Parents are under a lot of stress nowadays, and it’s becoming a major public issue.
The U.S. Surgeon General issued a warning about parental stress recently, saying that parents of today are having to deal with things that “previous generations didn’t have to consider.”
Vivek Murthy made mention of this in an advisory he released recently. In it, he said that there are 63 million parents in the U.S. who have children who are 18 years old and younger. Of that total, 41% are “so stressed they cannot function.”
These high stress levels are at least partially because of “complexity of managing social media … concerns about the youth mental health crisis, and an epidemic of loneliness that disproportionately affects young people,” Murthy wrote.
Media outlet The Hill also spoke to other parent experts and psychologists, all of whom pointed to additional stressors that the parents of today are having to face. Two such things are the fact that expectations of what they need to do to be considered a “good parent” are shifting dramatically, and it’s not as easy to access child care today as it once was.
The experts The Hill spoke to also said they agreed with Murthy that it was time to highlight social media as a major parental stress source. That’s because a lot of parents aren’t quite sure how they should control what social media platforms their children have access to, or how they even can control it to begin with.
Mia Smith-Bynum, who works at the University of Maryland School of Public Health as a professor of family science, for instance, said:
“Because kids are so engaged online, they are exposed to all kinds of harmful content.”
This is something that not many generations of parents have had to deal with. Kids today basically grow up with a smartphone in their hands, or at least seeing other people around them all have smartphones.
They don’t know life without them and, as such, they are exposing to some things that parents might not want — and in a much easier way than ever before.
One of the biggest changes that parents have experienced in the last 100 years is the simple fact that more people understand how important parenting matters. This puts extra pressure on parents as a result, according to University of Minnesota research associate professor Christopher Mehus.
While that increased knowledge has definitely led to positive outcomes such as parents who are more engaged with their children, it can also make parents feel as if they always have to be perfect.
Being a parent has also become much more of a burden financially. Salaries haven’t increased in recent years at nearly the same rate as the cost of living. Plus, child care isn’t nearly as accessible as it once was.
Since 1990, the cost of just child care has increased 214%, while the average salary for a family has increased only 143%.
That’s a pretty major gap that many parents have to figure out, according to a report from the group The First Five Years Fund.
