Parents in the U.S. are feeling stressed, and Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy says it’s time to do something about it. Nearly half feel overwhelming stress on any given day, compared to just 25% of non-parents, according to a recent survey from the American Psychological Association (APA).
The crisis has convinced Murthy to issue a new advisory calling attention to the immense pressures parents face.
“What we have to realize as a country is that the work of parenting is really vital to the well-being of our kids, and to our society overall,” Murthy says. “That means the well-being of parents really matters to society.”
He says the current advisory is a natural follow-up to his previous ones on the harmful effects of social media on youth mental health, and the growing crisis of mental health issues among young people, which is reflected in increasing depression and suicide rates in teens. Stress in parents, he says, can also harm the well-being of children.
It’s a hard time to parent
In the advisory, Murthy outlines the long-standing pressures parents face—like financial concerns about providing for their families—as well as newer ones, such as the impact of social media. In 2023, according to the APA survey, 66% of parents reported being “consumed by worries regarding money,” compared to 39% of other adults who weren’t parents. In 2022, a Pew Research Center survey revealed that a quarter of parents said they were unable to provide enough food for their families or pay their rent or mortgage in the past year. Contributing to those challenges is the fact that child care costs have risen by 26% over the past decade, according to the White House.
Increased school violence and bullying, especially online, are also adding to parents’ concerns about their children’s safety and well-being.
The advisory notes that the impact of technology extends beyond the influence of social media on children’s mental health. Virtual options mean many parents are working longer and more varied hours, which increases the need for primary child care. Murthy says mothers are now spending 40% more time each week on child care, compared to 1985, and fathers are now devoting 154% more time each week to child care than they used to (though mothers still spend far more of their time on it than fathers).
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Social media also amplifies age-old worries every parent has about how they are measuring up—to their own parents, peers, and other families in their social circles. The transparency that social media makes possible is both a blessing and a curse, says Murthy, as it can both serve as a source of comfort and support for parents struggling with similar issues but may also depict idealized situations that parents find difficult to achieve. “Technology and social media allow us to now compare ourselves not just to the few parents around us, but to thousands of parents, all of whom can make us feel more insecure about how we are parenting,” he says. “And that contributes to a greater sense of shame and guilt around the hardships that parents experience.”
Those pressures are also contributing to higher rates of loneliness among parents; 65% of parents and 77% of single parents reported feeling lonely in a 2021 survey conducted by Cigna compared to 55% of non parents. Isolation and loneliness can exacerbate pressures parents feel, since “social connection is a buffer to stress,” says Murthy. “And when people feel lonely, even routine stressors can become overwhelming.”
Murthy sees the current stressed state of parents in the U.S. as the result of cultural, social, technological, and political shortcomings that together devalue parenting and the role parents play in healthy communities. “It is up to us as a society to not only recognize parenting as important, but to make supporting parents a priority,” Murthy says. “And we need to underscore the urgency of making it happen. It’s not an issue that can wait for five years—parents are struggling right now.”
How to ease the burden
To better address the needs of parents, Murthy recommends a series of steps that national and local governments, as well as individuals, can take. They start with policies that provide paid family leave and sick leave to let parents take the time they need to care for their families and for themselves, and include making child care and health care more accessible and affordable. Congress also has a role in helping to make social media safer and addressing gun violence, two areas that are major sources of stress and concern for parents, says Murthy. Ensuring that workplaces and schools provide adequate mental-health support is also an essential part of easing the burden parents feel, since they feel ill equipped to address the emotional and psychological challenges they or their children might be experiencing.
Employers can also bolster support of parents with more flexible work schedules that allow for unexpected child care needs as well as stronger mental health services for workers struggling to balance parental and work duties. Outside of the workplace, communities can make neighborhoods more supportive and inclusive for families, by providing social services such as playgrounds, libraries, and other spaces where parents can bring their children and form important connections with other parents. “The truth is that parenting at its best is a team sport. For thousands of years, people have done parenting together,” says Murthy. “The notion that parenting is something that is exclusively the work of one or two people is actually not reflective of how humanity has lived for most of our existence. Raising children requires the support of family and friends and the infrastructure of a society that recognizes how essential parenting is.”
The U.S. has made progress in recent years by investing in ways to increase access to early childhood education and by providing stronger mental-health services, including the launch of 988. But, Murthy says. “there is a lot more to do when it comes to making parenting more sustainable.” With the advisory, he hopes policy makers, employers, and others will become more aware of the pressures parents currently face, and start to take steps to address them. “The work of parenting is essential work,” Murthy says. “There are multiple steps that we’ve got to take to help parents.”
That includes galvanizing not just government and business leaders, but individuals as well. Murthy still recalls the time a friend dropped by when he was alone with his infant son for the first time eight years ago. “She held him and played with him for 15 minutes,” he says. “I remember feeling relief and comfort knowing that I wasn’t alone, and that there was somebody who had my back.” Even though it was a brief visit almost a decade ago, he says, “it made a lasting difference for me. We often underestimate how much we contribute to the lives of others…and you don’t have to wait for a law to be passed to get started to support the parents around us.”
