Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question

"Having a child in a burning world is one of the biggest existential decisions of the climate generation. Who can imagine thriving in the future? Who has access to quality of life in the Anthropocene? What are the racial politics of reproduction when resources are increasingly limited? Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question makes a critical intervention in the discussion about whether to reproduce in this era of climate emergency. Jade S. Sasser argues that although race has always been an unspoken dimension of reproductive anxiety in environmental discourse, it has taken on new salience in recent movements for racial justice, climate change, and abortion rights. As the first book to analyze how race shapes reproductive and climate anxiety, Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question de-centers whiteness in climate emotions research."--Sarah Jaquette Ray, author of A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet "Sasser's work provides much-needed insight into the racial dimensions of climate-and-reproductive anxiety. This book demonstrates why such research is important, and why we need much more of it." -Britt Wray, author of Generation Dread and Director of the Special Initiative on Climate Change and Mental Health, Stanford Medicine. "Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question prompts readers to reflect on their own emotions related to reproduction, race, and climate action, presenting a clear and achievable call to action to increase mental health services for BIPOC folks. A key contribution is framing mental health care and climate anxiety as climate justice issues."--Corrie Grosse, author of Working across Lines: Resisting Extreme Energy Extraction "Brilliant and urgently needed, Sasser's second book helps us to connect the planetary, the intimate, the structural, and the cultural in order to address climate anxiety and the 'kid question'--and indeed climate injustice more broadly--in caring, generous, transformative ways. Sasser's investigation of the role of racialization and racism in these areas addresses a critical gap in current understandings of climate emotions."--Blanche Verlie, author of Learning to Live with Climate Change: From Anxiety to Transformation