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

By: Jade S Sasser(Author)

192 pages

Publisher: University of California Press

Click to have a closer look

ISBN: 9780520393820 Paperback Apr 2024 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 1 week
£16.99
#266816

Price: £16.99

About this book Contents Customer reviews Biography

Images Additional images

About this book

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 (a form of emotional or existential distress caused by negatively perceived environmental change). 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 US 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.

Acknowledgments
Preface

Introduction: No Future for Us
1. Childfree Nation
2. Can We Still Have Babies?
3. The Kids Are Not Alright
4. The Kid Question Is Unjust
5. The Personal Is Political
6. Reproductive Resistance in Public
Conclusion: No Climate Justice without Climate Emotions

Glossary
Notes
Index

Customer Reviews

Review this book

Biography

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.

By: Jade S Sasser(Author)

192 pages

Publisher: University of California Press

Media reviews

"Jade Sasser examines the ways in which young people, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, are navigating the moral considerations of having children in a world confronted with serious environmental issues.
– Geographical

"Consider this book an 'existential tool kit' that combines insights from psychology, sociology, mindfulness and years of deep listening with the climate generation."
– LA Times

"Highlights the need for greater representation in the fight for climate justice."
– Geographical

"A valuable book, based on her national survey of whether climate anxiety is affecting people's decisions about procreating. [Sasser] aims to help those struggling with the question and encourage research on it in marginalized communities, especially among Black people such as herself."
– Nature

"Examines the relationship between reproduction, gender, and power, and map[s] how social and environmental injustice affects people's bodies, in ways that are already remaking the very notion of reproductive choice. In paying attention to these often overlooked experiences, [Sasser] illuminate[s] collective modes of surviving – and of parenting – in the face of environmental and other existential threats."
– The New Republic

"Sasser conducted dozens of interviews and 'was struck by how common climate anxiety is among Gen Zers and how that translates into these anxieties about whether to have kids, ' she says […] The bookplaces communities of color at the center of the discussion. 'This is an intersectional issue, ' Sasser says. 'Climate change hits communities of color differently. Heat events have an impact on pregnancy and birth outcomes, which have long-lasting effects on a child's growth and development. The people who are hit hardest are pregnant Black women, and the mental and emotional impacts are really hard on communities of color, too."
– Publishers Weekly