Too tired to parent but not too tired to care

I’ve needed my mother more at 40 years old than I have my entire life. With two toddlers, a demanding clinical practice, a household to run, pandemic school and camp closures, and social isolation to manage, I'm pretty sure I'm burned out. But as a child and family psychiatrist, I know this doesn't fully explain my exhaustion.

There’s an implicit morality to parenting - it’s not like any regular job.

We sacrifice ourselves to raise children who are, by definition, dependent on us. Failing to meet the needs of our children, family, and work has a profound impact on a person.

Anguish and guilt arise when I don’t have the available mental space to scaffold empathy when my toddler is lonely due to the social isolation of the pandemic, the flexible schedule to help my daughter manage the transition to online schools, or the security to know that if I work a little less or lose my job, I’ll still have access to health care for my family. 

Parental distress can be couched under depression or anxiety, though they are not inextricably linked. Parents are judging themselves as failing, when truly our system doesn't support families to succeed. This is even more apparent with the pandemic, as many of my patients have lost their jobs and are suddenly without health insurance. Others continue to have work expectations similar to those before school closures and shelter-in-place policies.

Gone unrecognized, I have seen parental distress lead to emotional numbing, coping by avoiding work and family, and burning out. Burnout is a constellation of symptoms that include feeling exhausted and detached, with lower productivity, and a sense of ineffectiveness. A common metaphor for burnout is that of a battery running out. But when that happens, the toy stops working. But what parent can stop parenting? 

Parenting has become more demanding of our energy over the past decades.

Over half of both parents work outside the home, up from 32% four decades ago. Families are stressed, rushed and tired. Since research shows that parental mental health affects children, taking stress off parents may be enough to improve well-being. While changing jobs can mitigate workplace burnout, changing children likely won’t do much to parental burnout. 

We shift the emphasis from “you’re an individual with poor coping skills” to “you’re parenting in a broken system.”

Our distress is a symptom of something larger: our broken family and work-place policies.

If parents are burned out as individuals, perhaps it’s because we are trying to manage a dysfunctional social system for everyone.  We are isolated and depleted. Not being able to attend to the needs to our loved ones in the way we believe is right can challenge our resilience and ability to cope. Once in a while, fine. But on a repeated basis, the path of least resistance becomes a learned helplessness. Here are some options to help: 

Value the role of parents and family.

Workplaces that support families are more productive. Employers can implement flexible schedules, job sharing, temporary switches to part-time, and telecommuting. Studies show that paid leave has later positive benefits on mental health, can help close the gender pay gap, decrease reliance on public assistance, and boost return to the workforce. Hold leadership responsible for family

Embrace your moral compass.

The next time we are feeling depleted, exhausted, and frustrated, we can take a moment to ask how we believe things ought to be. Identifying the problem and giving voice to our experience will give a clue as to what our moral expectations are. Then ask what structural barriers are getting in the way, and begin to strategize action. 

Establish a sense of community.

Align with others and talk about your parenting struggles. Know that burnout, exhaustion, and parental distress are normal outcomes of a lack of support and a burdening of multiple responsibilities. Sometimes the blockades feel insurmountable. But in aligning with others and building community, we can strengthen the moral courage to parent in a society that no longer deflects blame onto the individual parent as not resilient enough, and rather build a society that serves to support all parents and families to thrive.