Children’s Affiliations with Nature: Structure, Development, and the Problem of Environmental Generational Amnesia

Citation

Kahn Jr, P. H. (2002). Children’s affiliations with nature: Structure, development, and the problem of environmental generational amnesia. Children and Nature: Psychological, Sociocultural, and Evolutionary Investigations, 93, 116.

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This chapter asks some big questions:

How do children think about environmental problems?
Are there universal features in children’s environmental conceptions and values?
How important is it that children and young adults experience natural wonders?
What happens to children’s environmental commitments and sensibilities when they grow up in environmentally degraded conditions?

To explore these questions, the author draws on five different studies carried out in a variety of places. In each study, children were interviewed about how they understand environmental issues, what they care about, and how they decide what is right or wrong when it comes to nature.

The chapter also introduces two key ideas that guide this work: structure (the patterns in how children think about moral issues) and development (how these ways of thinking change as children grow). Together, these ideas help explain both what stays consistent in children’s thinking about the environment and what evolves over time.

Building on this research, the chapter highlights a serious but often overlooked problem: environmental generational amnesia. This happens when each new generation grows up accepting a more damaged environment as “normal,” simply because they never experienced healthier ecosystems to begin with.

Abstract

How do children reason about environmental problems? Are there universal features in children’s environmental conceptions and values? How important is it that children and young adults experience natural wonders? Finally, what happens to children’s environmental commitments and sensibilities when they grow up in environmentally degraded conditions?

This chapter reports on the results of five studies that the author and various colleagues conducted. In these studies, children were interviewed in diverse locations about their environmental moral conceptions and values. The author also seeks to explicate two ideas that frame his theoretical approach to investigating children’s affiliations with nature–structure and development. Finally, the author builds on the structural-developmental framework and his research findings to articulate what may be one of the most pressing and unrecognized problems of the current age—the problem of environmental generational amnesia.