Parental stress becoming a public health concern

If you have kiddos, this might not be very surprising. Stressed out parents is now such a big issue that the U.S. Surgeon General has officially called that stress a public health concern. That's right. The advisory highlights stressors that impact the mental health and well-being of parents and the link between mom and dad's mental health and their kids' long-term well-being. So joining us to further break down this advisory is our 90s Parenting Expert and Therapist, Dr. Cheryl Ziegler. Dr. Ziegler, good morning. Good morning. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. So what is the difference in stress levels between parents and adults who are not parents? Yeah, well, it's significant. I mean, there's more stress around money. There's more stress around time management. So how do you spend your time? So parents report that they spend more time at work. So that's also like other adults. But the difference is they come home and they spend more time not just on the invisible loaded home taking care of a house, but also with their kids, ending caregiving. So there's leisure time with your kids. They spend more time with and also the caregiving, the feeding and the bathing and those kinds of things. So this really becomes a matter of time. Time is a really big source of where the stress is coming from. Times are very different than they were, let's say, 20 years ago, where you would, a lot of moms stayed at home and dads went to work. Nowadays, both parents are working. We're working really long hours. So talk about some of the unique stressors that come with raising kids. Yeah, today we have the unique stressor of technology. So technology and social media and constantly contending with that is a really high stressor. There's also the stresses around just are the parents own mental health issues. So we're seeing depression and anxiety at these higher levels, along with then their kids having these concerns. So like checking the box of, it used to be safety, safety was used to be the number one concern of parents. It's still on a long list, but honestly, above that is their mental health. They're scared their kids are going to have mental health issues. So that's another unique stressor. Well, let's talk about cultural pressure as well too. I mean, nowadays, it used to be every parent had their own parenting style and that was okay. Now, everybody can go online and tell you how you're doing it all wrong. Yes. Even the pressures of, wait, we have to celebrate, like they lost their first tooth, they rode their bike for the first time, you have to do a post, you have to tell people. And this isn't a joke. This is what people are replying. They're saying this cultural pressure, this always on document and celebrate everything. Birthday parties have to be so beautiful and tailored and the theme has to follow every bit of it that truly parents are also losing the joy out of these fun milestones we've always appreciated. They weren't this big, they weren't this big and you didn't feel judged around it. So that's a big one too. I think there's also an additional pressure when it comes to American parents. We have a lot of friends that live across the pond and they're like, y'all do so much with your kids. You've got them in 10 sports and music and you're doing all the activities and that's, I feel, a little bit more unique when it comes to American families. Absolutely. I mean, what we're doing here is unlike anything anyone's doing around the world. And so we spend more time with our kids, we micromanage our kids a lot more, we give them a lot less freedom too. So we don't give kids the freedoms to ride public buses or go ride their bike to farther away places. We're like, you have this small radius and I'm going to track you and those kinds of things. And that's also really causing us as parents stress. Okay, well then how is that put on the kids ultimately, right? Right. They've got less freedom, they have less self-esteem, they don't know how to do things for themselves, they're not doing chores as much, they require their parents to help them with homework. I mean, the list goes on and on. So if you can imagine, when I came home, really almost nobody helped me with homework unless it was a very big project, and even then that was very little. But now it's like, oh, well, I can't do this until you sit down right next to me and do this with me. So that's another time suck, it's a stressor. There's parents, it's not necessarily on a top 10 list, but parents that say, I really can't help my kids any longer with their work. I don't know the way they do math anymore, those kinds of things. So the pressure is sort of top to bottom. We are almost out of time, but I do have to ask, what can we do to alleviate some of the stress that we have in our lives as parents? Yeah, I mean, from the Surgeon General's perspective, there's public policy issues, we need to have more support for parents, we need a true cultural shift. And like anything, when I talk about mental health stigma, one of the ways to do that is to talk about it more. Talk about how, no, I'm not going to post about this, or no, I'm not signing my kid up for three things, and actually do it. Those are the two kinds of things that, that's how you start change, is by talking, by doing all those little things. And he says also, just remember, loneliness is a really big epidemic, stay connected to people who you can support one another. Absolutely, that's great advice all the way around. We appreciate that. Dr. Ziegler, thank you very much for bringing this to a lot of people's attention. All right.