The next reproductive crisis

August 30, 2024 2:08 PM

The U.S. surgeon general has issued a public health advisory on the stresses of modern parenting. "41 per cent [of parents] said most days they "were so stressed they couldn't function" — double the number reported by non-parents — while 42 per cent said they were so stressed they felt numb."

"You know more than you think you do." - Dr. Spock, who besides being a pediatrician and writing childcare books, ran for President of the United States as the People's Party nominee in 1972. He campaigned on a maximum wage, legalized abortion, and withdrawing troops from all foreign countries.

Average cost of childcare in the U.S.

The somewhat mythical still $10/day daycare in Canada

4 Ontario school boards sue social media giants

posted by warriorqueen (92 comments total)

Sorry can't read, my 6 year old is having a dinnertime tantrum about having a snack before dinner.
posted by Catblack at 2:11 PM on August 30 [23 favorites]

I have never been as consistently stressed in my life as when I had two kids in daycare, and had a 1 hr commute door-to-desk each way if traffic was okay.

- my daycare opened at 7:45 am and closed at 6 pm, with a $20/day late fee...do the math on my day (my spouse and I tried to swing days but it was rocky no matter how we sliced it)
- I was making -$275 a month after daycare and commuting costs (although we never ran the math on just one parent's salary), although I was on the salary grid and putting mandatory money in a 401(k) for retirement. It was a rice and beans budget.
- I used to cry the first half hour driving home and then try to cheer up for my kids who of course were tired and hungry
- I can barely remember that year otherwise
posted by warriorqueen at 2:28 PM on August 30 [41 favorites]

The US did once have federally-subsidized/provided daycare.

From 1942 to 1946 there were government funded childcare centers so women could help the war effort by working in factories. I remember reading somewhere, but can't find the link right now, that parents could drop off a shopping list with their kid and pick up both groceries and child at the end of the day. It was ended, and a subsequent national child care effort vetoed by Nixon, because powers that be didn't want to encourage women not to raise their own children, or whatever the ridiculous excuse was.
posted by msbrauer at 2:32 PM on August 30 [52 favorites]

Lots of broken adults were broken kids because their parents were shattered trying to raise them alone in this fucked up capitalist nuclear family hellscape. I feel like “it takes a village” is the most real indictment of everything we’re forced to do wrong because it’s not profitable to let people just help each other. Everyone has to earn a living and a half so they can’t spare any living for their parents or kids. It didn’t used to be this way!!!
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:46 PM on August 30 [19 favorites]

Adult stress in the US is either flat or down recently.

https://jabberwocking.com/stress-in-america-a-deeper-look/

So, no. This is just another moral panic, along with the Smartphones are Killing our Kids and All Our Cities Are Crime Ridden Hellholes.
posted by Galvanic at 3:08 PM on August 30 [10 favorites]

This isn’t all that surprising, parenting is fucking hard. Not only is it fucking hard, it’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my life. Somewhere between 10-15 years of parenting life also coincided with about the same time that I was too miserable to even try to put on a happy face, or to think that things would ever be better. I don’t know if parenting caused depression or if depression made parenting hard or some combination of the both but it doesn’t change the fact that it was hard, and by all indications also equally hard for my circle of friends.

There was no village for us, either. Just the four of us, no aunts uncles grandparents

Absolutely there were moments of sheer joy and the four of us got through those years in one piece, relatively speaking but I know that I’m incredibly fortunate to have a remarkable partner and great kids.

This finding is yet another way to measure how broken and unhealthy our society is. We all know it, and yet nobody is able to change the course we’re on.

Anyway, that was a bit of a knee jerk rant and now I’m going to go look at an actual link or two.
posted by ashbury at 3:16 PM on August 30 [9 favorites]

There’s a bunch of folks very concerned about our declining birth-rate.

If they legitimately want to improve that, maybe they could fix what a logistical nightmare it is to parent and work?

Just a thought. If Kamala and company could get that done they’d get some massive goodwill from folks with kids.
posted by leotrotsky at 3:24 PM on August 30 [12 favorites]

Galvanic, I know that you’re providing a different way of looking at this but perhaps you could choose your words more carefully; you may not be stressed, you may have found parenting a breeze and that’s great if that’s the case but please don’t call the feelings of millions of people “moral panic”.
posted by ashbury at 3:26 PM on August 30 [42 favorites]

I didn’t think parenting was easy. I thought it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. That’s a pretty consistent feeling over generations of American history. The moral panic is acting as if this is new or worse now. It’s not. It’s always been hard. There’s no governmental solution to a child with croup who can’t sleep for more than sixty minutes at a time.

And don’t disrespect previous generations by claiming the gold in the Difficulty Olympics for yourself. Think about the stress for parents of the 19th century when a very high percentage of children died before their fifth birthday.
posted by Galvanic at 3:32 PM on August 30 [12 favorites]

There’s no governmental solution to a child with croup who can’t sleep for more than sixty minutes at a time.

True $10/day daycare and single payer government health care can help lots.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:36 PM on August 30 [28 favorites]

The stats in that jabberwocking link sound screwy as hell to me. So, during the days of Trump, covid lockdowns, food shortages, riots in the streets, soaring temperatures and endless fires that turned the sky a sickly orange for day after day, Americans reported significantly less stress than they did in 2007? Nope. I call big fat shenanigans.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:42 PM on August 30 [19 favorites]

The polls are from Gallup, the American Psychological Association and the CDC. Feel free to find more than a vibes reason to discount them.

(By the way, the American child mortality rate in the 19th century was 43% by age five. Almost half.)
posted by Galvanic at 3:46 PM on August 30 [4 favorites]

The surgeon general was comparing parents to non-parents, so I’m not sure the total stress has to go up. But I am curious what the end game of this moral panic would be - don’t have kids? The end of social media for kids?
posted by warriorqueen at 3:48 PM on August 30 [3 favorites]

I honestly think that if Trump wins we will see a new kind of refugee: Reproductive refugee. Mark my words.
posted by floweredfish at 3:50 PM on August 30 [5 favorites]

Honestly I feel in many ways like I kind of lucked out in being a stigmatized poor single parent for most of my kid’s life. I was *already* judged by all the parents, so it kind of let me be free and do whatever the fuck I wanted to do and not worry about whether I was being perfect, because I already knew I was a failure. Did I feed my child Chinese food from the corner store for three days in a row because of depression? Absolutely! But I had the benefit of not feeling guilty about it, because I had nothing to live up to. So I remember child raising as pretty low stress, but I can easily see where if I felt I had to be perfect, it would have been awful.

(That said, I also had the benefit of having cheap early childhood care in the before kindergarten years - if I had to pay modern childcare prices, I can only imagine that would have been insanely stressful).
posted by corb at 3:51 PM on August 30 [13 favorites]

P.S. my first kid died. And yes, that was horrible, and yes, it made parenting stressful. But even in a modern world where it’s unusual, no one blamed me for that. I didn’t have to juggle a boss upset I had to leave at 5:01, catching up at night so as not to drop balls for my team, not feeling like I could buy lunch if I forgot mine, the shame and scurrying around when I forgot it was my snack day that month, my kid asking me why I was the last mummy at pick up, and my car breaking down meaning going into savings. Or the time my husband was on jury duty and got sequestered before a 4-day press trip I was committed to.

Of course it was a much more profound loss. But not less stress. Just FYI.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:53 PM on August 30 [13 favorites]

The polls are from Gallup, the American Psychological Association and the CDC. Feel free to find more than a vibes reason to discount them.

Oddly, if you actually click through to the source for that first Gallup graph that he cited, the graph that he posted is nowhere to be found and there is instead a set of data that shows rising stress levels across the board over the past 30 years, particularly for women ages 18-49...
posted by ambulanceambiance at 3:54 PM on August 30 [22 favorites]

Galvanic, why would you think that I think that it was easier for previous generations? I definitely don't and the article specifically mentioned that the data doesn't really support that it's harder today. The article isn't really about "harder", it's about how parents are coping and feeling, which totally makes sense considering increasing focus on mental health over the last 1o years.

"And don’t disrespect previous generations by claiming the gold in the Difficulty Olympics for yourself." That seemed unnecessary.
posted by ashbury at 3:54 PM on August 30 [23 favorites]

The $10 / day daycare is terrible because there’s not enough of it. So then scarcity mindset kicks in; I know so many people who are like “well we don’t actually need the daycare since my wife doesn’t work but it’s only $10 and hard to come by so we keep them in it.” Then us here with both parents working and having to scramble to make things work and there are NO daycare spaces and when I called they essentially laughed in my face that I didn’t get on the waitlist when I was pregnant 5 years ago… I never would have moved here if I’d known it would be this stressful.

Honestly all this stress has forced me to become even more Buddhist; if I let go of everything I ever thought I needed to be happy (including a house and consistent childcare) then yes I can spend time with my kids and just be in the moment and hopefully not pass on too much of this anxiety and stress to them.

Plus I mean we deeply take care of our kids now - if they are neurodivergent we seek out support, and we get them into sports so they’re healthy and coordinated and next thing you know my entire life is scheduling for and bringing up these people. And if I’m not, I’m looking at my own patterns and reactions because I didn’t like how behaved back there and I want to consider why so that I’m a healthier parent tomorrow. This is all on top of regular adulting which is exhausting. And some days I tell myself, “look be more benign neglectful, they’ll be fine” and to some degree this is true so what if they feed themselves peanut butter sandwiches for dinner tonight they’ll have vegetables tomorrow but damn. It’s still hard. So then maybe you do the final let go which is “well they’ll turn out however they’re going to turn out so whatever” but I’m unwilling to completely do that and dust my hands off just yet.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 3:58 PM on August 30 [18 favorites]

Oddly, if you actually click through to the source for that first Gallup graph that he cited, the graph that he posted is nowhere to be found and there is instead a set of data that shows rising stress levels across the board over the past 30 years, particularly for women ages 18-49

Read the post again to see how he’s using the Gallup poll.

Galvanic, why would you think that I think that it was easier for previous generations? I definitely don't and the article specifically mentioned that the data doesn't really support that it's harder today.

From the linked article: “In addition to the traditional challenges of parenting — like protecting children from harm and worrying about finances — there are new stressors that previous generations didn't have to consider, said Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.”
posted by Galvanic at 4:05 PM on August 30 [1 favorite]

ambulanceambiance, you're not supposed to click through! Just look at the pretty picture and nod and move on. If you start clicking through and actually reading the actual sources linked by articles, you're going to be really stressed when you realize how much of what's out there is just compete BS.
posted by dsword at 4:08 PM on August 30 [1 favorite]

This makes this observation make more sense. I don't think it's just a moral panic—I look around at many of my friends with kids and see how heavily parenting has aged them in a short time. Maybe it was ever thus, and no doubt parents aged faster and more visibly in the era of ubiquitous smoking and baby-oil suntans, but yeah. It also seems like this pandemic era presents its own noteworthy challenges for parents. See also on the blue: this story about school closings.


Plus I mean we actually take care of our kids now - if they are neurodivergent we seek out support, and we get them into sports so they’re healthy and coordinated and next thing you know my entire life is scheduling for and bringing up these people. And if I’m not, I’m looking at my own patterns and reactions because I didn’t like how behaved back there and I want to consider why so that I’m a healthier parent tomorrow. This is all on top of regular adulting which is exhausting

The thing that struck me (not for the first time) when I went snowboarding the winter before last was how many parents aren't trying to break cycles of generational trauma or examine their own responses to others. They're just blithely yelling at their kids on snowboarding slopes about "why can't you be more like your brother" or talking about their kids' supposed failures on the phone like they're not even there. There's definitely an entire contingent of parents who don't care whatsoever about all of the things that a lot of us think are important to address in the next generations' lives. There's also an entire contingent of parents who take their parenting behavior to work and treat their colleagues like recalcitrant children, as if they were never kids themselves. Those behaviors haven't magically gone away among Gen X and millennial parents.
posted by limeonaire at 4:15 PM on August 30 [15 favorites]

I think metafilter is bringing up a good point that this is also an effect of capitalism / class system on a family level. Like if my kid doesn’t get ahead is their future secure; so they’ve got to be in the good school / right classes etc. because otherwise it’s far to fall.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 4:16 PM on August 30 [15 favorites]

Read the post again to see how he’s using the Gallup poll.

You're right, I read more closely. That said, his numbers in his Gallup graph still don't line up with the numbers in the Gallup source? So not terribly confidence inducing in any case.

It's also quite odd that when given the APA data, instead of looking at people of typical child-raising ages, he just... lumped them all together? When looking at the APA source posted, this is in the press release looking at 2023 data, specifically addressing adults in the prime child-raising years: "The survey revealed that those ages 35 to 44 reported the most significant increase in chronic health conditions since the pandemic—58% in 2023 compared with 48% in 2019. Adults ages 35 to 44 also experienced the highest increase in mental health diagnoses—45% reported a mental illness in 2023 compared with 31% in 2019—though adults ages 18 to 34 still reported the highest rate of mental illnesses at 50% in 2023. Adults ages 35 to 44 were more likely to report that money (77% vs. 65%) and the economy (74% vs. 51%) were the factors that cause them significant stress today compared with 2019.

Maybe looking at stress in 80 year olds isn't quite helping us understand the stresses of parenting adults.
posted by ambulanceambiance at 4:17 PM on August 30 [11 favorites]

(I’m certain that a stranger seeing me in passing on a bad day would also conclude I’m just passing on generational shit to them and in that moment they’d be right.)
posted by St. Peepsburg at 4:18 PM on August 30 [2 favorites]

I just clicked through the links on the jabberwocking site to the APA study and they said “ In 2023, parents were more likely than other adults to report that financial strain increased in their household (46% vs. 34%), that money is a cause of fights in their family (58% vs. 30%) and that they are more likely to feel consumed by worries regarding money (66% vs. 39%). Most troubling is that compared with other adults, parents of children under the age of 18 were more likely to report that on most days their stress is completely overwhelming (48% vs. 26%), they are so stressed they feel numb (42% vs. 22%) or on most days they are so stressed they can’t function (41% vs. 20%).”

so…not sure there’s disagreement. Since this seems like same data the surgeon general used. I didn’t see in my quick look data that this has always been true.
posted by warriorqueen at 4:20 PM on August 30 [3 favorites]

You're right, I read more closely. That said, his numbers in his Gallup graph still don't line up with the numbers in the Gallup source? So not terribly confidence inducing in any case.


Oh, I think I see what he did. In the source that he used to show that we're all hysterical about stress, he only looked at people under 50, who are reporting rapidly rising levels of stress. Then, in the source to show that ACTUALLY stress levels are declining, he included the 80 year olds. So, yeah, a bit screwy.
posted by ambulanceambiance at 4:23 PM on August 30 [11 favorites]

And don’t disrespect previous generations by claiming the gold in the Difficulty Olympics for yourself. Think about the stress for parents of the 19th century when a very high percentage of children died before their fifth birthday.

oh yes ok sure
posted by knock my sock and i'll clean your clock at 4:29 PM on August 30 [4 favorites]

from the Surgeon-General's advisory foreword, all of which I find to be remarkably thoughtful, insightful, honest and necessary:

"In addition to the traditional challenges of parenting—protecting children from harm, worrying about finances, managing teenagers who are searching for independence—there are new stressors that previous generations didn’t have to consider. These include the complexity of managing social media, parents’ concerns about the youth mental health crisis, and an epidemic of loneliness that disproportionately affects young people and parents, just to name a few.

As technological and economic forces have reshaped the world at a dizzying pace, it has also become harder for parents to prepare children for a future that is difficult to understand or predict. Parents across all backgrounds want to provide their kids with a foundation for happiness and success. Yet too many fear they won’t be able to provide what’s necessary or their kids won’t be able to access what they need in order to lead a fulfilling life. These needs are many and they vary from safe neighborhoods to admission to the right schools to stable housing. The more parents feel they are falling short of meeting their children’s needs, the more they scramble to make up lost ground.

One response to a world in which success and fulfillment feel increasingly out of reach has been an intensifying culture of comparison—often propagated by influencers and online trends—with unrealistic expectations around the milestones, parenting strategies, achievements and status symbols that kids and parents must pursue. Chasing these unreasonable expectations has left many families feeling exhausted, burned out, and perpetually behind.....

....Finally, our cultural norms must also support us talking more openly about the challenges parents face and building more community for parents whose disproportionately high levels of loneliness compound the day-to-day challenges they face.

Raising children is sacred work. It should matter to all of us. And the health and well-being of those who are caring for our children should matter to us as well. I am hopeful this Surgeon General’s Advisory will help catalyze and support the changes we need to ensure all parents and caregivers can thrive."
posted by ashbury at 4:32 PM on August 30 [12 favorites]

Things that would greatly reduce the stress of parents:

Being able to support a family on a single salary or two half salaries. Parents need time to make family life happen, and our system doesn't currently provide for that.

Having protection from employers who are pressured to continuously increase profits and who translate that into pressure on employees to continuously do more than they have ever done before.

Having healthcare that isn't tied to your job. Having doctors who are accessible and remember your name from one visit to the next.

Having sufficient income protection to allow people to avoid impoverishment and homelessness if they lose their job.

Having access to affordable flexible daycare.

Having communities with housing that is affordable both by the daycare workers, the teachers, the librarians, and the firefighters alongside the families they serve.

This nuclear-family two breadwinner model that we've been thrust into is a new development that isn't working. The sooner we replace it with something else, the better.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 4:35 PM on August 30 [34 favorites]

There are many problems with Galvanic's link. To name a few...

1) The Gallup data directly contradicts the author's thesis.
2) It is not clear at all how the author obtained the second graph from the APA link provided. The textual summaries also seem to dispute the overall thesis. (So I'm done trying to figure out what the author did.)
3) The CDC data is about indicators of anxiety and depression. That's great, but we were talking about stress, not anxiety or depression or both. These are different things.
4) The original post is specifically about stress experienced by parents. This link is not. Imagine citing a study reporting decreasing rates of lung cancer in the general population to refute a study showing it is increasing among smokers, and then calling somebody's concern over the latter development "moral panic."
5) There's also a clear "whoa pandemic" effect in the data. Even if you aren't well-versed on the myriad problems that arise when comparing survey data--especially self-reported data including Likert scale values--this should definitely be reason to pause and think carefully before comparing two numbers and saying "look everything is great!" I don't see evidence that the author did this at all.
posted by dsword at 4:45 PM on August 30 [18 favorites]

Yes the stress is parenting and not the utter bullshit that our entire society forces on us. That's a great fucking joke Surgeon General, laughter IS the best medicine. Good job.
posted by symbioid at 4:49 PM on August 30 [1 favorite]

By the way, from the end of the article linked in the OP:

“ That said, she questions the statistic cited in the surgeon general's report that 70 per cent of parents say parenting now is more difficult than it was 20 years ago.

There just isn't the definitive data to support that, Strohschein added.

"Of course, parents are going to say it's harder today."

One issue may be the framing of it, she said, where we believe that our children's success depends on how we parent them, and the idea that there's one (best) way to parent every child.

"This is now creating these mental health crises, where people feel that they're not doing enough, or that they're not successful, or that they're in danger of not succeeding, and it seems like a recipe for trouble," Strohschein said.”

So, er, moral panic.
posted by Galvanic at 4:57 PM on August 30

Ambulanceambiance beat me to posting that very link. And Drum's conclusion, that "stress hasn't changed an awful lot over the past couple of decades but we sure talk about it more than we used to," is refuted by this article from the APA. ("Around three in five adults (62%) said they don’t talk about their stress overall because they don’t want to burden others.")

Galvanic, it seems like you're ready to take on all comers but I really don't have the time or energy today to get much deeper into this. Too stressed!
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:00 PM on August 30 [10 favorites]

Are Canadian parents less stressed than Americans?
posted by Selena777 at 5:06 PM on August 30 [3 favorites]

I am not sure if there’s data on that but housing prices and the fact that there isn’t actually $10/day daycare (complex reasons) would lead me to believe if societal pressures are a factor as well as economics, it would be similar.

Anecdotally I do think there are differences in Canadian parenting vs American, mostly around tall poppy syndrome and the cost of higher ed.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:10 PM on August 30 [3 favorites]

moral panic: A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society....

...moral panic happens when "a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests".[6] While the issues identified may be real, the claims "exaggerate the seriousness, extent, typicality and/or inevitability of harm...

...In over 40 years of extensive study, researchers have identified several general clusters of topics that help describe the way in which moral panics operate and the impact they have.[7][8] Some of the more common clusters identified are: child abuse, drugs and alcohol, immigration, media technologies, and street crime.".

galvanic, if you feel that the Surgeon General is experiencing moral panic regarding the stress of parenting, and I suppose that it's possible, then I guess there isn't much more to say on the subject.
posted by ashbury at 5:16 PM on August 30 [13 favorites]

I guess I don't really see what the endgame is here for calling this a "moral panic" because, like, so what if we do just all agree "oh actually it used to be even worse"

how is that actionable in any meaningful way other than giving parents another thing to feel bad about and stress over
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:16 PM on August 30 [17 favorites]

Okay, now I'm curious about how far off it actually is from $10/day. Because I would have done things....things! to just half a mortgage for my kid's daycare instead of a full one.

When he started school last year we suddenly had this HUGE boost in free income. What's wild is that all the workers at the daycare centers are underpaid and over worked*.

*"Mr. Sarah" at my kid's preschool had these "tattle ears" drawn on piece of construction paper and stuck on an easel. The kid's tell the tattle ears and the tattle ears will tell Ms. Sarah later. The day my wife discovered this, it was because there was a line of kid's waiting for their turn. Mr. Sarah is a gd genius.
posted by VTX at 5:22 PM on August 30 [10 favorites]

Galvanic, the Jabberwocking blog post you linked to takes one survey not limited to parents, and then some other survey results with even more irrelevant populations, to talk about historical trends in parental stress.

That blog post is not authoritative, it is a laughable internet cliche: a non-expert in the field (no indication he studied statistics, even) cherry-picking data from diverse sources about irrelevant and misleading populations to draw conclusions they had already decided on in advance.

This one crap blog post was enough to lead you to aggressively try to shut down conversation here by labeling the entire issue as a moral panic. Do you even know what a moral panic is? What exactly are the characteristics this shares with, say, the ongoing persecution of trans people of all ages?
posted by Number Used Once at 5:37 PM on August 30 [26 favorites]

It’s more that there are $10/day spaces but they are few and far between. There were never enough in my city but to get the actual subsidized spots is really hard.

For daycares it is too. You have to be licensed, which is good! But the licensing requirements + the subsidy terms mean all your staff salaries get locked in at a low level. I can’t remember how they handle rent (in Toronto rent for a daycare sized space can be very pricey and dude to the good licensing rules has to have a lot of features plus x square metres per child.) But I did the math for my after school program (we were investigating opening a full on daycare as well) and I would have had to lower hourly rates for staff as well as essentially become non-profit. I support non profit spaces! But as a business we couldn’t swing the subsidy.

As a result, a lot of private daycares have opted out of the program.

When my kids were both daycare-aged it was just over $3k/month.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:44 PM on August 30 [8 favorites]

If they legitimately want to improve that, maybe they could fix what a logistical nightmare it is to parent and work?

Well, the main thing is that they don't legitimately want to improve anything, they just want to be able to yell at people for living incorrectly.

...kinda like selected folks right here in the thread, amazingly enough.

Republicans do not now, nor have they ever, given a single shit about kids per se. The only reason they pretend to care is so that they can punish people they've identified as the dreaded Other. That it works reasonably well is a terrible indictment of the intellect of the average US citizen.
posted by aramaic at 5:46 PM on August 30 [10 favorites]

no mention of climate change

i'm stressed when the kids can't play outside because the heat index is 114 now, what will it be when they are 20?

i'm teaching them to grow food and climb over fences
posted by eustatic at 5:54 PM on August 30 [30 favorites]

The other thing that strikes me is how much I think modern parenting is shaping a kids personality. I mean we were always shaping our kids personality but it seems more intentional now. I think of my mother who casually dropped that I had difficult trait X when going up but thought “she’ll figure it out.” Yes I sure did figure it out… 30 years later after much pain and heartache. I could have used some coaching at the time but was just left alone. Would I have listened? Probably not! The tragedy of parenting! so on top of all the tasks I described above there’s also being a kids personal coach while trying to fix yourself.

Maybe I do it to myself, maybe I’m too involved. Make new and better mistakes I suppose…
posted by St. Peepsburg at 6:09 PM on August 30 [6 favorites]

We were paying 1200-1500 for one kid so ya that tracks and anything less than that was cutting corners that didn’t sit for me especially when they were very little.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 6:11 PM on August 30 [4 favorites]

Here's the link directly to the actual advisory put out by the Surgeon General.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 7:00 PM on August 30 [4 favorites]

Of particular note: the final section of the advisory is titled "We Can Take Action" and includes a detailed list of recommendations addressed to seven different sets of stakeholders. The original article for this thread doesn't really address that part of the advisory, which is a shame.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 7:04 PM on August 30 [5 favorites]

"41 per cent [of parents] said most days they "were so stressed they couldn't function" — double the number reported by non-parents

this is something that's come up once before - extreme amounts of people who can't function

am i to believe that at least 20-30 % of the people i see can't function when i see them out and about doing funtional things? - or are they all staying at home hiding in their bedrooms sucking down their favorite starbucks concoction with lots of whiskey poured in, and turning up the synthwave study music on you tube so they don't have to listen to their kids pounding on the door as they commit their next crime against civilization?

if you get through the day and your kids get through the day still going, still fed and still housed then you've had a reasonably good day, even if no one enjoyed it - and if you are wise, in spite of all the things that have fucked up and didn't go how you wanted, if you've kept that much together then guess what?

you are functioning - it's stressing the hell out of you and it's no fun and it seems like an endless road in front of you, but for pete's sake don't tell yourself you aren't funtioning when you are - nothing but grief awaits you if you do that

no one's going to get anywhere by putting themselves down as non-functional unless they are in dire need of some help
posted by pyramid termite at 7:13 PM on August 30 [3 favorites]

Maybe they’re talking about quality of function, like feeling distracted, fatigued, preoccupied, forgetful like their overall performance level is impacted?
posted by Selena777 at 7:24 PM on August 30 [6 favorites]

It's no easier raising children in Canada. Subsidized childcare is very thin the ground. And if daycare providers provided the childcare parents need, they would burn out after a year. Despite all the sentimentality around family and children, no institution makes the slightest concession to make parenting easier. I was shocked to discover, in the 2020s, that schools are still organized on the assumption that each household has a stay-at-home parent. Also dismayed to see that we ( general society) rely ever more on cars and ever-increasing commutes for parenting. Our daycare moved further out of town to find affordable rents, which added an hour to my already long daily commute. The 15 minute neighborhood would really improve parenting.
posted by SnowRottie at 7:28 PM on August 30 [8 favorites]

Things that would greatly reduce the stress of parents:

Please add meaningful gun control to this list.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:36 PM on August 30 [19 favorites]

According to survey data documentation, the "function" question was asked along with others on a four-point strongly/somewhat/agree/disagree scale, all of which had higher somewhat/strongly agree responses than the "can't function" question:

1. When I am stressed, I can’t bring myself to do anything.
2. I can get things done even when I am feeling stressed.
(3. Most days I am so stressed I can’t function.)
4. Most days my stress is completely overwhelming.
5. My stress makes going to work/school increasingly difficult (asked only of employed/student respondents)
6. When I feel stressed I can get over it quickly.
7. I am so stressed I feel numb.
8. My stress level has made me have less patience for others.
9. My stress keeps piling up
posted by audi alteram partem at 7:38 PM on August 30 [5 favorites]

Every single article about how parents are struggling and need to make time for self care should be replaced with ten that grill c suite ghouls over why they make employees work so damn much. you know why parenting sucks? because one or two of the caregiving adults in a home is working all day.

a 20 hour work week and sensible sick leave would mean fewer hours in daycare, not having my hair fall out every other week when i get the latest illness, and actually being able to do things at a pace appropriate for a young child, instead of rushing my kids through a series of tasks to get them to sleep before 10 pm.
posted by petiteviolette at 8:20 PM on August 30 [15 favorites]

Galvanic, others above have addressed the quality of Kevin Drum’s work both in the link you shared and at large. The man writes and analyzes data like a junior-year philosophy major from 2002. Which, given that he started his blog in 2003, might not be too far from the truth.

On the claim of a “moral panic”, I’m not sure if you and Drum understand the function of the office of the Surgeon General of the United States. Dr. Murthy has identified parental stress as a priority for his office, as “the Nation’s Doctor”, so that the country pays attention to the issue and hopefully makes some progress in mitigating it. When the Surgeon General’s office brought attention to the health dangers of cigarette smoking, it wasn’t because of a huge increase in the number or proportion of Americans who smoked: it was because smoking is bad for you, full stop. Would you have called *that* a moral panic?

Stress is bad for people, full stop. The Surgeon General has decided to highlight stress among parents as a public health issue. Are you frustrated because there is another public-health issue that you think Murthy should have highlighted instead? If not, what skin is it off anyone’s ass that he has chosen to thrown his influence behind the cause of parental stress?
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 8:43 PM on August 30 [20 favorites]

Seeing what my sister in law goes through makes me very glad not to have a child. Some of it she brings on herself, taking too many cues from dumb shit mommy groups on Facebook and then hating that she can't live up to that standard, making really stupid financial decisions because of "should" rather than "need" or even "want," constantly fighting with everyone who helps her, etc, but most of that is just who she's always been.

However, I also see how external factors make everything even harder. She teaches kindergarten, but it ain't like being a kindergarten teacher was 30 years ago. So much paperwork. Take home assignments(!) that have to be graded. Showing up stupidly early because everybody has to drive their precious to school and don't you even think about carpooling, that's for the poors, so somebody's gotta direct fucking traffic and even if it's not her, she still has to arrive before the parents start dropping off or she'll be late due to all the cars. So even before having her daughter she never got enough sleep, which of course makes everything 10 times harder and feel a thousand times more stressful.

Then there's the rank stupidity of shitty (sub)urban design and lack of reasonable transit options that means everyone drives everywhere and everything is far away, so it's a long slow and infuriating drive to work, to the grocery store, to the vet, to friend's houses, to the doctor, or anywhere else you have to go. There is no such thing as a quick errand. So much time wasted in the car, for both mother and child. So much time it turns a five day work week into a six day work week at the best of times.

And then there's the financial shit. Every time she thinks that things are looking up a bit, stupid shit happens. Most recently her kid no longer qualifying for Medicaid. Turns out it's still possible to qualify for subsidized insurance that's reasonably cheap, but it ain't like the state actually says that and it turns out that there are many hoops and plenty of paperwork involved in actually getting it. Which maybe wouldn't be such a huge issue, but see above about time constraints, stress, and lack of sleep making even relatively simple tasks feel like climbing a fucking mountain.

Out of all of this, I think the biggest issue is simply time. If parents could send their kids to a neighborhood school, didn't have to spend an hour or more a day just dropping the kids off and picking them up again, didn't have absurd commutes, and didn't have to spend the equivalent of an entire workday a week behind the wheel to get the errands and activities and whatnot dealt with then I'm pretty sure their stress levels would be massively reduced and they might even be able to get a sustainable amount of sleep, or at least something close enough to not feel like they're wading through molasses every minute of every day.
posted by wierdo at 8:44 PM on August 30 [17 favorites]

ryanshepard, the priority listed immediately under parental stress on the Surgeon General’s website is Firearm Violence!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 8:46 PM on August 30 [7 favorites]

My first child arrived a month ago today. We applied to the 6 closest day cares when just a few months pregnant; $2675/month, $2240/month, $720/month, unlisted x 3. It seems like $10/day is a myth.

I'll leave the cross generational stress analysis to those more familiar with the details.

The glut of information currently available is helpful as we're picking up tips, but the conflicting information leads to stress when we're not certain what we should be doing. E.g. Three hospital breast feeding clinic visits, three Toronto Public Health breast feeding clinic visits, two private breast feeding consultants, and advice from grandma. Everyone has an opinion on what should be done, yet feeding is far from ideal. Has social media changed our perception of the ideal feed? Or is it just hard, and it has always been hard for many people, but nobody admits it?

On the plus side, the 3:20am feeding time lead to me still being up at 5am so I got to watch a distant cousin compete at the Paralympics.
posted by ecco at 9:14 PM on August 30 [9 favorites]

I have thoughts on this discussion. I'm struggling to figure out what to say that contributes to good discussion. The best i can come up with is, a Block function would have helped me salvage something valuable to me, at least, out of the wreckage caused by the early derail.
posted by PresidentOfDinosaurs at 9:41 PM on August 30 [5 favorites]

tl;dr: parenting has never been easy, but it was probably easier when everything else wasn't conspiring against you too
(sayeth the uncle)
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:46 PM on August 30 [2 favorites]

There’s no governmental solution to a child with croup who can’t sleep for more than sixty minutes at a time.

Indeed! However, when difficulties overlap they compound one another, and conversely, incremental improvements in areas unrelated to coughing children can free up parental coping power for those coughing children. There doesn't have to be a governmental solution for every parental stressor in order for governmental interventions to make things much better for parents.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 9:56 PM on August 30 [14 favorites]

Everyone has an opinion on what should be done, yet feeding is far from ideal. Has social media changed our perception of the ideal feed? Or is it just hard, and it has always been hard for many people, but nobody admits it?

currently 5 months pregnant with my first (which makes this article extra terrifying!) & mentioned to taquito mother-in-law that one of my rotating cast of obstetricians wanted to meet with me close to the due date as she was a lactation consultant

(to which I responded, "that's really great, because I have no idea what I'm doing")

taquito mil's response was to half-snort & go "what's to consult, you stick the baby on the tit, they figure it out eventually"

so my guess from that one data point is it's always been harder for some people than others & we're only just now starting to talk about the ways in which it can be hard, leaving everyone who never experienced the hard version to assume you just stick the baby on the tit and they figure it out eventually?

(I vividly remember a friend like 6-7 years ago posting "NOBODY TELLS YOU ABOUT THE BITING")
posted by taquito sunrise at 10:00 PM on August 30 [8 favorites]

I'm voting for I'm more stressed out as a parent than my parents were because I actually parent.

Baby Boomers, am I right?
posted by Toddles at 10:27 PM on August 30 [9 favorites]

I have too many thoughts about this and can't really focus on one. Having kids can still be wonderful, and yes raising children has always been a challenge, but a lot has changed over 50 years to make the conditions for it much more difficult. I have tremendous sympathy for every family out there struggling to run the modern parenting gauntlet. You deserve better.
posted by Alex404 at 11:29 PM on August 30 [6 favorites]

Maybe one thought: when people ask me what the hardest part about parenting is, my answer is logistics. My wife and I are a very good team, and we've also been extremely fortunate in how the material conditions of our work and lives have evolved to avoid many of the issues e.g. raised by wierdo. Parenting has pushed us to our limits, but not past them. Each one of our fortunate conditions is extremely boring and pedestrian (e.g. affordable daycare, school in walking distance, flexible working hours), yet feels like a fundamental pillar that keeps our family afloat. Yet we are very fortunate, and it seems clear that the modern parent is expected to live in a state of chronic exhaustion and emotional distress.
posted by Alex404 at 11:38 PM on August 30 [7 favorites]

There seems to be an assumption, or maybe desire, to frame the issue a bit as "parenting is more stressful than in The Good Old Days, because modern living." Reading the pdf from the Surgeon General, I'm not so sure that's really a good angle to think about this issue, so much as "parental stress is a worthy health issue and something we should be thinking about".

Today's world has unique stressors, no doubt, but if you're trying to argue that it's worse than in the past, I'm going to say you'll need some very good evidence. Stigmatization of being a single parent is nothing compared to what it was as recent as my Mom's generation. When in addition to stigma, a mother and her children might also face significant impoverishment even if fully employed. Along with the stress that caused singlehood, be it failed marriage, abandonment, or death.

Not to mention how much stress parents bore because they stuck with terrible marriages. This one almost broke my mother.

Go back just 100 years, and the rates of child mortality are simply incomprehensible to us today. Capitalism wasn't any less cruel, and for most, was likely far more ruthless. And in a far more agrarian society, you may not have stressed so much about your job, but rather working your ass off to raise enough food to live. A bad crop season or a dead milk cow might mean starvation. Do you literally tighten your belt and hold out for a better crop next year while you watch your kids waste away, or pack what you can and head to the city to try to find paying work?

I feel doubly lucky when it came to raising my two kids. First, I got an unusual amount of actual hands on experience with my three youngest siblings, who came along in my jr high/ high school years. Not only did I get to do more child rearing than most of my peers, I also got a pretty good sense of what is and isn't worth stressing about. Compared to dealing with my folks terrible marriage, kids were easy.

Second, my adult household was secure enough that I was able to be a stay at home parent after my second was born. That first year was the most stressful of my life, but probably not in a way you might assume. Taking care of a toddler and infant was relatively easy. A true joy, really. But being non employed for the first time since high school had me going out-of-my-head stir crazy. A household with a stay at home parent is a true privilege, and one for which I'm eternally grateful to have experienced.
posted by 2N2222 at 12:10 AM on August 31 [6 favorites]

2N2222, I'm sure you mean well but you're really missing the point. Yes, we're all very thankful that child mortality in the west dropped from up to 50% down to below 1%. Obviously we wouldn't trade our present conditions for those. Everyone knows this and it's rather patronizing to point it out. You're suggesting that modern parents just have an attitude problem, and that their conditions are actually fine. Their conditions are not fine, and there's a lot of very clear, concrete evidence as to why this is the case, and why in recent decades those conditions have gotten worse.
posted by Alex404 at 12:29 AM on August 31 [11 favorites]

Not a parent, but living here in the Netherlands I see one thing that surely must make life easier for parents -- kids bring themselves to school and after school activities.

From the beginning of schooling (kids start school on their 4th birthday here) they have traffic units integrated into the curriculum. When they are 10 years old they start biking themselves to school and everywhere's else. This is one of the benefits of putting in safe biking infrastructure (and transit).

Like everywhere there are problems here. (Skipping discussion on the "parttime princess" double standard) but at least in this one area kids can have some independence and parents some rest from chauffeuring duties.
posted by antinomia at 12:42 AM on August 31 [19 favorites]

Has social media changed our perception of the ideal feed? Or is it just hard, and it has always been hard for many people, but nobody admits it?

There’s not a lot of awareness that not everybody’s nipples are made for nursing. I breastfed exclusively, but has to do so through pumping and using bottles; my baby could not latch for love nor money. But at the time I was nursing, that was just *shrug* okay give me the breast pump and the bottle. Now I think social media is all in raptures about the mystical connection of the actual breast to baby connection, to where people maybe feel bad about taking solutions like that. But actually it was perfectly fine, worked great, and let me freeze enough of a backup supply to have nights out drinking if I wanted and just call that nights milk a wash. I think the notion that everything must be ideal all the time is the real problem with social media, rather than just wanting things to be good enough.
posted by corb at 1:46 AM on August 31 [8 favorites]

I raised my kids while working nights as a bartender/waitress. Many of the people I worked with were also parents. Working nights meant, for me, that my spouse could go to work during the day, I got the high-quality time at home with my children and I could leave a hot dinner in the oven before I went out to work. The laundry got done, the lawn got mowed, the dog got walked, and we all took a nap in the afternoon. I worked two or three shifts during the week, usually one or more on the weekends, made decent money and only had occasional child care costs. There's more than one way to work and having one parent work nights/weekends was a really good arrangement for us. There's this assumption that 9-5 office jobs are "real" jobs but I'm sure I was making far more money with less stress on our family than if I'd been working a "real" job. I don't know why more people don't entertain this option. There are plenty of jobs that can be done outside of standard office hours. I couldn't imagine working a job and paying half my income for childcare, plus the associated costs involved with working, commuting, and keeping up an office-appropriate wardrobe and grooming. It's no wonder parents feel overwhelmed by it all (and the constant racing against the clock and so little time to enjoy with your preschoolers). I think the lack of prestige in night work has a lot to do with it, again it's a kind of class assumption that waiting tables or driving a cab or stocking shelves at the grocery store isn't "real" work.
posted by alltomorrowsparties at 2:08 AM on August 31 [5 favorites]

Mod note: One deleted (this news is "wonderful" if it causes couples to decide against parenthood, or better, "unwed mothers to choose abortion") for too many reasons to even list. jeffburdges, do not comment again in this thread.
posted by taz (staff) at 2:40 AM on August 31 [8 favorites]

Before the modern are and the invention of baby formula, co-nursing was the norm. Babies could learn to nurse from an experienced mother and then have have an easier time nursing with their inexperience birth mother.

There are good reasons people don’t nurse other people’s babies anymore, in terms of disease transmission. But it’s also an example of how the the nuclearization of the family has made things more difficult.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 5:08 AM on August 31 [1 favorite]

Out of all of this, I think the biggest issue is simply time. If parents could send their kids to a neighborhood school, didn't have to spend an hour or more a day just dropping the kids off and picking them up again, didn't have absurd commutes

We think about this a lot here in DC where I’ve seen estimates that as much as 40% of the weekday case trips are school related, and there’s something of a prisoners’ dilemma caused by all of the other policy failures. A lot of parents have been told constantly that their child’s future depends critically on going to a good college but also that this is incredibly expensive and difficult unless their child is an academic star who can get scholarships react by thinking their child has to go somewhere other than their neighborhood school, which makes it pretty common for people to mention these crushing commutes racking up miles in a city ten miles on a side because they’re driving halfway across to kid A off at the language immersion daycare, then driving kid B to the STEM charter halfway across in a different direction, and finally driving to the office. Bikes are like a cheat mode saving half the time required, but a lot of people are worried about the danger from all of those cars (not wrong), and the bus routes were designed to take federal workers downtown rather than students crosstown even if the routes weren’t clogged by cars.

The part which makes this tragicomic is that the main thing holding back neighborhood schools’ academic performance is that the affluent/driven parents are pulling their kids out. If you use a calculation other than a simple average, students do as well as, often better than, the charter schools when you compare students of similar backgrounds and in most cases both the children and parents would be better off using the 1-2 hours a day they’re spending on commute overhead doing almost anything else.

Unfortunately, until you get critical mass staying at the neighborhood school people will look at the average score and decide they can’t risk it. Universal child care, housing support for poor families, college at European levels, etc. it would remove that entire cascade of decisions people make knowing full well that they’re trading guaranteed stress now for the hope of a future gain.
posted by adamsc at 6:01 AM on August 31 [10 favorites]

“ am i to believe that at least 20-30 % of the people i see can't function when i see them out and about doing funtional things? - or are they all staying at home hiding in their bedrooms sucking down their favorite starbucks concoction with lots of whiskey poured in, and turning up the synthwave study music on you tube so they don't have to listen to their kids pounding on the door as they commit their next crime against civilization?”

Psure you’re joking, but many parents of my acquaintance are literally drunk or high a lot of the time bc that’s the only way they can get through the day without k*lling themselves. Due to increased social pressure around “child safety” (Not to be confused with actual child safety), and much much worse car traffic and even less effective transit than in earlier generations, you have to drive kids and everyone else A LOT more. The rent is too high. You can’t get a conventional rental if you have an eviction or a criminal record. People with evictions and criminal records have kids (and are good parents), and being homeless with kids is stressful. So yeah, I didn’t see anything not credible here.
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:42 AM on August 31 [8 favorites]

There’s no governmental solution to a child with croup who can’t sleep for more than sixty minutes at a time.

Sure there are. Setting up and funding a program to supply the equivalent of home health aides for parents, so that parents can get some sleep would be one possible governmental solution.
posted by eviemath at 7:07 AM on August 31 [9 favorites]

Who'd have thought the internal contradiction that crashes capitalism would be the profit motive rendering reproductive labor unsustainable?
posted by pattern juggler at 7:47 AM on August 31 [2 favorites]

Would more equitable distribution of household labor help?
posted by Selena777 at 9:03 AM on August 31 [1 favorite]

I think the honest answer is that managing a house is itself a job; having two working parents as a necessity for survival means that no one can be doing that job. I was lucky: when I was a single mom I was in the Army or retired from the Army/collecting VA. But for most, both parents need to be working full time and they can’t afford to hire anyone to take care of the work left undone.
posted by corb at 9:09 AM on August 31 [14 favorites]

living here in the Netherlands

A lot of this is only possible to such as extreme extent because of the geography.

I live in the US in Minnesota near the Minnesota river. For miles on either side of the river everything is hills hills hills. Then winters are cold and snowy. I do a lot of cycling both on the roads and trails and the mountain bike parks. And then you've got the typical US problem of things generally just being very spread out.

I love the idea and would definitely like to see more of that kind of thing here but in practical terms it would have to be very different.

Something that is surprising to me is that when I was in elementary school I first walked to school (a bit over a third of a mile) and later about a half mile to a bus stop. I was actually supposed to walk to that school too but was a bit farther across busier streets and I had a good friend that road the same bus.

Now it seems like a lot of parents drive their kids to the bus stop and then wait there with them until the bus comes. I don't get it.

I drive my kid to the bus stop because he's enrolled in a school outside our district ('cause they do Spanish immersion) so I do drive him to the bus stop but then I check my phone app to make sure the bus is coming, send him off to the stop, and then I'm gone. There are like 8 other parents there and a couple of older kids. All the kids do great at looking out for each other too. Not too much longer and he'll be responsible enough to carry a cell phone so he could call me if something went pear-shaped.

I had none of that back in the '80s.
posted by VTX at 9:12 AM on August 31 [1 favorite]

What Corb said.

And just knowing that there is a long list of things that haven't gotten done can be incredible stressful, not to mention trying to steal time from work for home stuff and trying to steal time from home for work stuff.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 9:28 AM on August 31 [7 favorites]

Would more equitable distribution of household labor help?

The responses to this thread make me wonder if the 42% of parents were mostly women.

Things that have changed in the last like 15 years to now:

- housing prices - I think this is the big one
- commuting times, linked to housing prices - young families are priced out of a lot of markets
- tuition costs/student debt loads is the next biggest one, meaning delaying of having kids so more people are having kids mid-career AND parenting them under that continued debt load in many cases
- tuition costs/student debt loads, meaning parents are playing in a winner-takes-all situation for their kids if they think they are university-bound
- retirement savings because what the heck is a pension anyway?
- global pandemic
- rising costs, including daycare, see also rent inflation
- stagnant wages
- social media not just for kids but for parents
- social expectations around afterschool activities
- making sure their kids are ok on a daily basis as opposed to assuming they are fine


I'm voting for I'm more stressed out as a parent than my parents were because I actually parent.

This cracked me up. I feel for my mother, who would have been great being a doctor or something but good mothers stayed home to have the problem with no name - like I have empathy for her as a woman.

But, she was a stay at home parent with a car and yet she would not let me enrol in any activities that involved her driving me so no t-ball due to games, didn't pick me up at school -- I took a bus and a streetcar starting in senior kindergarten or walked 40 min and yes, I have stories -- etc.

My sister and I, like all the neighbourhood kids, were kicked out of the house on a regular basis to go play for a few hours so that mothers could do the mysterious things they did after doing mysterious things all day while we were in school. TV for 3 hours? Sure why not.

My parents paid zero of my university costs, $900 tuition a year.

I don't know why more people don't entertain this option.

I don't think you're wrong that it's a class thing.

But I also think for me as a woman...I was not prepared to get out of a career I had built (34, 35, and 40 when I had my kids) and risk the financial ruin that divorce would rain down if it happened. I also was aware that daycare is not forever, and that I would need to save up more for the kids' university fees after daycare stopped. (I did take a detour out of white collar work to white collar adjacent and back in though, and it is possible.)

I had none of that back in the '80s.

LOL.

As mentioned above I had a long commute. When my son was in grade 5 he wanted to go to martial arts class at 5:30 pm, so I did the public transit route - about 10 min on one bus and 5 on another - with him a few times and let him go. Later I got him a cell phone.

I got called 3 times by "concerned parents" from his class that I would let him do that. This is in Toronto in broad daylight and I would pick him up after his class. The academy would call me if he didn't show up (which never happened). One mother was so upset she actually drove him to his 2x a week class for a few months.

Not to mention snack shaming. (Yes that's 11 years ago, when my oldest was in school and it was real, man. Not that I oppose healthy snacks but it's feeling you get. I packed cut up veggies for years knowing they would be thrown out or come back just to show that I had.)
posted by warriorqueen at 9:30 AM on August 31 [9 favorites]

For new parents in the thread though - the external stuff is real, but the kids are pretty amazing. Hang in there.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:35 AM on August 31 [8 favorites]

It's no easier raising children in Canada…. Despite all the sentimentality around family and children, no institution makes the slightest concession to make parenting easier. I was shocked to discover, in the 2020s, that schools are still organized on the assumption that each household has a stay-at-home parent.

This is 110% my experience. That’s the quiet part said out loud - everyone here has an at home parent or close grandparent. And if you’ve got neither, well, tough to be you! Even the after care (if you can battle the other parents for it) ends at 4pm! We live in a neighborhood with a walkable school. If my husband didn’t work from home we’d be screwed. The saving grace is that kids walk here… like by 4th or 5th grade they walk by themselves and in groups. It’s not uncommon to see groups of kids just… wandering the neighborhood. Or taking local transit. That small amount of independence is a godsend.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:53 AM on August 31 [6 favorites]

I have a friend in California and they have these weird half days each week or every other week or something. How does that work?? She’s a SAHM. It’s not just Canada! But agreed.
posted by warriorqueen at 9:59 AM on August 31 [2 favorites]

Oh hell yeah! Kid's are awesome. It's amazing to see them grow. Now that mine is six he is really starting to turn into a noticeably more complex person. He bring so much joy to everyone around him. He's such a sweet kid and he puts smiles on the faces of so many strangers, I love watching him interact with people.

Also for any new, expecting, current, or future parents there is a "Parents of Metafilter" Facebook group is excellent.

There is also a great sleep guide you can find there that can help you manager your newborn-toddle's sleep and feeding schedule in the form of a google doc. I found it profoundly helpful for years.

But something I noticed about it is that it's incredibly detailed and really makes it seem like managing your baby's feeding and sleep requires your constant focus. I skipped most of that and really just paid attention to the timing to have some idea of the appropriate sleep schedule for that age and about when and how fast to start spacing out feedings and sleep/nap patterns as the kid ages.

Delaying having a kid for describes me but we also had some fertility issues and it took us a long time to get pregnant so we're even older than most older parents. I think that one of the ways that helps keep parenting a bit less stressful for me is that I kind of just don't have any fucks to give about what other parents think of my parenting choices. I know I do right by my kid as best as I can and that's enough for me. I don't feel the need to perform parenting for other parents though I 100% empathize with anyone that does.
posted by VTX at 9:59 AM on August 31 [5 favorites]

I have a friend in California and they have these weird half days each week or every other week or something. How does that work??

I'm in the SF Bay Area, and judging by when I see kids out and about, every Wednesday is a half day.

WTF? How are working parents supposed to deal with that? At that point it'd almost be easier to give up on Wednesday entirely, at least then the parents wouldn't have to go drop off the kid and three hours later go back to pick them up again, waiting in an enormous line of cars both times because fuck-everybody-lets-not-have-buses seems to rule the local mindset.

The lines of cars waiting to pick up/drop off are bad enough that in several places they fuck up the nearby highway traffic, so they spend half of Wednesday dealing with school transport. If the schools can't deal with having a full day on Wednesday then they should just give up on it and do a four-day week; it genuinely seems like they developed the school schedules with the specific intent of fucking over all the working parents.
posted by aramaic at 10:16 AM on August 31 [9 favorites]

Parenting is genuinely harder now. I can say that because I raised my two in the 80s/90s/00s and now I am the third parent to my granddaughter. Why does she - and her mom, and her uncle - live with me? Housing costs. When I was a single mom back in the day I could rent an entire house for $600 a month. That house is $1800 a month now. Why does she only go to “school” 3 half days a week? Those 3 days cost $500 a month. When her mom and uncle were little, full time daycare was $500 a month, so I could work full time.

Back then I worked 9 - 5. Now my daughter works as a bartender Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights and I work 8 - 5 plus my phone rings or email dings whenever. We’re still poor, we’re all exhausted and stressed and then there’s the screens. I’m watching Bluey with one eye while I type this on a tablet and watch my granddaughter with the other. We’re all fragmented now and tech isn’t making it easier but quite the opposite.

And then there’s the sandwich generation stuff. I find myself in the unenviable position of becoming a caregiver to an older relative for the third time. While I’m also watching my grandchild. Why? Because there are no supports out there for that either.

As a society we are absolute SHIT at helping people navigate the beginnings and endings of their lives.
posted by mygothlaundry at 10:57 AM on August 31 [23 favorites]

When we had kids in grade school there was an early dismissal once a week. That meant 1:00 instead of 3:00. Then there were a couple of months where there'd be a four half-days for parent/teacher conferences. Then there were about four professional days over the course of the year. The professional days were for teachers to get continuing ed, but I believe they could also just take them as days off.

All of these shortened days were negotiated by the teachers' union, and appropriately so. The weekly 1:00 PM dismissal was for "collaboration time" between teachers. The half days were so teachers didn't have to do parent/teacher conferences in the evenings. The professional days were just a few extra days off, I think, though I expect they were often used for professional development. There were times I'd look back at a month and there wouldn't have been a single week with a "normal" schedule. Every week was shortened by one thing or another.

Again, it's great that the teachers were taking care of themselves and trying not to get ground down by the system. But the result in this particular case was that the grind was just transferred to the parents. There's not enough give in the system overall. It's too highly optimized for maximum efficiency, and the result is stress breakdowns.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 11:30 AM on August 31 [8 favorites]

Dr. Spock also won a gold medal at the Olympics, in rowing.

And he kept rowing throughout his life for exercise.
posted by eye of newt at 11:49 AM on August 31 [2 favorites]

the typical US problem of things generally just being very spread out.

When the US had even *more* room per person, a hundred or two hundred years ago, we built cities that were more walkable than our cities are now. So it's not our size, our geography, that makes our current cities so traffic-choked.

The first cars seemed fun because they were more powerful than anything else on the roads, and so we made room for them, and now they've made everything so awful that we sprawl trying to get away from them, pulling traffic behind us like a burning brand tied to a cat's tail.
posted by clew at 12:31 PM on August 31 [8 favorites]

Winnie the Proust, imagine if the short days were used for art or nature walks or big all day games or honestly just kids hanging out, with a floating band of non-teachers overlooking them.
posted by clew at 12:32 PM on August 31 [5 favorites]

Oh lawd. I have a 13yo who has just spent the entire week learning on her own about the US electoral system and dark money and the electoral college and all these very important things and is now On The Warpath, and a 15yo who used her Hot Mess friend as moral support to try to go and ask out the boy she's had a clearly unrequited crush on for a few months, only to have the now-ex friend snatch away the boy for a brief and surely doomed relationship of their own, and who is now experiencing all five stages of grief at once.

Most of the time, it's not that stressful if you actually like your kids, which I've noticed a whole lot of people do not, but this weekend is shapin' up great so far.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 2:52 PM on August 31 [8 favorites]

#reproductive crisis?
As a grandmother of millennials I assume I won't live long enough to see any great-grandchildren. Those millennial grand-kids have watched their parents' perpetual stress-panic all their lives. But, to be fair -- their parents are AWESOME; the kids will be the first to say that.

I just wish my Gen X kids had not rejected ALL of my 'boomer indolence' ... The Dude had some good points.
posted by Surfurrus at 5:20 PM on August 31 [4 favorites]