From Mother to Child: How Climate Change Shapes Health Across Generations

Authored by Mariah Seater (Polar Scientist in Residence, Arctic Basecamp) and Netra Naik (Research Fellow, Arctic Basecamp)

The Climate Crisis Is Rewriting Childhood

Vaccination rates are slipping, infectious diseases are on the rise, and beneath these immediate threats lies a quieter, prolonged danger: the climate crisis (Mahmud et al. 2020; WHO, 2025). Increasingly, children’s health (which includes physical, mental, and developmental) is being shaped not just by healthcare access, but by the environments they grow up in.

Linking women’s health to childhood outcomes

Moreover, growing evidence shows that climate change is not only reshaping childhood, but also intensifying gendered health vulnerabilities across the life course. A recent systematic review finds that women, particularly in low and middle income countries, face disproportionate health risks from climate stressors due to gendered roles and limited access to resources, healthcare, and decision making. Climate impacts worsen maternal and newborn health risks, mental health challenges, water and sanitation insecurity, and caregiving burdens, reducing women’s capacity to cope and adapt (Anjum & Aziz, 2025).

At the same time, children’s vulnerability cannot be separated from the health of women, especially mothers and caregivers. When women’s health and resilience are undermined by heat, food insecurity, displacement, or disease outbreaks, children’s health outcomes often deteriorate as well, reinforcing intergenerational cycles of climate vulnerability.

The Climate Burden on the Young and Women

Recent research underscores the scale of the problem. Children born just five years ago are expected to face between two- and seven-fold more extreme climate events, such as heatwaves, than their parents or grandparents. Unlike past generations, today’s young people are inheriting not only the planet the way we left it but also a mounting burden of climate stressors that can shape their health, learning, and futures (Thiery et al. 2021).

The impacts are already visible.

• The Financial Times recently reported that over 80,000 schools across 87 countries have had to adapt to rising heat, with closures cutting into classroom learning (Adeoye and Mooney 2025).
• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), climate change is contributing to rising rates of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and deaths per 100,000 children under five worldwide (Sheffield and Landrigan 2011).
• Meanwhile, studies also link in utero exposure to extreme heat with poorer educational outcomes later in life (Wang et al. 2025) – suggesting that climate change can alter trajectories before a child even takes their first breath.

Importantly, this burden accumulates across generations. Climate exposure during pregnancy, experienced by women through heat stress, malnutrition, environmental toxins, and air pollution, has been linked to higher risks of preterm birth and low birthweight, which are among the leading causes of child mortality worldwide. A recent overview of reviews found that climate change related exposures, especially extreme temperatures and pollutants, consistently worsen these outcomes for mother infant pairs, potentially increasing under 5 mortality and lifelong health challenges. Climate risks are especially severe in low and middle income countries, where women face the highest exposure to climate hazards but often lack access to climate resilient healthcare systems, amplifying long term health and developmental risks for children. (Ludwig-Borycz et al., 2025).

The Hidden Toll: Asthma, Anxiety, and Lost Opportunities

Climate impacts on child health extend far beyond the classroom. Rising heat and worsening air quality are linked to higher rates of asthma and other respiratory conditions (Venugopal Reddy Iragamreddy 2025). Extreme weather events bring with them displacement, food insecurity, and trauma—stressors that can compound into long-term mental health crises (Getzzg 2024).

In parallel, climate-related stress and trauma manifest differently across genders. Women and adolescent girls report higher levels of climate anxiety, post-disaster depression, and caregiving-related burnout (Pardon et al., 2023; Dannis et al., 2025). These mental health burdens often go untreated due to stigma, lack of services, or digital exclusion, further limiting families’ ability to respond to climate-sensitive illnesses and emergencies.

Where Innovation Could Make a Difference

There are bright spots, though limited. Some school systems have begun retrofitting classrooms with cooling systems, adjusting academic calendars, or expanding shade and green spaces (Matsunobu and Coimbra 2023; Sanz-Mas et al. 2024). Community health programs are piloting interventions to monitor asthma in regions with worsening air quality. But these efforts remain fragmented, rarely coordinated under a framework that explicitly prioritizes child health.

Additional solutions to support children and youth:

• Policy shifts that integrate child health explicitly into climate resilience planning.
• Expanded research funding to understand how prenatal and early childhood exposures to climate stressors affect development.
• Education investments to ensure schools are climate-resilient, minimizing lost learning time.
• Mental health services designed specifically for children facing climate anxiety and disaster trauma.
• Youth engagement in policymaking, recognizing children as stakeholders in shaping their future.

Additionally, programs that strengthen women’s Digital Health Literacy (DHL) and Environmental Health Literacy (EHL) can improve early disease detection, preventive care, and emergency response for entire households. Evidence suggests that empowering women with accessible, climate-relevant health information leads to better outcomes for children and communities alike, yet most initiatives remain small-scale or pilot-based (Abdolkhani, 2022; Choukou et al. 2022).

Additional Children and Women’s Health Climate Resources

• Climate change and child health: a scoping review and an expanded conceptual framework, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30274-6/fulltext
• Protecting maternal, newborn and child health from the impacts of climate change: A call for action, https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240085350
• Gender equality and climate policy scorcard, https://www.unwomen.org/en/climate-scorecard