Weekly Insights
What church leaders need to know about young parents and their concerns for their children.
Stat of the Day:
40% of parents with children under eighteen years old are “extremely or very worried that their children might struggle with anxiety or depression at some point” (Pew)
Why it Matters:
The mental health crisis among young people continues to roil Gen Z and Millennials. Even as the social isolation of the peak Covid years fades, indications are that higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation were only accelerated by the pandemic. As the CDC documented, these trends were growing throughout the 2010s and seem likely to continue.
As society scrambles to seek solutions to this crisis, it is clearly front of mind for many young parents and families. While young parents have plenty of reason to be concerned about these issues for their kids, it may also be that they’re transferring that concern from their own anxieties and sadness onto their little ones. A recent New York Times Magazine article, for example, described the burgeoning new field of therapy and mental health care focused on climate-anxiety. With a worsening climate emergency, coupled with the increased threat of nuclear war, it seems reasonable that many Americans have concerns about our ability to address these existential problems under the weight of the anxiety and depression that many experience. This is especially so for those raising young people in a world where the future is so uncertain.
There is much that can be done to support the mental health of young people (the APA article cited above has some great ideas regarding work that is already happening in this field). Much of the work that is happening right now is focused on treating and supporting young people, but as church leaders we know well enough that the individual is often a symptom of the larger family system (a central tenet of Family Systems Theory). The question, then, is not only about what we can do to support the mental health of young people (especially teens and children) in our communities, but also this: what can we do to support the anxiety, depression, and mental health struggles of our members and, especially, young parents whose mental health has such an impact on the children in our congregations?
What Can the Church Do About it?
In her book, Common Shock, Witnessing Violence Every Day: How We Are Harmed, How We Can Heal (Dutton, 2003), Kaethe Weingarten talks about the cumulative psychological influence of simply witnessing violence and profound suffering. Her solution (best understood by reading her book!) is to act as a compassionate witness to others. Both the body of the text and the appendices include discussions of what such a compassionate witness looks like in real-life situations.
Becoming a compassionate witness to our own suffering and that of others is a practice we can do in community. Rather than simply lamenting the inaction of government to seriously address the climate crisis, for example, we can organize, engage, and act both locally and nationally on the issue. Such action could be as small as the creation of a community garden on church grounds or as big as leading a letter-writing campaign or protest aimed at the statehouse or Congress. Neither small nor big efforts need diminish the other—all are necessary if we are to come through this crisis! The Episcopal Church’s Creation Care webpage offers ideas for meaningful action that can acknowledge the sense of climate anxiety that many experience while working towards a better future.
Try It:
Work with your families, especially young parents, on a project from the Creation Care site in your community. Be mindful: the participation of young parents may be just as if not more important than simply involving the little ones. Young and old(er) alike can practice becoming compassionate witnesses who take concrete action (however small) to make change in the world.
If members of your community are already doing a great deal regarding the climate emergency, consider practicing compassionate witnessing in relation to other existential or human rights crises today. One area receiving much more attention since Oppenheimer came out this summer is nuclear weapons activism (activism against them, that is). The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is hard at work on this issue and has resources about ways to get involved. While the conflict in Ukraine recently raised the alarm level to unprecedented heights, there is much organizing, activism, and influencing that can be done to make the use of nuclear weapons not merely unimaginable but truly impossible. The Ploughshares Fund provides deeper engagement on the issue for a specifically American context.