Little Apocalypses: Essays on Motherhood, Climate Change, and Hope at the End of the World

Teer, an editor at the lifestyle site Cup of Jo, debuts with a stirring essay collection that examines motherhood amid the climate crisis. A mother of two young children, Teer explores how to raise kids in a warming world as natural disasters increase and apocalyptic rhetoric abounds. Reflecting on her first pregnancy in 2018, she recalls receiving fetal development updates from a pregnancy app alongside news alerts about impending deadlines to reduce global carbon emissions, prompting her to wonder “How would a changing climate change parenting?” Unable to separate maternal anxiety from climate anxiety (she’s haunted, for example, by the fact that it takes 500 years for diapers to decompose in landfills), she attends a 10-week course based on the book How to Live in a Chaotic Climate, where she learns that teaching kids resilience and empathy can be a meaningful form of climate action. Elsewhere, she unpacks the power of fairy tales, which she finds can instill in kids a sense of enchantment with the natural world, and recounts volunteering at beach cleanups and attending a climate strike with her daughter. She adeptly balances her anguish with optimism, revealing that “parenting has shown me that love is capacious enough to hold both hope and despair.” This is a must-read for climate-conscious parents. (Apr.)