""Parenting is the perfect recipe for burnout," Robyn Koslowitz, a clinical child psychologist and author of Post-Traumatic Parenting: Break the Cycle and Become the Parent You Always Wanted To Be, told HuffPost. "It demands round-the-clock emotional availability, regulation, flexibility and decision-making - often while you're sleep-deprived and touched out," she continued. "Add financial strain, lack of affordable child care, no paid leave and a mental health system that's inaccessible to many and it becomes unsustainable.""
""We're asking mothers to do too much, with too little," she told HuffPost, noting that societal expectations, insufficient systemic support and internalized perfectionism are fueling this crisis."
Survey data from 2016 to 2023 show a marked decline in maternal mental health: among nearly 200,000 mothers (89.8% aged 30+), reports of "excellent" mental health dropped from 38.4% to 25.8%, while those reporting "fair/poor" rose from 5.5% to 8.5%. Contributing factors include relentless caregiving demands, sleep deprivation, financial strain, lack of affordable child care, absence of paid leave, and limited access to mental health services. Societal expectations and internalized perfectionism intensify pressure. Experts describe parenting as a burnout risk and call for more research and systemic supports to address these declines.
Read at BuzzFeed
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]