Parents and climate mental health

Parents and their mental health

Parents are a primary source of emotional resilience for their children. As climate impacts increase, and the mental health impacts of the climate crisis in youth escalate, understanding the close relationship between parent and child well-being will become increasingly important. What’s more, parents represent a large segment of the population, and their mental health matters in its own right.

Many parents are already overburdened by systemic failures to support parents and families and paradigms that undervalue nurturing and relationships. Parents are rightly concerned about the cost of living; access to clean water and healthy foods, affordable housing and health care; gun violence in schools (in the United States); systemic racism, and many other issues. In 2024, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory calling attention to a crisis in parental mental health. These stressors are particularly felt by parents with marginalized identities, including parents of color and parents of children of color, women, LGBTQ parents, and parents of children with special needs.

Around the world, climate change is amplifying parents’ already high levels of acute stress and increasing allostatic load – the burden chronic stress has on our bodies and minds. A large majority of parents are concerned about how climate change will affect their children. Climate disasters can bring trauma, loss of homes and community, economic stress, and forced migration. They can leave parents without safe shelter, access to adequate nutrition, childcare, and/or places for children to play. Parents are on the front lines of supporting children and adolescents through these painful experiences.

Supporting young people’s mental health and resilience in a changing climate also requires supporting the mental health and resilience of their parents and caregivers. Parents and caregivers need far more support than they are currently getting.

How does climate change impact the mental health and wellbeing of parents?

Parents experience the same impacts of climate change on their mental health as the general population, plus the additional unique burdens related to their role as caregivers.

For parents, there are few values more deeply held than to protect and care for their children, and climate change is interfering with their ability to do this. This may result in distress and/or moral injury – a sense of profound harm when core moral values or beliefs are betrayed or transgressed. Climate distress in parents may look like:

A wide range of emotions: Parents may experience anxiety, anger, grief, overwhelm, shame, regret, frustration, fear, despair, and many others. Although current research overwhelmingly documents painful emotions, some parents may also experience positive ones like hope, solidarity, and a greater sense of meaning.
Worry about a climate-changed future: Research suggests that a large proportion of parents (nearly 80%, according to one survey) worry about climate change, and fear being able to protect their children from climate threats. Safeguarding future generations seems to be a universal concern: a 2023 global survey found that climate messaging focused on protecting future generations was significantly more impactful at motivating climate action than other messaging strategies.
Stress related to extreme weather: Research suggests that a majority of parents of young children (84%, according to one survey) feel that extreme weather is impacting their own physical and emotional well-being. Some parents also worry about the impact of extreme weather on their children’s health.
Guilt and shame about contributing to climate change: Especially in the Global North, parents may feel guilt and shame about being unwillingly complicit in systems of harm, such as the fossil fuel infrastructure that makes many of the routine tasks and responsibilities of parenting possible. Because of this complicity, parents may feel unable to set a “good example” for children, like driving when there are no good public transit alternatives or flying to visit relatives.
Challenging climate conversations: Many parents struggle with how to talk to their children about climate change, attempting to walk a difficult line between honesty to help prepare children for a climate-changed future, while also wanting to protect them from fear or emotional harm.
Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort that arises when two or more conflicting beliefs, thoughts, or values are held at the same time. Parents may experience cognitive dissonance when having to maintain a sense of household normalcy for their children’s sake in decidedly non-normal conditions (e.g., preparing for a wildfire or flooding event evacuation, a day of extreme temperatures or poor air quality).
Eco-reproductive concerns: It’s been documented that young people and prospective parents are hesitant to have children because of climate change, but people who are already parents may also experience eco-reproductive concerns (e.g., trying to decide whether or not to have an additional child or regret about having children).
Relational conflict: Parents may experience conflict with their partners when they disagree about the seriousness of the climate crisis and/or how to respond within the context of parenting, lifestyle, or advocacy choices.
Pressures of “green motherhood”: Especially in Western cultures, mothers may feel intense pressure to act on their environmental distress by making consumer choices like buying “eco” products.

Special considerations on mental health during pregnancy, postpartum (the period of 6-8 weeks after birth), and early parenting:

Pregnant and postpartum women are more vulnerable to mental health concerns in general, and may experience intensified climate anxiety as they think about what the future may be like for their children.
Pregnant and postpartum women may be at increased risk of experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder and depression following an extreme weather event. The stress from experiencing an extreme weather event during pregnancy may also impact the child for years.
Heat and air pollution are linked to risk of adverse birth outcomes, like preterm birth, low birth weight, and still birth. The risk is higher for Black and Latina mothers. Adverse birth outcomes can lead to long-term psychological distress and bereavement.

How do parents cope with climate mental health impacts?

Parents employ a range of strategies to cope with climate distress. These may include:

Distancing strategies: Sometimes these strategies fall into the category of disavowal, such as turning away from the climate crisis through numbing behaviors or refusing to think about the future. Other times, distancing strategies may be skillful, such as when parent activists intentionally choose to take breaks from climate action in order to preserve their mental health.
Climate change as a catalyst for growth, meaning, action, and hope: For some parents, embracing the distressing reality of climate change may be a catalyst for personal growth, meaning, and action-oriented hope. Parenting may be a primary motivator for climate advocacy efforts, and participation in parent-focused climate advocacy groups can nurture positive emotions like hope and solidarity.

Unequal impacts

Largely because of historical and present-day racism, climate change is having a greater impact on families in marginalized communities. Around the world, Black, Indigenous, and Latino parents are more likely to be on the front lines of climate harm, and to have fewer economic resources to adapt. It is not surprising that research finds racial disparities in parents’ overall levels of worry about climate change and other forms of environmental harm.

Other factors can also influence how climate change impacts parents’ mental health, including:

Ethnicity and cultural context
Gender
Socioeconomic status
Education
Political views and religion
Child and parent age
Level of exposure to extreme weather and/or climate disasters
Geography – parents may face profoundly different threats depending on where they live

During and after pregnancy is a period of heightened risk for mental health challenges. Women of color are particularly at-risk, in large part because they’re exposed to higher levels of stress and trauma from systemic racism. Climate change is increasing levels of stress and trauma.

Research findings

As of February 2025, the vast majority of studies on parents and climate emotions are from the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, and thus may not be fully representative of the experiences of parents in other parts of the world.

A 2023 literature review on how climate change impacts the emotional dimensions of parents mental health identified that parents experience dimensions of moral injury about climate change, such as being unwittingly complicit in fossil fuel infrastructure causing harm, or being unable to protect children from the impacts of extreme weather. Parents often feel worry, sadness and fear about the impacts climate change might have on their children both emotionally and physically.
Parents own emotional distress about climate change can pose a barrier to family communication about the topic. A consistent fear is that climate conversations could exacerbate their children’s emotional distress. A child’s age is a point of concern, with parents of younger children reporting greater hesitancy and feelings of unpreparedness for climate change.
Having a child, or deciding to have a child, is a transformative event that can heighten both climate awareness and distress. Some parents and potential parents have an “overwhelmingly negative expectation” of a climate-changed future. In a 2020 study of eco-reproductive concerns and climate change, “parental anxiety about how their children will fare in a climate-changed future can cause feelings of regret about having children due a sense of hopelessness and despair about climate change”.
Parents who belong to historically marginalized communities may experience a greater burden of climate distress. Research shows that Hispanic/Latino individuals tend to be more worried about climate change than non-Hispanic white individuals, and research suggests that Hispanic parents in the U.S. are more concerned about the environment, and climate change in specific, than non-Hispanic parents.

What can we do to address parents’ climate mental health?

Advocating for systemic change. This includes:
- Advocating for policies that support parents and children, including paid parental leave and flexible work hours, affordable childcare and healthcare, affordable housing, funding for free/low-cost indoor spaces for children during heat waves or low air quality days, and access to green spaces within cities.
- Promoting caring and trauma-responsive communities through the creation of community resilience hubs and shared public spaces, opportunities for healing-centered activities, and networks that promote connections between neighbors.
- Increasing parents’ access to climate-aware therapy and other psychological support.
Supporting parents directly. Social isolation is a primary risk factor for parental mental health challenges. We can protect individual parents from isolation through:
- Creating more opportunities for parents and children to participate in collective climate action and/or group stewardship activities, such as litter clean-up days or tree planting events.
- Spreading the word about family-focused or parent-centered climate advocacy groups.
- Creating more opportunities for parents to process climate emotions in community, such as climate cafes/circles.

Parents may also benefit from religious and spiritual support, as well as books and media that can broaden perspective and help cultivate meaning. Parents often receive a lot of advice about how to support their children’s climate emotions or improve their household carbon footprint. But many parents need emotional support, such as listening and empathizing, rather than advice.

Raising awareness about parents’ climate mental health.
- Researching culturally-relevant interventions and practices for parents and increasing the evidence base for climate mental health impacts on parents with marginalized identities, like queer/nonbinary parents or on grandparents.
- Educating the public, policymakers, clinicians, birth/early childhood professionals, among others, about maternal and parental mental health and climate change, and the intimate connection between parental and youth mental health. This is particularly important in light of research suggesting that parents want information from their child’s doctor about how climate change impacts children.

What else might we need to know?

Dual challenges of managing their own emotions and providing support for children: Parents need community and social support to fulfill their role in providing a primary source of emotional resilience for their children and buffering against the escalating mental health impacts of the climate crisis in youth. This requires recognition of their vital importance in the form of policies that support families and reduce systemic injustice.

Research on the impact of climate change on parents’ mental health is nascent. Key priorities for future research could include:

Prioritizing leadership of the Global South and Latino/Hispanic, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color in developing interventions for parents.
Exploring how to meaningfully and effectively help parents cope, such as the role of group-based support models, parent-centered climate advocacy groups, access to natural spaces, and spiritual care.
Explore the connection between climate change and mental health during and after pregnancy (the perinatal period).
Exploring the relationship between child/youth and parent mental health in the context of the climate crisis.
Increasing support for climate-concerned parents.

Author and version info

Published: February 5, 2025

Authors: Elizabeth Bechard, MSc, Public Health Manager, Moms Clean Air Force and Jennifer Silverstein, LCSW

Editor: Colleen Rollins, PhD

Parents and climate mental health

Parents and their mental health

How does climate change impact the mental health and wellbeing of parents?

How do parents cope with climate mental health impacts?

Unequal impacts

Research findings

What can we do to address parents’ climate mental health?

What else might we need to know?

Further reading

Parent-focussed Advocacy Groups

Books

Podcasts & newsletters

Articles and Online Sources

Music/Film/Art

Selected Research/Scientific Papers

Author and version info

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