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“Parents Under Pressure” is the title of a new advisory from Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. Murthy notes that while many parents feel fortunate to be raising children, they often struggle silently. In fact, parents are nearly twice as likely to experience daily stress compared to those without children.
In the video above, Straight Arrow News contributor Timothy Carney argues that turning to the government to address this stress is a mistake. According to Carney, the real issue lies in the erosion of community support — a problem the federal government can’t easily fix.
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The following is an excerpt from the above video:
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.
