Climate Change Is An Unspoken Reason Parents Are So Stressed
Climate Change Is An Unspoken Reason Parents Are So Stressed
What the Surgeon General's advisory leaves out
Hello friends.
I turned 44 on the 15th of September. It was a really full and fulfilling and yet also relaxing birthday weekend. I shared three different gatherings with four other Virgos who are dear to me, spreading out the hosting duties and getting to see so many wonderful people. I’m so grateful for my partner, family, friends, and community. And for each of you!
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This week I’m sharing an edited version of an article I co-wrote with Joe Waters of Capita. Capita is a thinktank and community dedicated to family & community flourishing. I resonate greatly with the way they weave climate in among their other priorities, like support for childcare. I’m grateful to be in conversation with them as thought partners.
Parenting in the Age of Climate Crisis
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently issued an advisory on the mental health of parents. It’s a long-overdue acknowledgment of the growing pressures on families in America. However, it falls short by neglecting a crucial factor: climate change. This omission is concerning, given the escalating toll that climate is taking on families’ well-being.
Dr. Murthy’s advisory is right to call out new or emerging factors impacting families: technological change, rising housing costs, long working hours, family structure shifts, and higher academic and extracurricular pressures for some. These challenges coexist with chronic, systemic problems: inadequate child care supports, no paid family leave or child tax credit, insufficient health care and mental health services. A national survey on loneliness carried out by Harvard’s Making Caring Common and funded by Capita found a quarter of parents report that a lack of adequate child care, alone, is harming their mental health.
The surgeon general is so right to name the guilt, shame, exhaustion, anxiety, overwhelm, and loneliness so many of us are feeling; and the pressing need to elevate and value caregiving of all kinds.
Yet, even as more attention turns to parental mental health, climate change remains a glaring blind spot. It’s not just the surgeon general’s statement; there is broad silence on the mental health impacts of climate change, even as the evidence mounts that it is compounding a global mental health crisis.
The interactions between climate and mental health are both direct and indirect. Extreme heat exacerbates anxiety, aggression, and depression and impairs cognitive function. Extreme weather and displacement can cause trauma. Knowledge and awareness of the crisis create fear for the future, anxiety, climate grief, vicarious trauma, anger, and despair. Dr. Murthy notes how worries about “children’s futures” affect parents’ stress. The existential dread of climate change is one huge component of that worry.
According to a 2022 survey for Capita and This is Planet Ed by the Siena College Research Institute, over a quarter of all adults with children agree that climate change has affected their mental health. In other research, parents describe feelings of moral injury and helplessness, worry about the world their children will inherit, and guilt for their part in making it worse. Parents I’ve interviewed are experiencing climate-related guilt, anger, anxiety, and stress over talking about climate change with their kids, unsure of how to help them process their own climate-related fears.
The stress is particularly acute for families in communities of color. Research shows that these families experience higher rates of climate anxiety and are more likely to have their reproductive planning affected by the climate crisis. For many, the cumulative effects of climate change only add to the systemic inequities they already face.
But this does not have to be the end of the story. Supporting parents through this crisis requires systems-level change. New policies and infrastructure need to address not only practical issues like child care and housing but also support mental and emotional resiliency in the face of climate change.
There are a host of emerging strategies. Organizations, collaboratives and networks across the country are already helping parents transform their climate anxiety by creating programming and resources to promote fluency with climate emotions, healthy coping mechanisms and ways to turn their anxiety into action.
Some policies solve for all these challenges at once. For example, walkable cities with more green space:
Are safer for children.
Give children more space to play, more independence, and more outdoor time, all of which are good for children’s mental health.
Promoting community ties and giving kids safe places to play with less direct supervision, and the ability to walk to school rather than be driven, supports parents’ mental health.
Cities with fewer cars have lower emissions and cleaner air. More vegetation can make cities more flood resilient. And greenery fights the urban heat island effect.
The surgeon general’s advisory is amplifying a critical national conversation about parents’ mental health and well-being. Instead of retreating into despair, let’s say yes to accessible child care, affordable housing, and supporting, helping, and healing parents and caregivers. And we cannot leave out climate change. A family-friendly society addresses this critical threat to our future.
Come see me at Climate Week NYC!
Climate Mental Health Network
is having a meetup at Joe&the Juice cafe at 1758 Broadway, on Wednesday Sept 25 at 1:30 pm.
I’m a moderator for the panel: "Building a Resilient Future: NY’s Climate Education Movement" on Wednesday Sept 25 at The American Museum of Natural History.
5:55 PM - 6:40 PM Register here: https://bit.ly/3Xibnav
And at 2:30 pm on Thursday, September 26, I’m presenting a “Climate Emotions Wheel” activation at this mental health-themed event : Register here: PAUSE
DOM NYC, 287 Park Ave S, New York, NY 10010