Parenting is Hard. Parents Can Make it Harder.
The Back-to-School Issue with scientific evidence backed by research and based on percentages
Thanks for reading Child + Line. My picture book, A Cub Called Crash, is now available here.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has issued a warning that many parents are exhausted, stressed, burned out, and at their limit. Parents, not unexpectedly, “have a profound impact on the health of our children and the health of society.1”
The statistics are sobering: “41% of parents say that most days they are so stressed they cannot function and 48% say that most days their stress is completely overwhelming compared to other adults (20% and 26%, respectively).”2
However, there is hope. A recent study inspired by Denmark points to evidence suggesting that 99% of parenting is 100% about the parent, and their ability to regulate their own emotions, and 1% about the child. This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Participants were stratified according to age and the mean age was 516.033 months. The study then selected 100 peer-reviewed journals, referenced the first half of the first chapter of ten parenting books, watched five reels from their corresponding Instagram accounts, and conducted a symptom survey based on the glucose blood level of parents at school drop-off and then at the breakfast PTA-meeting ten minutes later, delineating between those who ate breakfast, those who sipped coffee and those who abstained.
The results were conclusive. 93% of all parents, regardless of their eating habits, experienced feelings of overwhelm, sleep deprivation, and rage due to mismatched socks from the laundry, with a large subset (>83%) evidencing hopelessness due to increased social media usage and a small but significant subset (<9%) unclear on why there was strawberry yogurt dribbling out of their iPad.
The implications of the study are profound. Parents need to prioritize their health and wellness. Parents need support. Parents need community. Parents would benefit from increased access to the arts, green spaces, and affordable groceries. Parents need an app that consolidates all parenting advice on Instagram and TikTok with one easy opt-out button and offers parental controls and usage stats (for parents, obviously) with stronger online filters for asinine stupidity or any mention of cats other than from Taylor Swift. There were further recommendations; all families should be issued a free membership to a biometrically calibrated meditation app with up to four individualized logins that would automatically run in one of five scenarios (the data from the app would absolutely not be collected and sold by Facebook, it may be aggregated and shared). The scenarios include:
when a child refuses dinner
when a child refuses to go to the park/go to school/go to an extracurricular activity
when a child refuses to get in the bath
when a child refuses to get out of the bath
when a child refuses to go to sleep
As these are, within reason, normal behaviors for children, moderating a parent’s own reactions would significantly contribute to a decrease in stress responses and an increase in overall well-being and enjoyment of life.
The results were encouraging. Of the parents participating in the study, 48 (50%) were cured, 4 (4%) were improved, 4(4%) experienced treatment failure, and 1 (.1%) withdrew (but that was because they got the date wrong).
The one percent of parenting fully out of your control is what your child decides to wear to school. Good luck with that one.
Recommended reading:
And:
New York Times link.
A reminder that A Cub Called Crash is now out in the world in major bookstores, but please do check out bookshop.org and support indie booksellers.
And feel free to reach out to me and let me know what your child thinks — the books were written for them… to be read together with extra love and cuddles. Thank you so much for letting me be a part of storytime.
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/08/28/us-surgeon-general-issues-advisory-mental-health-well-being-parents.html
ibid.