High rates of parental stress are cropping up all over the world. For many, child-rearing isn’t fun and games.

Breaking health news often causes a major media buzz, but U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy must have been surprised when USA Today reacted to his August 2024 advisory “Parents Under Pressure” with the headline “Parenting may be hazardous to your health.” 

Why was the media reaction so strong? Because Murthy described a daunting picture of how stress on parents is rising like a flood in an environment without enough life-boats, bringing the issue front and center as a U.S. public-health challenge.

It isn’t only a problem in the United States. Isabelle Roskam, a psychologist with a specialty in parenting and child development and her team at Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium studied the prevalence of worldwide parental burnout in 2021 by conducting a 42-country survey.

It found that rates of burnout were highest in Western Euro-American countries including the United States, Canada, Belgium, France and Spain. But the phenomenon also appeared in Latin and Eastern countries such as Chile, Egypt and Russia.  

The United States is examining the reasons for the stress but also possible solutions. Murthy promoted policy changes at the federal and state levels, including increasing a tax break for parents who raise children, and expanding paid parental leave. 

In doing so, he focused on financial stress and lack of time for child-rearing as major burdens. 

A most difficult job

But health professionals say the stress is not due to less money or time alone; it’s caused by parenting becoming much more difficult in a rapidly changing society that offers little guidance on how to respond to it.

What led to these difficult, rapid changes? In one word: COVID. In a 2022 review of studies on the effects of the pandemic, researchers Maria Gayatri and Mardiana Dwi Puspitasari found that family life changed worldwide when families were forced to isolate in their homes. From early 2020 through the end of 2022, parents for the first time felt that they were alone in raising their kids while also trying to earn an income. Technology became the tool to stem boredom and loneliness for both parents and children. 

While it’s difficult to measure use of technology across a population, social media use was tracked across Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia in a 2021 Norwegian study led by Oslo Metropolitan University. 

The results revealed that during the pandemic, social media use increased substantially among adults.

Becoming a parent without preparation

Performance psychologist Ben Bernstein, author of “Stressed Out! For Parents” with a Ph.D. in Applied Psychology, says more education is needed to help parents navigate the unprecedented challenges of the last 10 years, such as ubiquitous technology and post-pandemic behavioral changes.  

He says training programs for want-to-be parents are scarce, even though being a parent is one of the most difficult roles in society. He commends Murthy’s recommendations, but also pushes for a direct mandate for parent education. 

Specific online education is what matters most to Dr. Anya Kleinman. A pediatric emergency room physician in the U.S. state of Ohio, Kleinman says she has seen evidence of children growing up without “guard rails” when it comes to online activity. She says a lack of education is derailing the efforts of parents to protect their children and society must change to address these issues. 

Small efforts by health professionals, such as directing parents to age-appropriate learning apps for their children, can make a difference, she said. 

Parents desperately need support from empathetic people, says Robyn Koslowitz, a clinical psychologist with a Ph.D. in Clinical Child Psychology. In her forthcoming book “Post-Traumatic Parenting: Break the Cycle, Become the Parent You Always Wanted to Be,” due out in July 2025, she tackles a major issue connected to parental education: the no-room-for-failure mentality.  

The force of societal pressure

Koslowitz says she’s heard stories from parents who were humiliated after sharing their parental struggles with others online, where people often feel emboldened by anonymity to post criticism. 

Parenting is not like other tough jobs where stakes are high and standards keep shifting. Parents feel they can’t walk away, from child-rearing, unlike a paid job, so mental healthcare is important and parenting classes can help. 

But classes demand space in schedules, even if they are on Zoom. And time for self-care is a precious and a rare commodity among parents. Even Kleinman, who is concerned about children being given smartphones too early, admits that it is difficult to come up with an alternative strategy to free up time for families with few resources. 

And the importance of parental self-care is paramount for good mental health, says Koslowitz. The answer to reconciling these two needs might be found in the words of Joy Brown, a centenarian living in Longmeadow in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, who will soon become a great-grandmother.

Brown said that extended family helped her and her husband but what was most important was finding ways to do what she liked to do with her sons in tow. 

At a celebration brunch held in Joy’s honor on the occasion of her 100th birthday, she received an outpouring of community support, something that Murthy thinks a lot of parents are lacking. 

But that second part of his message does not seem to have gotten as much media attention as the first part.

Three questions to consider:

1. Why has it gotten more difficult for parents in recent years?
2. How can parents combat the feeling of loneliness?
3. What attributes do you think make someone better able to handle parenting?

Julia Yarkoni is a family medicine physician living in Israel who is passionate about bringing to light the effect of current events on family health and relationships. She is a fellow in global journalism at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.