LA Times: ‘It’s almost shameful to want to have children’ – ‘Climate Anxiety & the Kid Question’
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-09-11/climate-anxiety-and-the-kid-question
By Jade S. Sasser
Excerpt: Jade S. Sasser is an associate professor in the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies at UC Riverside. Her research explores the relationships between reproductive justice, women’s health and climate change, and she’s the host of the podcast “Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question.” The following excerpt is from her newest book, “Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future,” which was published earlier this year.
These interviewees have more climate change knowledge than most people do. All of them are college-educated; most of them either grew up or have lived for some time in Southern California; and most have taken environmental studies classes, either as undergrads or in graduate school.
Their experiences as members of marginalized groups have shaped their experiences with climate emotions like anxiety, fear, and trauma — as well as hope and optimism. Paying closer attention to those emotions and mental health in communities of color, including how they shape reproductive plans, will become an increasingly important component of climate justice in the United States.
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Melanie, a 26-year-old Native American woman, was raised on the Navajo reservation and in Southern California. She idealizes having a big, happy family, but there are aspects of the world that give her pause, so she struggles with whether it’s morally OK to have children.
“ I think I may not have children although I do want them,” she notes. “Just because, with all of the things we see going on in the world, it seems unfair to bring someone into all of this against their will.”
Melanie’s feelings about climate change include a general sense of powerlessness and lack of control over other people’s actions, which directly translates into her fears about parenthood: “With climate change, we’re the driving force of things breaking down, but then also, the planet’s going to do what the planet’s going to do. … So … it almost feels, like, kind of shameful to want to have children.”