It didn’t really matter where we took our four children, who are about two years apart in age. Comments from strangers were similar.
At the Capitol, looking at the Smithsonian museums, and later in the Fort Worth Stockyards after moving to Texas, people didn’t hold back in their opinions about my family. “Wow, you really have your hands full,” a stranger quipped as he looked at my children, ages 7, 5, 3, and 1. “Don’t you know how to stop it?” others will ask with a wink.
Having such an extended family is somewhat rare these days. Only 12% of adults have four or more children. Now that three of my children are teenagers, family size no longer matters. I’m too busy raising them.
Not only am I working, but I’m also taking my kids to school, sports practice, and doctor’s appointments. I also attend concerts, soccer games, parent-teacher conferences, and try to spend as much quality one-on-one time as possible.
Comedian Jim Gaffigan says in a particularly hilarious skit, “If you want to know what it’s like to have a fourth child, imagine yourself drowning, and then someone hands you the baby.” . The struggle is real.
Of course parents are stressed too.
Recently, as I was pulling out photos to show a friend, she noticed my calendar open on my phone. “Oh my God!” she said, observing her days so packed that they were almost unreadable. “How do you do it?” I just laughed.
Parents probably have busy schedules, too.
I had the same reaction when U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy recently issued dire warnings about the declining health and mental well-being of parents, aptly named “parents under pressure.” I held you.
“Over the past 10 years, parents were consistently more likely than other adults to report experiencing high levels of stress. In 2023, parents were consistently more likely than other adults to report experiencing high levels of stress in the past month.” 33% of parents reported this, compared to 20% of other adults. I read a report that cited a study by the American Psychological Association.
Nearly half of parents said they were overwhelmed by stress most days.
It seems obvious that parents are more stressed out than adults without children. After all, they are caring for other humans, and that’s a big responsibility.
Good parents, even if they are healthy, organized, and financially stable, feel the weight of their responsibilities, which can be stressful. This is similar to the warning “Coffee is hot” written on coffee cups at fast food restaurants. Please tell us what we don’t know.
And sometimes it’s hard to admit that you’re feeling overwhelmed. After all, most of us wanted children. I especially wanted to have a lot of children. So this is not what I got?
But living with this level of stress for 25 years while our children grow from toddlers to fully functioning (we hope) adults seems unbearable. I’ve heard dozens of colleagues who are parents say things like: “I never thought it would be this hard and this busy!”
The Surgeon General’s report found that parents (and carers) are suffering from “financial strain and financial instability, time constraints, concerns for the health and safety of their children, parental isolation and loneliness, and difficulties managing technology and social media.” “Difficulties, cultural pressures,” he said. I have been through all of this and can confidently say that so have my friends who are parents.
OPINION: Parents are stressed and children are depressed. This is the Surgeon General’s prescription.
There is no doubt that the feeling that raising children is difficult deters adults from having children. Birth rates have fallen dangerously low. I can almost hear childless adults looking at us and asking themselves why we would want to do that. They look stressed, tired, and broken.
Is it okay for parenting to be this hard?
The problem is not that parents can’t handle stress, or even the job of raising children itself. It is often personal, family, and societal expectations that cause the most stress.
In his book Unkind to Families, Tim Carney, a Catholic father of six and columnist for the Washington Examiner, argues that our culture has made raising children more difficult than necessary. It is claimed that there is. An example of this is an excessive focus on busyness and excellence, most obviously seen in children’s obsession with travel sports, which is costly and time-consuming for parents.
Other factors also contribute to the anti-family culture, Carney said, including neighborhoods becoming less walkable, children no longer having community, and the multigenerational family connections that once existed virtually extinguished. claim that it is.
As a parent of four children, I couldn’t agree more with Carney’s observations about modern American life. He longs for simpler methods and proposes solutions that don’t make it seem like the only way to improve parenting is to live on a farm and churn your own butter.
Opinion: I love being a mother. But J.D. Vance is horribly wrong about “childless cat ladies.”
Mr. Carney provided his thoughts on the latest report in an email. “The Surgeon General is right,” he wrote. “Parents are overwhelmed, and that’s probably what’s driving the birth rate down. He’s right to blame the breakdown of communities. Raising children is not an individualistic job. Take his word for it. It takes a village, and the more we become isolated and fragmented, the harder it becomes to raise children.”
In his book, Carney suggests policy changes to make America more family-friendly, including parental leave. He was passionate about pro-marriage and a child-friendly tax system, saying, “Just as the government should be biased toward people, so the government should be biased toward children. A government for people, not a government for puppies.”
Parents, get some perspective. It’s normal to feel overwhelmed.
Most parents don’t live or think in the policy realm. That’s not to say you can’t influence your legislator’s position on tax law, but let’s be realistic. Some of these solutions are difficult to enact, at least not by parental command.
Observing the ups and downs of parenting my friends and myself can provide some perspective. Parenting is a season just like any other season. According to the U-shaped happiness scale, some level of dissatisfaction is normal. According to this measure, people are happiest during childhood and adolescence, then least happy in their 40s, when many parents are raising adolescents and teenagers, which coincidentally However, it is said that it declines again in people’s 40s. Someone in their 60s.
Therefore, it is normal to feel overburdened and overwhelmed during parenting. However, unhappiness doesn’t have to be the default. My parents still say the best years of their lives were when they raised my brother and me. I’m halfway through raising four children, and I think the same applies to me.
One of my favorite lines by author Shel Silverstein is from a poem called “How Many How Much.” “How good is your day? It depends on how good your life is.”
I challenge myself to reframe the feeling of being overwhelmed as a parent as an opportunity to love my children in the best way possible. It doesn’t necessarily mean doing more or attending more events, it just means focusing on quality time and socializing. Parenting can be fun and enjoyable, but it can also be busy and exhausting. Your mindset is the key.
Mr. Carney wrote to me, “Lower your ambitions for your children.” “Enroll him in a local rec league rather than a travel program. Skip the extra violin lessons. Make him bored in favor of fun.”
Carney also suggested “immersing yourself in your community, ideally your church.” Finding support within your community can improve everyone’s health and reduce stressors that parents worry about.
Parenting is hard and demanding, but it’s also a great blessing and opportunity. Both can be true at the same time.
Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY. She lives in Texas with her four children. Sign up for her newsletter, The Right Track, delivered to your inbox.
