Analysis: Almost one in ten caregivers say they're experiencing parental burnout so what’s causing it and what can be done to alleviate it?
Earlier this year, US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, issued an urgent advisory calling for a 'fundamental shift in how we value and prioritise the mental health and well-being of parents’ and caregivers. This was in response to research documenting high levels of parental stress, guilt, exhaustion and loneliness. Murthy pointed out that today’s parents are experiencing unprecedented challenges associated with the all-consuming nature of childrearing, causing many to feel overwhelmed and burnt out.
So what are the factors contributing to elevated levels of parental stress and burnout in Euro-American societies? Are these pressures and challenges likely to intensify in a digital economy augmented by artificial intelligence? And if so, what can be done to alleviate the stresses and strains of modern parenting that leave many feeling so depleted and alone?
Recent decades have witnessed the downplaying of structural explanations for social inequalities and a corresponding repositioning of the family as a public, political and moral concern, rather than a private matter. The increasing emphasis on children’s rights, combined with the growing influence of psychology, neuroscience and evidence-based policymaking, have further contributed to a profound shift in societal expectations of what it means to be a ‘good parent’.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne, parenting advice from Clinical Child Psychologist Dr. David Coleman on problems from an 18-year-old pushing the boundaries at home to a five-year-old who won't use the bathroom in school.
These expectations include being heavily involved in children's formal education, reading to/with them, investing in their social-emotional development and ensuring their digital and physical wellbeing and safety. Middle class mothers in particular spend significantly more time than previous generations supervising and assisting children. This includes helping them with homework, taking them to and from extra-curricular activities and ensuring that they possess desirable skills needed to navigate an increasingly uncertain future shaped by climate change, technological transformation, social unrest, economic polarisation and precarity.
The time demands of such intensive parenting are amplified for those balancing childcare with work commitments, single parent families, those with care responsibilities to aging relatives and those whose children have additional needs.
Whereas being a parent was once primarily understood as a naturally existing relationship between a caregiver and their child, the concept of parenting that emerged in the 1980s has shifted the focus to a series of activities, strategies, tools and skills that parents should employ in order to optimise children's life chances. As parents are increasingly made to feel personally responsible for their children’s wellbeing and outcomes, many struggle to meet the unrealistically high standards that intensive parenting entails. With little time left for themselves, their own leisure pursuits and personal relationships, almost one in ten caregivers in Western contexts are experiencing parental burnout.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, UCD Associate Professor of Psychology Paul D'Alton on burnout and why the amount of people experiencing it is increasing
Aspects of intensive parenting, such as hypervigilance and omnipresence, are further reinforced by the availability of digital technologies, including parental surveillance or monitoring tools designed to ensure children's online safety. Parents and caregivers shoulder the burden of protecting their children from online predators.
At the same time, they are expected to help their children navigate problems such as cyberbullying and harassment, peer conflict and exclusion, while balancing this with the social and educational opportunities that online activity affords. They also have to make sense of conflicting expert advice about the effects of smart devices and social media on mental health and are expected to keep up with a plethora of digital technologies and safeguarding tools while somehow also respecting their children’s right to privacy and autonomy.
Read more: Why 'good enough' parenting is good enough
With AI amplifying the need for human-centric skills and fuelling parental anxiety about diminished employment opportunities in an increasingly competitive society, the demands of contemporary parenting are likely to intensify even further as the 21st century progresses. As AI is mainstreamed, the demand for human skills such as creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration will intensify.
In recent years, the OECD has begun to assess children’s non-cognitive or social-emotional skills including open-mindedness, collaboration and engagement with others, task performance and emotional regulation. Developments such as these are likely to up the ante where intensive parenting is concerned. As parents worry about their children’s future in an increasingly complex and uncertain world, those who can afford to do so will try to ensure that their children have access to educational and extra-curricular opportunities that cultivate human-centric skills.
Whereas the effects of intensive childrearing on children have been extensively researched, the physical, mental and relational toll it is taking on parents is under-acknowledged. Research suggests that parental burnout – a condition charactered by intense exhaustion, emotional distancing from one's children, and a loss of pleasure in one's role as a parent – is a historically new phenomenon linked to the unique stressors and expectations of contemporary parenting. A recent large-scale, cross-national study found that parents living in individualistic (predominantly Western) societies are more prone to parental burnout than those whose cultures value collectivism and interdependence.
The implementation of ‘family-friendly’ policies and related social supports to alleviate work-family conflict are helpful measures to improve parental wellbeing. But the norm of intensive parenting – and the competitive individualist values and political-economic ideologies and policies that underpin it – need to be dismantled if the alarming rates of parental burnout, and unacceptable levels of economic inequality that this type of parenting contributes to, are to be addressed.
In the absence of effective social policies to address wider societal problems of housing and educational inequality, precarious employment, the climate crisis, online safety and runaway AI, parenting that is frenetic, future-focused and unfulfilling, rather than relational, rewarding and ‘in the moment’ will prevail.
Follow RTÉ Brainstorm on WhatsApp and Instagram for more stories and updates
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
