America’s Parents Are Not Okay
Episode 479 | Author: Emilie Aries
Parental support in the workplace is about more than public health—it’s about talent retention.
To all the parents out there: when’s the last time you didn’t feel stressed out?
In August 2024, an advisory was released from the U.S. Surgeon General titled “Parents Under Pressure.” The data within doesn’t beat around the bush: it identifies parental mental health as an urgent public health issue.
Parents are facing extreme levels of stress. In the surveys quoted, 41% say they’re “so stressed they can’t function most days,” and 48% say their stress is “completely overwhelming.” Both numbers are about double those of the non-parents who report feeling this way. While the wellness of our adults is of great concern, there’s an even darker shadow to all this: research shows a strong correlation between poor mental health in parents and poor physical and mental health in children. In other words: this issue impacts the health of multiple generations and, as a result, our entire country.
There’s no question that parents and people considering becoming parents across the U.S. are experiencing burnout (chronic stress levels over a long period of time) by the hundreds of thousands. In this episode, I take a closer look at the advisory and what workplaces should be doing to mitigate this national crisis.
The main causes of parental stress
The advisory outlines seven primary sources of stress for parents that, when combined—as they almost inevitably are in most family units—paint a stark picture of what a crisis this really is.
Financial strains: Child care is an obvious one here, but they are also talking about inflation, price gouging in grocery stores, health and education costs, and so on.
Time demands: When you combine the hours worked at a paid job and the unpaid hours spent caretaking, parents are putting in a heck of a lot of overtime. Add in that the time demands on both types of work have increased in recent years, and you’d be hard-pressed to get a daily number that adds up to less than 24 hours, much less the 16 that would allow for a good night’s sleep.
The health of our children: Even setting aside the financial strain, parents are facing continuous stress over their children’s wellbeing. Issues like COVID and the return of once-eradicated youth illnesses are combined with the growing concern over mental health, especially for teenage girls.
The safety of our children: Bullying, gun violence and school shootings—it’s no wonder we’re losing sleep when we can actually snag some.
Isolation and loneliness. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and it turns out that refers to more than explicit childcare duties. Fewer and fewer parents have the social support they need to be well themselves, and this lack is directly correlated with depression and anxiety disorders.
Technology and social media: The unfettered availability of the internet and social media is directly linked to our children’s safety and health.
Cultural pressures regarding our children’s futures: Perceived parenting standards, societal expectations, whether we’re doing enough to ensure our children are successful later in life—all of these considerations understandably stress parents out.
That’s a long list for a problem we haven’t heard much public discussion about before this year. While there are, of course, many policy and personal steps that might be taken—which are laid out in the report—in true Bossed Up fashion, I’m taking a closer look at the actions workplaces should be taking to mitigate these issues.
What workplaces can do better
More and more parents are “choosing” to leave their paid careers and raise their children. But is it really a choice when you make it because you can’t otherwise afford exorbitant childcare or because you’re expected to work excessive hours at the office and you’re seeing that impact on your health and the health of your family?
If the wellbeing of their employees isn’t reason enough, the fact that this public health issue is also a talent retention issue should have companies scrambling to find solutions. In “Parents Under Pressure,” they recommend the following actions.
More policies and programs: Organizations should create new initiatives that support the wellbeing of parents (and caregivers of other individuals, as well). This includes things like paid parental leave, medical and sick leave, and flexible schedules—none of which is currently mandated in our country.
Improved training: Providing managers with training in stress management, work-life harmony, and recognizing the signs of poor mental health in their direct reports. All this validates the reality of parental stress, which is a big first step in itself.
Extended benefits: Developing resources and coverage for employee mental health care, like employee wellness plans.
More funding and media attention for vital social programs: Promoting and funding programs that support families, such as universal preschool, early childhood education, and courses in family dynamics. A lot of these initiatives already exist, but they need money and media exposure to make an impact.
What is your workplace doing—if anything—to help alleviate these parental stressors? If you’re a parent or considering becoming one, how is the current situation affecting you? Share your thoughts on the Courage Community on Facebook or join us in our group on LinkedIn.
Related Links From Today’s Episode:
U.S. Public Health Service “Parents Under Pressure Advisory”
Episode 468, “Disrupting Elder Care: We Need to Talk More About Working Daughters”
Episode 434, “The Economic Imperative of Affordable Childcare”
Episode 472, “How We Get Over Overwork to Build a Better Life”
TAKE ACTION on parental mental health
and other issues affecting workers:
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EMILIE: Hey and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 479. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today's episode is unsurprising for those of us who are in the trenches right now, like myself,
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but maybe surprising for those of us who aren't. Today, I want to talk about how not okay America's parents are. The U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, released an advisory back on August 28 that declared parental mental health is an urgent public health issue. His report, Parents Under Pressure was all about the mental health and well being of parents in our country right now. And I have never before seen something acknowledging just this intense pressure parents are facing as a public health crisis.
And I think it's relevant for today's conversation because so many managers and so many workplaces are seeing the ramifications of parents hitting a breaking point. And in fact this is becoming a talent retention and acquisition issue because there are so many parents in the workforce or who would like to be in the workforce, but life as a parent in America these days feels so impossible that they are dropping out of the workforce altogether. And this is becoming a real talent problem.
In fact, if you look just at the self reported levels of stress, we've really hit a peak where the difference in stress levels between parents and non-parents is stark. According to the report, 41% of parents say that most days they are so stressed they cannot function compared to 20% of non parents who agree with that state. And 48% of parents say that most days their stress is completely overwhelming compared to other adults, which only 26% of non-parents agree with. So the stress levels of parents is about double of what non-parents are experiencing.
Now I'm not drawing this distinction to create mommy wars between us because I think being child free by choice or just being in a pre-parental stage in your life is also stressful. And also you can experience burnout and also life can be really hard and challenging for lots of different reasons. But the unique stressors parents are navigating right now, I think warrants the kind of systemic solutions that we're trying to bring attention to in other diversity, equity, and inclusion conversations.
So if you have a Women's ERG or a People of Color ERG at your workplace, my question is where's the Parental ERG? Where is the employee resource group talking about the issues and challenges specifically navigating parents? Because this is a public policy issue, this is a public health issue, and this is a workplace issue if you want to retain parental talent. Because after all, parents with children in the household, this is just a unique, intense, but fleeting time period in one's career. So if we lose our entire career trajectories because of this temporary and in some ways too fleeting moment in time, that's a real detriment to our ability to achieve our full potential and for the workplace and the economy to reap the full potential of all of its, you know, contributors.
So to break this down, let's first acknowledge what this report identifies as the main causes of parental stress. The first is financial strain. This should be no surprise to you. I've railed before on this podcast about the astronomically increasing cost of childcare in this country. In fact, I plan on doing an upcoming Bossed Up episode all about that as well. But that's just one of the many costs that parents are experiencing. When we talk about things like inflation or price gouging at the grocery store, you got more mouths to feed, you're going to hit, you know, that's going to hit harder when it comes to your grocery bill. But that doesn't even account for things like health and education expenses for children as well. So financial worries continue to be a top stressor among parents, which is no surprise.
The second primary stressor are time demands. The amount of time that parents have spent on paid work, as well as caretaking work has increased over the years, leading to, you know, conflict between family responsibilities and work responsibilities. Basically, over the past generations, the amount of intensive hands-on parenting time has increased and the amount of time that parents spend in the paid workforce has also increased, which is a really interesting and tricky situation. In fact, I interviewed Brigid Schultze recently on this podcast and her very first book that came out 10 years ago, Overwhelmed, talked a lot about this, time pressure and just the rise of intensive parenting that has led parents today to feeling completely overwhelmed. Not surprising and also very relatable.
The other stressors that came up really hurt my heart. Children's health, including mental health challenges, a huge and troubling trend, particularly among teenage girls right now. Children's safety, whether we're talking about things like bullying or the shocking, and still hard to even wrap my head around, rise in gun violence and school shootings. That is just a significant stressor for children and parents today.
And then parental isolation and loneliness. I know that loneliness is on the rise, but for some reason I didn't see this as a parental issue. But it makes sense, right? Like if you spend so much time parenting and working and just trying to keep your head above water. You're not feeling super connected to your community necessarily. And we're all, like, raising children in isolation in this nuclear family model that we were never designed for. Like, this is never, like, the whole concept of it takes a village is there for a reason, because we were never meant to be parenting alone. And so parental isolation and loneliness is directly linked and correlated with parental depression, and anxiety disorders, and mental health being in the toilet, quite frankly.
And then the final two are technology and social media, which, oh my god, I can't even, like, imagine what that's going to be like when we get to that point. Managing social media use of your own children, not to mention your own use, that sounds really daunting. And cultural pressures for your children's future. Societal norms, the pressure to meet perceived parenting standards and cultural expectations, really thinking about, like, how to set your kid up for success is such a high bar that we hold ourselves to as parents.
All of that taken together, has left parents at a breaking point. And I think the financial strain and time demands and safety and mental health and wellbeing pieces in particular really paint a dark picture of what a public health crisis this is becoming. So when parents are under this kind of extreme and chronic pressure, which, if you've been following this podcast for a while, you know, when I talk about burnout, that burnout is really defined as a state of chronic stress. So it's one thing if you are experiencing, you know, a stressful day, a stressful week, a stressful season in life, but how about a stressful 18 years of having children under your roof? That's a really long time to be depleted. That's a really long time to not have a lot of rest and recovery in your life. And so these are parents who are completely and utterly burnt out, which is showing up in the workplace as well.
So the reason that the Surgeon General has pointed to this as a public health crisis is because parental mental health has a direct impact on children's wellbeing. So if we care, hypothetically, you know, in this society about children, our most, one of our most vulnerable populations, then we need to care about parental wellbeing. One study cited in the research found that children of a primary caregiver who reported poor mental health were 4 times more likely to have poor overall health and 2 times more likely to have mental, behavioral or developmental disorders. 41% compared to 21%. S*** that is a lot of kids who are experiencing mental, behavioral and developmental disorders.
So this is not surprising,right? This is a correlation. It's hard to tell exactly which direction the causal link might be going. But we were just sick. Like this is a sick society. This is a sign of us failing our children by failing parents. And if parents are drowning and we're making this into an individual problem, like, figure it out. You're the one who had kids. You're the one who chose to have kids. You know, good luck with that. You're on your own then. What we're really saying is that we don't care that children are suffering as a result of this. And to be clear, the reason I think we should as a society care is not only because it's a moral thing to do, it's the nice thing to do. It's like loving on your neighbor.
But also when 50% of kids are having mental, behavioral or developmental disorders in these households, that disrupts society for all of us. Those kids are in your kids classrooms, Those kids are hanging out on the corner of your street. You know, those kids' behaviors and futures impact things like our crime rates and like violence in our communities. So if we want a healthy society, we have to start young. We have to start investing in parents, children, and families because it's a public benefit to us all to have a society that actually takes care of our children.
And interestingly, the research also finds that both maternal and paternal, so mom and dad's mental health conditions, are shown to impact the wellbeing of children. Maternal mental health conditions significantly impact a child's wellbeing and environment and can serve as a critical determinant of child outcomes. So, I just feel like this is such an alarming point in time in which our society has to ask ourselves, do we care about this? And I get it. Like, I understand people who feel like I'm not really invested in you raising your children. You know? Maybe you chose that you don't want to have kids and that's fine. But this idea that we have a widespread public health crisis, when it comes to mental and regular old general wellbeing of parents and children begs some questions about the future of our country.
It's no surprise that we have a plummeting birth rate here in America and in lots of places. And are we okay with that? Should it be this hard to have children? Because I think if you ask our parents and our grandparents, not that raising kids has ever been easy to be clear, but it just feels to me like there's generational significant differences in how difficult it feels and how out of reach having children can feel for so many people today.
So what can we do better? I want to talk about this in two ways. What can our workplaces do better and what can our society do better? First and foremost at work, we can expand policies and programs that support the wellbeing of parents and caregivers. That can include things like offering paid parental leave, medical leave, sick leave, and flexible work schedules. In addition to employee sponsored childcare, which is huge. We have a childcare shortage in this country.
I'm so proud of the state of Colorado. I interviewed Nicole Riehl from EPIC Executives Partnering to Invest in Children, all about how Colorado is offering huge grants as a state for employers who want to start up their own daycare centers on-site for their employees. So that kind of public policy meets the private sector solution is a really helpful way to solve for the childcare crisis and shortage in this country that I'd love to see more of. And also policies that help and support parents can be as simple as training managers on stress management and work life harmony.
And so their second recommendation in this report is that employers should include training, support and resources for managers on how to recognize signs of stress and mental health challenges among parents and caregivers. I like how they throw caregivers in here sort of after the fact, which is something that I talked about with Liz O'Donnell recently on the podcast all about those providing elder care. You know this. This report was very specifically focused on parents of children, but it absolutely applies to people who are caring for elders or their own parents in their older age as well. But caregiver burnout is real.
So making sure that we're enabling and equipping managers to recognize caregiver burnout, recognize and validate the reality of parental stress, and provide a family friendly culture by actively, quote, including parents in leadership roles, end quote. Which can put them in a position of supporting others who are balancing and juggling role overload in and of themselves. So seeing more parents in leadership is an aspect, I think of diversity, equity and inclusion as well.
And the final recommendation for workplaces is to provide access to comprehensive and affordable high quality mental health care. So whether it's through an EAP or just having quality health insurance plans that include access to comprehensive and affordable mental health services or even something like employee wellness programs, those can really provide a lifeline to parents who need them. And so making sure that you've got your bases covered on that front is so key.
There's obviously lots more to be done on the societal level. Here at Bossed Up we've got four policy areas that we're particularly focused on advocating for, which you can support via our Take Action page bossedup.org/takeaction and there you'll find two recommendations that this report includes. One is passing national paid family and medical leave, which is absolutely top of mind for me this election season. And the final recommendation that they make in this report is simply to promote and expand funding for programs that support parents and caregivers and families.
So that includes things like child income tax credits, universal preschool early childhood education programs like Head Start, and programs that help nurture healthy family dynamics, such as early childhood home visiting programs funded by the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program. So there's a lot of support out there for parents. It's just not well funded, it's not well known, and it's not nearly enough to curb the massive pressure that parents are under today.
I want to just close by reminding us that this should be, and very much is a workplace issue because this is a talent retention issue. I'm not saying that it, you know, we all need to be working full time if people want to off-board and make the choice to, you know, exit the paid workforce to provide full time care at home, that's amazing. I think that's an incredible choice to make and man, that's a hard job. Honestly, full time caregiving is really hard and not for everybody. But my big question is, is this actually a choice for people or is this a necessity because of how impossible it feels to do both. So if it feels completely impossible, it's not like any caregivers are making that choice from a place of personal agency. And that I have a problem with okay?
So if you want to, if you're consciously making a free choice between choosing to pursue a blended career of caregiving and being in the paid workforce, versus being a full time caregiver, good for you. Make that choice in whatever way works best for you and your family. But it's such a constrained choice that it doesn't really feel like a choice for so many workers right now. And if your company wants to retain talent and ensure that we don't permanently lose people, due to what is a fleeting and temporary caregiver role that they have in their life right now, then it behooves all of us to invest in making parenting in America just feel more possible.
If you want to learn more about throwing your support behind some of these public policies, head to bossedup.org/takeaction to learn more about how to support our public policy priorities. And for more details on everything I discussed in today's episode, head to bossedup.org/episode479 that's bossedup.org/episode479 and as always, let's keep the conversation going in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook and in the Bossed Up LinkedIn Group.
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I'd love to hear what you think, and I'd love to hear what this feels like for you, for your family, and for how you're viewing the future of yourself and your loved ones, or of our country and how we treat one another in this society that we're building together. Until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose, and together, let's lift as we climb.
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