When I quit my full-time job to research the intersection of caregiving and work, one of the first things I did was conduct structured interviews with 50 parents. One of many questions I had was around parenting styles. Last fall, when the Surgeon General issued an advisory on parental mental health, intensive parenting was cited as a factor, and was the focus of many follow-on discussions. Intensive parenting, defined as “child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor intensive and financially expensive,” requires hands-on monitoring, teaching and an always-on focus on enhancing development. A vivid example of intensive parenting from Claire Cain Miller on The Daily is observing something like leaves falling from trees, and asking your child why they think that’s happening. Everything is an opportunity for educational discussion, and if moms are parenting this way, this does indeed sound very stressful.
But this depiction of parenting didn’t resonate with me as something I’d observed in others or myself (I very comfortably have no idea why the leaves fall and there’s zero chance I’ll be asking Hank about it). I set out to use caregiver interviews to better understand if and how this parenting approach was impacting parental stress.
I found that in very few conversations, were parents expressing habits indicative of intensive parenting (and therefore, this wasn't a clear source of stress). Instead, I heard anecdotes like, “We encourage boredom;” “We try to have fun with yardsticks of appropriate behavior;” “We’re pretty reactionary;” “Mostly I just care that things are split 50/50 with my husband”; “I need my kids to not be assholes.” Are there flavors of intensive parenting in there that just didn’t come up, like getting kids into the best summer camp or the most nurturing daycare? I’m sure. But still. The conversations felt almost diametrically opposed to the spirit of intensive parenting.
It’s also worth noting that I interviewed people in my extended network who are almost entirely high-income “elites” and in fact, that’s the exact cohort cited as driving the intensive parenting trends. These conversations indicated that given current dynamics between work and parenting, intensive parenting in and of itself is a privilege that even the most privileged people don’t have access to.
Instead, these conversations led me to believe that parental stress, simplified to its most basic form, seems to come from the stakes feeling really, really high. We have very little time for ourselves, for our friends, for our marriages. We know our children are only little for so long, and when we’re not working, we want to maximize time with them (and we’re doing this: we now know mothers who work outside the home spend just as much time tending to their children as stay-at-home mothers did in the 1970s). So we maximize time because we feel guilty that we work so much, but we have to work that much because those are the expectations in our devoted work culture, and temporarily stepping out of the workforce may be detrimental to our optionality. All of these constraints come at a cost. Rather than anything feeling intensive, everything feels strained and like we’re just barely scraping by. As one mom put it, “we’re survivalists”.
Two common solutions I heard for alleviating this stress were (1) living close to family and friends who you can get free, trustworthy help from at a moment’s notice; and (2) having control of your time (whether that means working for yourself, working for a boss who gives you total autonomy, etc.). It was these conversations that solidified my belief in part-time work as a crucial option that needs to be more accessible.
Lastly, of note, and this is obvious, but not only is intensive parenting a privilege but any stress outside of things like food shortage, healthcare access or home safety is a privilege. Those issues are likely contributors to broader declining maternal mental health and that is of course a completely separate, gigantic problem that part-time work is wholly irrelevant for.
