Parenting is stressful – lost sleep, worries about how our children will grow up, and the daily mental ticker of raising a family.
But that only scratches the surface. Last week, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a report, naming parenting in today’s climate as a public health issue.
For parents who face these daily obstacles, it’s somewhat affirming. While every generation might believe they had it worse than the previous one, the link between modern day parenting and negative impacts on stress, mental health, and well-being is alarming.
But are policymakers and corporations taking it seriously?
PARENTS UNDER PRESSURE: PARENTING AS A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE
Here are a few of the major findings of the report:
(All quotes below are attributed to “Parents Under Pressure” report, unless noted otherwise.)
Parents work more AND parent more
It sounds impossible, but it’s true. Parents work outside of the home more now than ever before; especially women. Mothers now work 28% more than they did in 1985.
But they’re doing more primary child care despite these increased paid work demands. Mothers have increased their child care time by 40% and fathers by a whopping 154% since the mid-1980’s. This might be attributed to the trend of hands-on intensive parenting, but also the lack of affordable child care options.
The results are concerning. “Balancing work commitments and occupational-related stress with family responsibilities can lead to work-family conflict, guilt, and burnout among parents,” says the report.
Despite this, child care has failed to surface as a front-and-center issue in the 2024 presidential election, with one candidate stumbling to offer even a basic commitment or plan to address it.
The sandwich generation brings increased pressure
Not only do parents struggle to care for their minor children, but they increasingly face caregiving responsibilities for older adults.
“In 2021, nearly a quarter of U.S. adults (23%) had a living parent age 65 or older and also either a child under age 18 or an adult child for whom they provide financial support.”
With Baby Boomers living longer than ever before, their options for long-term care and health care are clearest when they are wealthy or have very little money. For the many in between, they will increasingly rely on their working age children who are already caring for their own kids.
And yet, companies and policies have not prioritized or valued their caregiving employees’ needs. Instead, we see companies tout diversity efforts on their website while they erase work-from-home policies and virtual options that actually ease caregiver stress and help retain quality workers. Companies are replacing caregiver-friendly pandemic policies with distrustful tracking policies, then blame the lack of retention of women on false “opt-out” theories.
The mental load impacts parents negatively
The cognitive load of raising a family is debilitating and often falls to women, including the responsibility to plan holidays, build community, and support their children’s emotional and developmental growth.
The Surgeon General’s report indicates that these countless decisions have a negative impact on parents’ mental health and well-being. The mental load “can limit working memory capacity and negatively impact attentional resources, cognitive functioning, and psychological well-being.”
And yet, we still view the cognitive load as an individual responsibility, one that mostly falls on the shoulders of women who’ve been culturally conditioned and quietly expected to take on yet a third job of default household manager – rather than a cultural problem that needs widespread solutions.
Parents carry intense stress about children’s health and safety
Simply reading these words in print causes me to exhale deeply about some of the deep fears that parents bury each day to simply survive.
Parents worry about the mental health of our children – something that generations before did not have strong concerns about. “Nearly 3-in-4 parents are extremely or somewhat worried that their child will struggle with anxiety or depression.”
When children have intellectual or developmental disabilities, they experience even more stress. “Parents and caregivers of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities often face greater stressors related to caregiving (e.g., learning specialized skills, navigating complex systems of services to support their children, and financial pressures).”
We worry about their physical safety, too. “School shootings, or the possibility of one, are a significant source of stress for nearly three-quarters of parents (74%).” This stress is heightened following each school shooting, which has become a regular occurrence in the U.S.
Other factors can exacerbate parental stress:
Each one of these situations is difficult, especially when they are layered on top of each other.
The report declares that factors can increase the risk of mental health conditions, such as:
- family or community violence,
- poverty, and
- racism and discrimination
The decline of parenting
The stressors are so real that adults in their 20s are delaying or forgoing children altogether. Young Americans aren’t having as many babies, despite wanting children. Factors in the declining birth rate are: concern about the financial cost of having babies, lack of support, student loans, and climate change.
Pregnancy and birth have also become more dangerous in recent years, with restrictive policies in many states. Birthing people are experiencing sepsis and fallopian tube ruptures as a result of insufficient health care because doctors are scared of criminal prosecution in today’s post-Roe landscape.
Where do we go from here?
Despite these significant stressors on everyday parenting and the declining birth rate, the U.S. has yet to see a true cultural shift in the way we value (or don’t value) caregiving.
Initiatives about caregiver pay are mostly laughed away, despite Salary.com’s estimate that the annual salary for a stay-at-home parent — when taking into account all the jobs that they do, including chef, chauffeur, cleaner — is $184,820.
The Surgeon General’s report contains tangible recommendations for government and policymakers, employers, community organizations, schools, health and social service professionals, and individuals.
Their very first call-to-action is the most important one. As a society, we need to respect and value the work that parents do the same way that we respect any paying position, and uplift the importance of raising the next generation.
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