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Parenting in deeply troubled times is heartbreak and heartbeat.
Heartbreak and heartbeat.
Heartbreak and heartbeat.
Making and sustaining a life of one’s own, finding and nurturing community, and channeling the care you are capable of providing into the living world can make for a meaningful go-round as a human — without the need to, the desire for, or the circumstance of bringing new human life into a wounded world. And yet, some of us — whether by primal instinct, through the kind of love to begs to participate in creation, via rational calculation, or through happenstance — find ourselves wanting or having children in our care. And we are keenly aware that the entire lives of these children will unfold, yes, in an era of collapse, but also in an era of presently unimaginable possibility.
The very few headlines and think-pieces on the narrower topic of modern parenting and climate breakdown emphasis either (i) a sense of existential crisis among younger adults grappling with ethics of procreating and their own decisions around whether to become parents at all, or (ii) the fears and anxieties of parents wrestling with how to prepare their beloved children for the end of the world as we know it, often while trying their best to provide for their families in an time of scarcity, separation, and decline.
While there are no definitively right answers to any of the above, we suspect that living these questions is better done together. So, middle-aged mother of two, Nicole Civita will hold space for questions and conversation around journeying into the double-unknown of parenthood now. We’ll consider how to talk with your children about the world they inhabit, the one they’re inheriting, and the ones they might make possible with our support. We’ll consider how we might tenderly shepherd children into adulthood amidst uncertainty and how to share grief within and between families. We may even think about how pro-natalist culture and disturbing trends toward forced parenthood are themselves a symptom of collapse. We, parents and not, will guide each other, across different stages of life and explore the roles we can each play in extending the human story.
Recommended resources for this EcoGathering: