Parenting in the Age of Burning Koalas

I am thrilled to have an essay featured on Romper!

This is a personal essay that considers the anxieties of parenting in a new age of climate crisis and burning koalas in the Australia bushfires.

Here is a sneak peek:

"My children are growing up in a time where our world is on fire, both literally and figuratively, and yet from our soft perch of privilege in New England suburbia, we are totally fine. My kids seem to only know an existence that is etched in black and white. They bless all those affected by the fires in their bedtime prayers, and then fall gently into dreamland with their clean cheeks resting on cool, crisp sheets. In this world of extremes — extreme rhetoric, extreme temperatures, extreme denial — I am raising children who have never known a time where their brains did not compartmentalize the stories of tragedy and death and destruction, and the disavowal of those stories by others."

"We are fine, we tell ourselves. We post our thoughts and prayers on social media with a link to the latest image of koalas wearing bandages on their hands and feet and then calmly order our venti vanilla latte from the front seat of our oversized SUVs."

To read the essay in its entirety, please visit Romper.

Comment below to share how you feel climate change tragedies like this one affect your children and your parenting.