In the 21st century, the scope and complexity of issues have piled up, constituting what Ariella Cook-Shonkoff refers to as a “polycrisis” — which she defines as a “a confluence of overlapping existential stressors” in her recent book, Raising Anti-Doomers: How to Bring Up Resilient Kids through Climate Change and Tumultuous Times.

The book guides parents and caregivers through navigating difficult conversations about  topics like climate change, racism, pandemics, gun violence and political polarization. 

A “doomer mindset,” as Cook-Shonkoff describes it, is a psychological barrier that “deflates your energy, and squashes your sense of purpose and meaning in life. It can feel like a quick knee-jerk emotional response that overcomes you, or it can gradually eclipse you until one day you wake up under a blanket of depression.” The antidote, in a word, is hope.

Cook-Shonkoff draws from her experiences as a marriage and family therapist and as a former member of the executive committee of the , which promotes climate-aware therapy. Here, she shares parenting insights from her book and emphasizes the importance of maintaining a clear-eyed view of what’s at stake for children, families and the planet.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Many of the parents you quote in the book said they feel isolated and ill-equipped for the challenges they’re faced with. How did we get to this point?

What we see again and again is a failure of adults in charge — whether in government or private sectors — to protect kids’ best interests and consider their healthy development and safety. Be it common-sense gun safety laws, digital-free school environments, restrictions on social media accounts, and so on. Wherever there was bipartisan compromise or regulatory bodies in the past to protect children’s health, it’s nonexistent now. So unfortunately the onus — and immense burden of raising kids — has shifted fully onto parents.

What made you want to make this more than just a book about climate change?

The book really was born out of some of my personal experience in grappling with raising kids while the wildfires were starting to intensify in Northern California. It was originally going to be a climate-focused book, and then my publisher and I decided to expand that. 

It’s hard to separate climate from all the other layers of existential stress. For example, I’ve worked with undocumented families, and for children, there can be real fear in leaving behind their parents and going to school. They hold that anxiety, and it manifests, often as a stomachache or a headache.The book also addresses gun violence and school shootings. It’s absolutely traumatic to be in school, a place of learning and curiosity, and to have to do active shooter drills again and again. 

How young is too young to talk about these topics?

People want an easy formula for this, but it comes through trial and error. I don’t think you necessarily need to introduce the tough subjects at a really young age. There’s a protected time when you’re filtering out a lot of the realities and letting your kid grow up into the world and make connections. As they get older and more curious, kids are asking questions and hearing things at school, and you have less control over what they’re exposed to. That’s when it becomes important to think about how to bring up a subject that is not maybe the most pleasant. There’s an expression, “No fear before fourth grade,” which means not introducing really scary stuff before they’re able to get support and think through issues in a slightly more sophisticated way. 

Sometimes, the subjects come up before fourth grade.

Parents don’t always have a choice, depending on different factors, about when they have difficult conversations with their kids. But I think how you talk is what makes the difference. If you speak in a gentle voice, and you’re calmer, and your own nervous system is regulated, that’s very different from if you’re on edge, sad, depressed. Do you have a lot of unprocessed emotions yourself? Those can transfer onto your kids. 

Beyond acknowledging the polycrisis, it sounds like taking care of yourself is one thing you want parents and caregivers to come away with. What are some other words of wisdom parents need right now?

Yes, taking care of ourselves and just continuing to regulate our nervous systems because we have to remember that it filters down to the kids. That’s really critical. I think that “the parent club” [a tool Cook-Shonkoff uses in her book to describe a community including parents, guardian, caregivers, foster parents, involved family or community members] is a way that parents can support each other. Parent groups have enormous potential for developing community and resilience in the face of toxic politics and culture.

How do parents move from self-care to social change? 

We do have to do emotional processing, or, as I call it, emotional metabolizing, and we can’t squash or deny and keep pretending life is a certain way. We have to just be real about it. And from there, we can raise healthier families and take action and have some society-level impacts. If you develop those capacities early in a child, by the time they’re in high school, they’re ready to be advocates for themsleves and to be part of their communities. 

What else have you seen that works?

My book explores spending time in the more-than-human world [a phrase coined by ecologist and geophilosopher David Abram]. We can see our place in the world or just understand things differently when we’re out in the natural world. Spending time in communities, creating these little intentional communities, making music, writing lyrics, writing poems, creating art, making a mural — all that stuff is more powerful than people realize. 

Who or what gives you hope?

Two women who influenced my work recently passed. One of them was Jane Goodall. Meeting her in my hometown when I was 17 years old was pivotal for me. She started a youth program in our town, and I was a president of the environmental club in the high school and was on this panel with her. Her steady advocacy around animal welfare, the environment and human rights countered my frustration with the adult world. It showed me that some adults did care. There was both a gentleness and firmness to her demeanor, and I could tell that she was a quiet force to be reckoned with. Joanna Macy, an eco-Buddhist philosopher-activist, also meant a lot to me. When I first came across her work, as a mom with my own eco-anxiety, it felt relieving to have my intense feelings of hope and grief so well articulated. And that she had a clear program — and a literal path forward through all of my pain and fear — was a lifeline for which I remain grateful for today.

In truth, John Ireland was a Liverpool-born union organizer who worked alongside César Chávez and Dolores Huerta for the rights of grape pickers in California. His wife, Barbara Ireland, had a housecleaning business and sold clothes that she sewed herself; eventually she became a nurse and founded a fundraising walk in honor of a friend who died of breast cancer.

When the kindergartener finally blurted out that her dad worked for labor unions, the news was greeted with a collective shrug. “It was so boring,” she laughs. “They didn’t get it.”

Ireland went on to become a world-famous fashion model, gracing the covers of Vogue, Cosmopolitan and, most famously, Sports Illustrated, and she followed that act with an even more impressive executive encore. As CEO of kathy ireland Worldwide (kiWW)—listed as the 15th most powerful brand in the world by License Global, the highest ranking ever for a woman-owned company—she oversees an extensive array of products including fashion for women, men and children; intimate apparel; accessories; fine jewelry; weddings and resorts as well as publishing, film, television, music, artist and athlete management. Alongside these ventures, she is a consistent advocate for human rights and religious freedom, with philanthropic commitments including the war on sex trafficking, improved access to medical care, recovery from addiction for men, women and children, and honoring America’s brave military members and their families.

Married 33 years and a new grandmother, Ireland recently caught Early Learning Nation’s attention on social media because of her enthusiastic participation in the #ClearTheList campaign, helping teachers obtain school supplies. “We’re sending thousands of products into schools,” she says. “Some of them are from our own collections; others we’re purchasing.”

For Ireland, the campaign was an obvious way to express herself philanthropically. “Teaching, like nursing, is one of the most underappreciated life commitments anyone could possibly make,” she says. “They are already overworked. Why should they spend their own money on school supplies, when they need it for their own families?” She credits singers Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr.—a married couple who first got together while in the group the Fifth Dimension—with bringing the campaign to her attention. (Ireland’s new label, EE1, put out their latest album, Blackbird: Lennon-McCartney Icons, which hit No. 1 on the album charts)

Here are Ireland’s 5 top tips for leaving the world a better place than how you found it.

1. Figure out what your gifts are. “I encourage people to really figure out their strengths and to focus on what makes them thrive,” she says. “Even if it’s pulling your mask down to give a smile.” Ireland celebrates acts of kindness that give children hope and encouragement. “We can all do our part to remove fear.”

When it comes to parenting, she says, “I can’t think of anything harder or more important than raising children. Being a mom, being a dad, does not get the type of respect that it deserves because there’s no paycheck attached. I often think of the Loretta Lynn song, ‘One’s On the Way.’”

2. Know your priorities. Nobody can do everything. Ireland notes that many parents today are caring for aging relatives, often on top of professional responsibilities. “I was 40 before I learned that ‘No,’ is a complete sentence,” she admits. “My personal priorities are my faith, my family and being of service through my work. When I don’t honor that, I’m a disaster, not effective. I’m not as well equipped to deal with whatever’s going to hit me throughout the day.”

3. Get acquainted with the gift of rejection. “When I was four,” Ireland recounts, “my very first job was a combination of business and design that was a solid indicator of what my life’s work would be. I sold painted rocks with my sister, from my wagon, door to door.” Not everybody bought a rock, even after she slashed prices. Later, she had a paper route and encountered more rejection. Despite her success in modeling, she also remembers all the magazine covers she didn’t get, but the sense stayed with her that she could still believe in herself and persist in spite of rejection.

4. Use your voice. This piece of advice was the hardest for Ireland herself—someone whose former job description was, in her words, “shut up and pose”—to follow. “It took many years for me to come out of that shy and selfish shell,” she admits. “Now I recognize that there are needs and opportunities so much greater than me. If sharing what we’ve been through can benefit someone else—our struggles or failures, successes, all of it—I recognize… I recognize that comfort is irrelevant. There’s a lot of work to be done.”

5. Stand up for the vulnerable. When kiWW launched 28 years ago, the first product off the assembly line was a pair of socks. Surprise factory inspections were always a part of the manufacturing process. “You can have a beautiful product,” she says, “but how does it come to market? Anybody can clean up if they know you’re coming. That commitment continues to this day,” and it stems directly from her father’s devotion to workers’ rights. Ireland recalls him fighting to get outhouses placed in the field so farm workers could relieve themselves with dignity. He also campaigned to equip the workers with long hoes, which were easier on their backs, even though the owners wanted them to work with short hoes, which supposedly helped the profit margins.

Ireland wasn’t born wealthy, but her entrepreneurial instincts have served her well over the years, and she is now the name that other models regularly invoke when they envision their post-fashion careers. She never forgets her father’s insistence on appreciating what they had. “We used to take trips across the border, and Dad would always point out the housing conditions of the people who lived there, houses literally made out of cardboard,” she says.

If her father’s example of gratitude has stayed with her, it’s her granddaughter, Daisy, who helps her stay grounded today. “No matter what’s going on in your day,” Ireland says, “when you look in Daisy’s eyes and she gives you that big smile, it’s like, ‘What? What was I bothered by?’”