Are parents at their wit’s end? The surgeon general says yes

We recently took a look in this space at the issue of anxiety in kids and teens. 

The topic drew nationwide attention with the March publication of “The Anxious Generation,” by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. His thesis is that between the late 2000s and the early 2010s – as cell phones became more ever-present – an entire generation of kids has sunk into the muck of social media rather than engaging in social activities like playing outside and engaging in person that can help them become successful adults.

Their brains, Haidt suggests, have been rewired enough to cause serious mental illness and distress.

Now comes an advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General – Dr. Vivek H. Murthy – that claims parents’ brains may need help, too. He posits that parenting today is too hard and stressful, and that those who practice it are at their “wit’s end.” 

“They feel lucky to be raising kids,” he wrote in the New York Times last month, “but they are struggling, often in silence and alone.”

Murthy goes so far as to call the trend a serious health issue. Is he right?

Based on pure numbers – like those in a 2023 American Psychological Association survey called “Stress in America” – 48% of parents reported being “completely overwhelmed.” The result, wrote Murthy, is that along with worries like finances, safety and the hours their children spend online, many parents feel they are falling short.

He cites the conclusion of an American Academy of Political and Social Science survey from as far back as 2011 that shows because of changes in the culture – including more women in the workforce, delayed marriage and childbearing and a lack of child care – parents are working more and spending more time on their children and less time on leisure and each other.

Murthy also cites the ubiquity of parenting advice, often online, that he says “promotes unrealistic expectations of what parents must do.”

“Chasing these expectations,” he concludes, “while trying to wade through an endless stream of parenting advice, has left many families feeling exhausted, burned out and perpetually behind.”

But not withstanding these parenting stressors, could part of the problem be a generational and understandable desire to be better at child-rearing than our parents or grandparents were? To give our kids “more” – without understanding what that more should be?

In a 2023 survey of 3,700 parents nationwide, the Pew Research Center found that of those who claim to be raising their children differently, the main change was in how they showed love and built relationships with their kids.

Millennials are a case in point. In a January survey of 1,000 parents in that generation – those between 28 and 43 years old – 73% said they believed their parenting style is better than past generations. Yet nearly half – or 46% – also indicated they’re burned out.  

So what should be the “more” we give children? In an April piece in The Atlantic magazine, author Arther Brooks acknowledged three things that contribute to our children’s happiness and to their becoming the kind of adults we want them to be: providing structure and goals, offering unconditional warmth and affection and modeling our own behavior.

So more isn’t measured by material things, and while we may have the means to attain things the generations before us didn’t, they likely don’t matter as much as loving support.

That’s an easy one.