The Surgeon General Issued An Advisory On Parental Mental Health. But Is Anything Going To Change?
No one goes into parenting under the illusion that it’s going to be easy, but almost everyone reaches a point when they think, “I never imagined it would be this hard.” It might be an infant’s sleep, a child’s diagnosis, another family member who needs care, or finding a day care spot or a job with flexible hours, but there eventually comes a moment when a parent isn’t sure they will be able to go on.
While the circumstances of each family are unique, many parents are feeling a huge amount of stress and a lack of support, which damages not only parents’ mental health but also their children’s.
The consequences of all this stress are so serious, and so widespread, that U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on the mental health and well-being of parents on Wednesday.
The document outlines the main sources of stress that are weighing on parents and suggests ways that the government, employers, communities and family members can offer help. Perhaps just as importantly, it uses an official voice to validate the anguish parents are feeling.
In a passage sure to resonate with frazzled parents who wonder why their minds simply aren’t working as well as they used to, the advisory explains: “The significant mental labor involved with parenting — balancing complex schedules, anticipating a child’s evolving needs, making countless decisions each day on behalf of a child, and monitoring progress — can limit working memory capacity and negatively impact attentional resources, cognitive functioning and psychological well-being.”
Yet many parents bear this suffering in silence, perhaps feeling the need to put on a brave face for their families — or simply because they don’t have anywhere to turn for help.
In an opinion essay published the same day in The New York Times, Murthy wrote: “The stress and mental health challenges faced by parents ... aren’t always visible, but they can take a steep toll. It’s time to recognize they constitute a serious public health concern for our country. Parents who feel pushed to the brink deserve more than platitudes. They need tangible support.”
How has parenting gotten harder?
Parenting has never been a simple task, but today’s parents face unprecedented challenges — and often, fewer resources.
Data from the American Psychological Association shows that, in 2023, parents reported significantly more stress than non-parents (defined as adults without children under 18). Sixty-six percent of parents reported that they were “consumed by worries regarding money,” compared to 39% of other adults.
In addition to the rising costs of food and housing, parents also have to contend with the high cost of child care, which has gone up 26% over the past decade.
The demand for child care is now greater than ever, with more parents in the workforce and those parents working longer hours than in the past. More mothers today work outside the home, averaging 26.7 work hours per week in 2022, in comparison to 20.9 hours per week in 1985. Fathers’ work hours have gone up, too, although less dramatically, from an average of 39.8 hours per week in 1985 to 41.2 hours per week in 2022, according to the advisory.
You might assume that all this time at work means parents are spending less time with their kids, but in fact the opposite is true. The advisory cites research showing that the amount of time both mothers and fathers spend providing primary child care has also risen in the past four decades — more so among fathers, who, overall, are doing more caregiving work today than in generations past.
Yet the number of hours in the day has not changed. If parents are working more both inside and outside of the home, those hours are coming from somewhere. The advisory suggests that all this extra labor subtracts from “quality time with one’s partner, sleep, and parental leisure time” — precisely the kind of self-care we’re often prescribed to preserve our mental health — leaving parents trapped in a vicious cycle of stress.
Kate Gawlik, a professor of nursing at Ohio State University who has conducted research on parental loneliness, told HuffPost that she feels the advisory is “long overdue.”
“Post-pandemic, our world has changed so much, and it’s really brought to light a lot of these challenges that parents are facing,” she said.
Adding pressure to an already lengthy list of demands is what Gawlik called the “culture of achievement,” and the advisory refers to “an intensifying culture of comparison.” This frantic need to keep up with others is exacerbated by social media, which encourages families to compare their children’s achievements and their own parenting with an unrealistic ideal.
In addition to their current financial concerns, parents are “constantly receiving this message now that our children should do better than we did financially,” Victor Armstrong, a social worker and vice president at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, told HuffPost.
The impact of new technologies on their children is another source of parents’ increasing stress. A Pew Research Poll found that two-thirds of parents believe that parenting today is more difficult than it was 20 years ago, and they cited technology as one of their top concerns.
Finally, racism, poverty and discrimination, while certainly not new phenomena, weigh heavily on parents and children.
“Those can also increase the risk for mental health conditions, and those impact not just our young people, but also impact adults, who see rising suicide rates,” Armstrong said.
“We know that systemic racism, historical barriers and inequities have left particular ethnic, racial and minoritized populations having to face trauma, loss, bias and social disparities that are often unique to those communities and have largely been unaddressed over time. And so now we’re playing catch-up,” he said. And he emphasized that each community will require an individualized, tailored approach to meeting its mental health care needs.
What support do parents need?
All of this stress puts a strain on parents’ well-being, reverberating out to their children and other family members. “Caregivers need care, too,” the advisory concludes, and it outlines possible avenues of support for parents and families.
Fundamentally, we need to acknowledge that caregiving is work that benefits society. “It’s time to value and respect time spent parenting on par with time spent working at a paying job,” the advisory states. Parents, and all workers, benefit from paid family leave, paid sick days, flexible schedules and on-site child care. In addition, promoting policies such as the child tax credit could bring families some relief from their financial strain.
On the micro level, “We really want to increase those resources and decrease those stresses, and this will be individualized,” Gawlik said. One overextended parent might assign their children more chores, for example. Another might join a carpool to reduce their time spent ferrying kids around, while someone else might ask a family member to pitch in with child care.
Access to mental health care — for both parents and children — is crucial. This includes making resources available and working to lessen the stigma of taking advantage of them. Gawlik mentioned that some nurses are reluctant to pursue mental health care because they are worried about needing to report it when renewing their nursing license. Long wait times to see a provider can add yet another barrier.
Businesses and organizations could hire their own mental health providers that employees would be able to access for free, confidential help. These providers could also offer services such as parenting support groups.
Finding parents who can offer peer support is another great option for any parent. If your child has a mental health diagnosis (such as ADHD), you may be able to find a group (online or in person) specific to it. Such groups can help parents combat “that overwhelming feeling” of not having “somebody that can relate to you,” Gawlik said.
For various reasons, too many people delay reaching out for help until they are at a point of crisis. “We oftentimes don’t recognize these day-to-day pressures and challenges that people face, but they take a toll on people over time,” Armstrong said.
When parents don’t get help, “it’s going to begin to take a toll on the child as well, exposed to whatever the parent is going through,” he continued. This is not to blame parents for adding to their children’s stress, but to acknowledge the reality that in a family unit, one person’s struggle will have an impact on others.
Armstrong has sons who are 10 and 12, as well as an older son who is 32, and this age gap has allowed him to see how much parenting issues have changed over the past generation, just as technology and social media have.
The root concern a parent has for their child’s well-being, however, remains the same.
“One of the things that I say with parents all the time is, ‘Give yourself some grace,’” he said. “There is no handbook for how you do this.”
Communication with your children and other family members, he said, is key to catching mental health concerns before they become emergencies.
“Give them room to have and to express their emotions,” he advised. “Listen to them, not judgmentally.”
Parents, too, need opportunities to speak with others who care about them. “If you’re going through a challenging time,” Armstrong said, “if you find yourself at a point where you can’t seem to function, it’s impacting your ability to do your job, it’s impacting your ability to function day-to-day, it’s impacting your sleep — it may be time for you to talk to someone. One of the simplest and most helpful things that you can do as a parent is talk to someone about what you’re experiencing.”
He recommended AFSP’s tips on reaching out for help and how to talk to someone if they are hesitant to share what they’re going through. The 988 crisis line is another resource available to everybody. He suggested that parents ensure their children, too, know where to find other trusted adults that they can talk to. One resource for LGBTQ+ youth is the Trevor Project.
Parents, alone, cannot shoulder the weight of every challenge that comes their families’ way, and no one should feel shame in asking for help.
