July 14, 2025
Climate change represents the defining crisis of our time, yet so little seems to be done to address it. This alarming discrepancy poses a question not only about the competence of elected governments but also about everyday barriers to participation existing at the bottom which end up silencing citizen demands. Among these muffled voices, parents represent a uniquely motivated yet underserved demographic in climate activism. As protectors of the next generation, they carry a profound emotional investment in climate outcomes, yet parenthood itself can create seemingly insurmountable obstacles: exhaustion, time scarcity, financial constraints, and the heightened caution that comes with caring for vulnerable family members.
In response to parents’ unique position in relation to climate change and climate action, Hope For The Future is collaborating with Parents For Future (PFF), Contact, Rowan Environmental Arts and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) to launch an ambitious initiative funded by the National Lottery: ‘A Future for All’. This five-year program is designed especially for parents and families in the Yorkshire region who feel the weight of climate anxiety but face steep barriers to meaningful action. The focus is on parents in deprived communities and parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). These groups confront disproportionate challenges in both climate vulnerability and civic engagement, and their voices are often underrepresented in policy decisions. This partnership aims to make climate advocacy accessible and climate policies more inclusive, ensuring they reflect the needs of those most impacted by climate-related issues.
For our partnership, building this initiative on a firm base of knowledge is crucial. That’s why earlier this year, in consultation with Hope For The Future, LSE politics students under the supervision of Prof Paul Apostolidis and two PhD students carried out a preliminary inquiry into UK parents’ everyday experiences and thoughts, hopes, and feelings about climate matters. Thirteen LSE undergraduates conducted intensive research with parent members of Parents for Future, which encourages UK parents to take action on climate issues, and Contact, which supports and advocates for families with SEND children.
Through interviews and focus groups, these preliminary research findings uncovered four critical realities that shape parental climate engagement and draw pathways for transforming that experience.
A widespread sense of frustration and disillusionment with democratic institutions exists among UK parents. Government failures to respond to the climate crisis with ambitious reforms fuels disappointment with traditional representative channels. Moreover, participants also experience a dissonance in democracy: they say that while in principle politics should embody the public good, in practice it often appears to reflect elite interests, a power-game that excludes ordinary people. This sense of abandonment runs deeper among parent carers, whose family configurations and children’s conditions often fall through the cracks of the welfare, education and health systems.
Fortunately, however, disillusionment has not collapsed into total distrust: UK parents still value standard representative institutions, expecting and demanding dysfunctionalities to be fixed. Some research participants even say that high-level institutional shortcomings have opened opportunities for remotivating citizen participation through local, grassroots initiatives. When national politics are gridlocked, community projects can deliver real improvements to ordinary people in their daily lives.
Recognising this dual reality, ‘A Future for All’ combines bottom-up community organising with strategic engagement of elected representatives to reconfigure a democracy that is accessible, responsive, and driven by those with the most at stake.
The climate movement has created a devastating paradox for parents. The sustainability public discourse depoliticises climate issues and relentlessly emphasises individual actions, such as recycling, transport choices, and consumer decisions, as the solution to a systemic crisis that parents know is primarily induced by large corporations and institutional actors. This dissonant narrative not only misplaces responsibility but also creates impossible burdens. Parents described the crushing weight of trying to make green choices their families can't afford, especially SEND families who already struggle with disproportionate energy costs.
Yet parents also feel invested with a profound moral duty to protect their children's future, often coupled with deep climate anxiety. Many spoke about making serious efforts in their daily lives to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and teach their children about sound environmental practices. Participants from PFF especially shared taking the further step of engaging in public action such as by participating in demonstrations, although those experiences have been mixed. Participants often wished they had been more effective in creating change. Other ways of taking public action might be better given parents’ expressed concerns about exhaustion, lack of time, higher risk-aversion, and avoiding activities that may negatively affect their children. These barriers are disproportionately encountered by Contact parents, who are already overwhelmed by their daily struggles as carers.
To address this dilemma – feeling profoundly obligated to take action yet reluctant to do so for practical reasons – ‘A Future for All’ aims to channel parental love into collective power, transforming individual guilt into accessible community action that can effectively create systemic change.
Especially when there’s a need to balance the overly individualistic thrust of much current talk about sustainability, it’s vital for UK parents to be able to rely on community power and not feel isolated. Yet a striking finding from the research was that parents frequently feel inhibited by prevalent social norms from expressing their concerns about climate issues with relatives or in traditional social settings. Parents are often afraid to come across as negative, fanatic or moralising if they voice their fears. Trapped in climate silence, parents end up caught inside a vicious cycle: isolation increases anxiety, which makes it harder to speak up about issues that feel existentially urgent – but that only compounds their sense of guilt.
But when parents do find like-minded communities – for instance, through environmental community groups, online social networks, or parent or parent-carer networks – they discover transformative experiences of solidarity. In such circles they can share their struggles and beliefs and gain encouragement for doing their part. Harnessing community ties is essential to foster a renewed democratic culture and offer an accessible pathway for parent advocacy in ways that enable action and lower socioeconomic barriers to political participation.
‘A Future for All’ builds these community connections aiming to create safe spaces where parents can voice their climate concerns, share strategies and unleash their collective power.
UK parents believe strongly that the climate movement should be inclusive of all family members, and most especially the ones whose future is most at stake: children. This means thoughtfully educating them about environmental issues and involving them in climate action when possible. Parents criticised schools for failing this climate-conscious generation by prioritising exam performance and employability over citizenship education, leaving children unprepared to engage with the most pressing issues of their time. But parents also speak about the inspiring ways that children are not just passive recipients of their education: they are also active agents, demanding better from the adults around them. Parents underscored how seriously their children take climate change and how dedicated many of them are to making a difference.
Yet, in their acute sensitivity, children also face unique vulnerabilities. Some are prone to excessively deep fears about the ecological future or adopt extreme behaviours, like refusing to use lights. SEND children face additional barriers, with overstimulation, noise sensitivity, and transport challenges limiting the possibility for their participation in many public climate advocacy activities.
‘A Future for All’ includes children as climate partners, designing age-appropriate roles that harness their eagerness while protecting their wellbeing and remaining mindful of their needs and capacities.
Drawing lessons from this initial research, the partnership behind ‘A Future For All’ aims to respond to these four urgent truths. Interweaving the power of the arts with impactful advocacy, the programs started in June 2025 and combine ‘Positive Imagining’ theatrical experiences to attune parents and families to nature with fun family-centred advocacy workshops designed to connect families and build local infrastructure for parents to influence change.
If these four truths resonate with you, you can sign up for any of the remaining Positive Imaginings shows and Family Forest School and Advoacy Workshops planned across Yorkshire this summer.
Come help us build momentum for climate action that is exciting, accessible, and visionary: action that doesn't ask parents to choose between family responsibilities and planetary survival but instead harnesses the power of parental love to deepen our collective care for the earth.
