Clinical and subclinical levels of anxiety and depression are common experiences during pregnancy for expectant
women; however, despite rising awareness of significant climate change anxiety around the world, the extent to
which this particular type of anxiety may be contributing to overall antenatal psychological distress is currently
unknown. Furthermore, the content of concerns that expectant women may have for their existing or future
children remains unexplored. To address this gap in knowledge, 103 expectant Australian women completed
standardised assessments of antenatal worry and depression, climate change anxiety, and perceived distance to
climate change, and responded to several open-ended questions on concerns they had for their children. Results
indicated that climate change anxiety accounted for significant percentages of variance in both antenatal worry
and depression scores and, unexpectedly, neither child number nor perceived distance to climate change
moderated these relationships. Content analysis of qualitative data highlighted the significant health-related
anxieties for participants’ children related to climate change (e.g., disease, exposure to extreme weather
events, food/water insecurity). Given the escalating nature of climate change, further investigation of this
relatively new stressor contributing to the experience of anxiety and distress, particularly in uniquely vulnerable
groups such as expectant women, is urgently needed.