a lot of insight about how unaffected I am from climate change in terms of weather and natural disasters - major floods, fires, etc. And since I am distanced from experiencing these things, it’s not something I have considered when asking the kid question. Of course I have asked myself if I think my kid have clean air to breathe or enough safe water. But I haven’t asked myself if I want to have a kid who might have to uproot their life to escape a wildfire or how their health may become severely negatively affected by the effects of climate change. These examples are things I don’t see in my daily life, so they are not things I actively consider. But just because I don’t see them, doesn’t mean my possible kid won’t see them when they’re my age. Which I now see is something I may have to consider when asking myself the kid question.

My friends and I talk about the possibility of having kids in the future, but very rarely (if ever) has climate change come up in those discussions.

It was also so interesting to learn how the effects of climate change most negatively affect minority/marginalized groups because of how institutions are set up.

[Ali]

this was interesting to read as a sort of review of climate×reproductive discourse and research, particularly in context of america

this gave me nothing to deal with my own questions about climate anxiety and the kid question

[Marc Hasson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The unexpected focus on race issues made this book worth reading for me. It really shifted my point of view on climate change anxiety and leaves me with many new questions. Also the explanations on population growth and climate change are answering quite clearly to many questions I had before.
Nevertheless, I found it hard to keep on reading as I didn’t quite get the structure of the book and I didn’t enjoy the bits of interviews. I didn’t find them relevant and interesting enough.
Added to this that I am not used to read in English, I wasn’t so disappointed to loose the book a few pages before the end.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

definitely a must read for anyone (esp w ppl) considering not having kids or advocating for ppl to not have kids given the climate crisis. rly interesting look at the intersection of race and climate anxiety + neo malthusian thoughts.

[Saila Buser]

read for theories of globalization - pretty interesting

[vee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5. i am definitely the target audience for this book, and i was really moved by the intersectional perspective it brings to a topic as personal and emotional as having kids in the face of climate change. a bit of a slow start, but the prose is very easy to read and accessible. the book is occasionally limited by it’s length, but i was grateful to get a short & impactful reading experience.

key points:
• climate change is not the first existential socio-political threat to challenge the viability of having families, and this concept is not new to marginalized communities
• the decision to reproduce isn’t an individual choice that exists in a vacuum, it is shaped by the society around us
• reproductive resistance is the decision to not have kids regardless of whether or not you want them; it is a reflection of unjust systems that have taken away people’s fundamental right to choose by creating a hostile & unsupportive society
• broadening our framework for what constitutes a family has always been a survival strategy & a progressive response to social failures; it is a good thing & shows a real ability to adapt (e.g. adoption, queer kinship networks)
• your emotions are not yours alone and sharing them can help you realize that, especially on a topic as big as climate change
• love, hope, & art keep us alive

[Benjamin Ferrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a dense read, so it took a little time to read it piece by piece and digest everything. The book turned out way differently than I thought it would based off the cover, but I have three major takeaways from it.

1. Most research done on climate anxiety was done without any consideration to the race of the people being polled, thus skewing results to show that the nations views on the subject are that of white, middle class Americans. These things need to be accounted for, as people of color are disproportionately affected by climate change.
2. Anxiety brought on my capitalism and this idea of the nuclear family needs to be discarded. There needs to be more emphasis on interdependence between communities rather than independence of a singular person or family unit. Creating safety nets by having families that are more than just biological, and things like mutual aid to help everyone affect by climate change.
3. We need more comprehensive climate justice and more support for mental health care. Specifically for marginalized communities that are suffering more from the climate crisis.

I appreciate the information and conversations that made me look beyond the scope of my own privilege, and now I can better understand how we can combat eco-anxiety.

[Bizzy berg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gave me a lot to think about without providing the answer for me (although I kind of wish it did). Reads very much like a book I would’ve read in my environmental science major classes — anthropology or sociology? — a lot of focus on studies and interviews. Makes me want to read more ethnographies like this (if that’s the proper genre).


Good read, thanks Nikki for the rec.

[Taylor M · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I have a very strong opinion about having children while humans are destroying our planet (I am personally very against having children and think other people should not have many either) and I was hoping this book would give me a fresh perspective and open my mind. Sadly, I think it failed at that. I did enjoy the perspective of race on climate anxiety and the decision to have kids. I think that is really important and people should focus more on the intersection of racism and these issues. Overall, this book skimmed over several important topics that I thought needed more discussion and gave very small interview sections of people’s stories. I would have liked full access to interviews and think I would have related with people better. I also think skimming over topics is dangerous. For example, what really got me worked up was that Sasser was quite persistent that human population growth is not a bad thing, which I am surprised by and wholly do not agree with. (I rant more about that below.) For a very short book, I think it was not bad and is a good conversation starter for several interesting conversations.


Human population growth rant:
I very much agree that “ecofascist” (people who are against non-white people having children) are terrible people and should absolutely not speak that rhetoric. But having more people overall on our planet is a bad thing. Sasser gives all the same statistics that the white men on Fox News give, that the US population is greatly declining and this is bad for our economy and workforce. These ideas rely purely on our capitalist society. It is capitalism that needs people and it is capitalism that is ruining our environment. It is our terrible capitalist economy that requires more people to work, it is not necessary for life. Yes, there may be no correlation that more people create more greenhouse gas emissions, but that does not mean people do not cause harm to our planet. We need less people on this planet because we just do not have enough space or resources to feed, clothe, and house more people. We already have a shortage of affordable housing, more people just make that worse. We already have a food system that struggles to provide affordable food to people and uses way too much land. We already pollute the Earth with so much plastic and waste because of all the items that people consume. Yes, people absolutely need to live more sustainably and that will fix a lot of the issues, but we also just need less people because every person eats and every person needs to live somewhere. Yes, maybe our plant can “support” another few billion people, but how many of those people will be living in poverty? (Too many) How many acres of land with be left for nature? (Not enough) How much wildlife on our land and in our oceans will those people see? (Not many) The less people we have, the higher chance we have to do things right.


Notes (from Introduction)
* In a non-scientific opinion survey conducted in 2021, 75% of Gen Zers said they weren’t planning to have children because of climate change.
* Many people have ignored race when talking about climate change and the kid question.
* Climate anxiety and climate change are a bigger reason for Hispanic (41%) and Black respondents (30%) to not want children versus white respondents (21%).
* Ongoing legacies of colonization intensify not only the lived experience of climate change, but also its mental and emotional effects. This is called climate coloniality.
* In 2019, Miley Cyrus said, “We’re getting handed a piece of shit planet, and I refused to hand that down to my child. Until I feel like my kid would live in a world on earth with fish in the water, I’m not bringing in another person to deal with that.” Many Millennials and Gen Zers have the same thinking. They do not talk about not wanting children though. They are identifying conditions on why they cannot have children. This is not a personal decision, it is a response to a public social problem that we are collectively experiencing.
* Society tells us that it is a moral obligation to have children and is necessary for a happy life. Ironically, research over the decades, especially in the United States, shows that parents are less happy than childfree people. This parenting “happiness gap” is most prominent in the United States due to the lack of policies that would help parents thrive and have a balanced life (paid time off, childcare subsidies, etc.).
* We need to not accept state failures as personal failures. We have larger structural system failures that has made us lack reproductive justice.

[Emily Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, through the lens of a Black woman in academia, tackles big topics like climate anxiety, environmental justice, and reproductive anxiety. She unpacks "the kid question," whether or not people should have kids, in the context of climate change. Previously BIPOC, low income, and LGBTQIA+ identities have been so often left out of research and discussions on these topics. Sasser directly acknowledges this gap in the literature and takes it upon herself to conduct a survey with more inclusivity as well as in-depth interviews of a diverse group of individuals. She interweaves her own experience and these interviews in a way that validates anxieties but also offers some hope for the future. While I still find myself enveloped in climate anxiety and fearful of the future, I find solace in hearing that I am not alone, and we can get through this together, bettering the world for all.

[Janet Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a deeply researched account of climate-and-reproductive anxiety presenting the perspectives of young people of color. The author is an academic and is childfree, but also grapples with her own climate anxiety and ambivalence around having children as a Black woman. I enjoyed the ways she integrated personal reflections into the preface and throughout chapter 5. I also appreciated the fact that she doesn't offer solutions to climate anxiety, but instead argues that these emotions aren't problems to be solved, and that resolving climate anxiety will only occur when we address the underlying structural issues that cause climate change itself. It's not a feel good book, but anyone who takes these issues seriously will appreciate its careful, nuanced approach. I'm recommending to all of my friends.

[Virginia Jansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be a very well written and researched book that not only helped me think through my own climate anxiety, but also expanded how I understand climate anxiety in relation to other social injustices. I am so appreciative of Sasser’s qualitative methods and hearing from people work through their own emotions in relation to broader developments in the climate crisis. Sasser temporally positions this book in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, which, although never fun to think about, emphasizes the temporality of these questions, as well as the pandemic’s role in amplifying how we experience them. Overall, I would definitely recommend reading this if you are questioning having children because of climate change.

[Tara Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was excellent! A lot of people talk about whether climate change is factoring into whether younger people are having children or not, but this book actually presents the research through survey and interview data. More to the point, the author explains how these issues are complicated by race and class issues. Her conclusion is that in order to support climate justice, you have to integrate mental health support for marginalized communities of color. Great arguments, loved it!

[Marissa Ferro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted more from this book (I don’t need the thesis of “young people aren’t having kids because of climate change” proven to me) but I really respect Sasser and found this to be a good start for anyone grappling with the kid question.

[Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

still anxious, and not helpful to know that other people are also anxious

[Victoria Reyes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read! Shows the interconnections between climate emotions and reproductive justice and the role of race/racism in this relationship.

[Anna Santo Domingo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was interesting but kinda stressed me out tbh