Peer-reviewed article

“Feels Like a Drop in the Ocean”: Parenting Children Amid the Climate Change Era

Jacopo Tracchegiani, Nicola Carone · 4 Mar 2026

Abstract

Abstract Parenting unfolds amid accelerating climate change, reshaping how adults understand responsibility, emotion, and everyday family life. We examined Italian parents’ lived experiences and meaning-making using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of nine semi-structured interviews (eight mothers, one father). Five interlinked themes were identified: (1) “Living in the forecast”: Parenthood as a temporal and intergenerational lens (past, present, and future); (2) “Panic, fear… and a spark”: Emotional ambivalence, solastalgia, and eco-grief; (3) “Honestly, we stay shut indoors”: Everyday life reorganized by climate constraints and family adaptations; (4) “My efforts are not enough” and “Not terror, but awareness”: Parental agency between helplessness and educational responsibility; (5) “Feels like a drop in the ocean”: Polarized coping from denial to guilt. Together, accounts portray climate change as an intimate, relational condition rather than a distant risk, saturating identity, care, and family practices. Findings extend environmental psychology by foregrounding intergenerational place-loss and the paradox of micro-agency within macro-helplessness, and they suggest supports that normalize eco-emotions, scaffold developmentally attuned communication, and connect parents to collective resources. Italy─a climate-vulnerable, family-centric context─offers a case for policy that treats parental well-being as climate adaptation. Implications span prevention, family services, and environmental communication, and invite longitudinal and cross-national research on parenting under climate stress.