The government isn’t the answer to a stressed-out parenting culture

Parents under pressure. That’s the title of a new advisory issued by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. Murthy says many parents tell him quote, they feel lucky to be raising kids, but they are struggling, often in silence and alone. He’s got data to back it up, too. 33% of parents report high levels of stress in the past month, compared to 20% of other adults. Parents are nearly twice as likely to feel daily stress. That is, quote, completely overwhelming. These are real problems. They are on the rise. The Surgeon General is correct. Here’s a key question, though, what does the federal government have to do with this? Well, Murthy says that public policy can help. He’s lobbying for government funding for families plus universal paid parental leave. The Biden Harris administration is pushing for universal daycare, the real solutions to the problem of parental stress, though, aren’t going to come from the government. They are going to come from the culture, and Murthy seems to recognize that, he notes that parents spend much more time on parenting than our predecessors did 30 and 60 years ago. Murthy is correct that more intensive parenting is a stressor, yet many commentators have assumed it was a good thing. They say we are trading quantity for quality. That is, parents with fewer kids invest more time and money in each kid, which is supposed to help the kids climb the ladder. These days, intensive parenting is part of upper middle class and middle class culture, and this trend is driving this crisis of parental stress and the epidemic of childhood anxiety that Murthy noted a few months ago. Parenting culture isn’t the only problem, though, the collapse of community connection is another source of parental stress. When policymakers propose massive child allowances, universal daycare and other government supports for parents, they are acknowledging something true and important. It takes more than two people to raise a kid. Parenting is inherently a communal undertaking. Throughout human history, parents have needed the support of in laws, grandmothers, neighbors, churches and other institutions of civil society. Our culture is less connected than before. We belong to fewer things. We know our neighbors less the worst part is that young parents, or would be parents today, don’t seem to know what they are missing when it comes to connection and community support. They think that parents should be able to raise kids on their own, and so when they find it too hard, they either blame themselves, or they look for government support. Parenting is more stressful than before because our culture is family unfriendly. The Surgeon General is right that we need to fix this. Changing a culture for the better, though, is not something that Uncle Sam can do. I.