How Bridget Phillipson can improve the climate for having children

Climate anxiety is a factor in young people deciding to become parents – and so should be included in the curriculum review, says Paul Atkin

In Bridget Phillipson’s proposals (Bridget Phillipson says she wants more young people in UK to have children, 30 July), a notable absence that she is well placed to address as education secretary is the anxiety felt by so many students that if they do have children in the context of accelerating climate breakdown, there won’t be a livable planet for their babies to grow up in. Surveys of young people’s attitudes published in the Lancet in 2021 and 2024 reveal that this is a material factor in considering whether to have children for between 38% and 52% of respondents.

Given that anxiety can either transform into purposeful action or malign and perverse despair if left to fester unaddressed, the curriculum review due to report in the autumn should integrate climate education across all subjects so that all our students understand the nature of the crisis and the debates about what we can do about it.

Anything less will leave them stranded with a Holocene education in an Anthropocene world.

Cover photo:  The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is concerned by Britain’s falling birth rate. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Getty Images