Modern parenthood: Loneliness, perfectionism, and anxiety?
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This post is for my babies and my greatest teachers, Zoey and Finley.
Before you read: If you’re pregnant, a new parent, experiencing infertility, or find conversations around parenthood challenging, here’s a gentle heads up that this post might be triggering.
I want to start by stating three things.
1. I love being a parent. It’s the greatest privilege of my life. I have two divine children and would love a third. But, I feel called to write about some of the challenges parents are facing, myself included. I haven’t yet met a parent who doesn’t at least occasionally struggle with loneliness, perfectionism, or anxiety. I believe it’s always been hard to raise kids, but we’re living through a particularly tough era. Climate change and global pandemics aside, the world is a very different place from the one most of us were raised in – and I wish we were talking about this more.
2. Modern technology is awesome. I feel immense gratitude for modern wonders like washing machines, online shopping, seatbelts, and smartphones. I don’t want to turn back the clock. I don’t believe the answers to our quandaries lie in the past.
3. I am privileged. My family and I live in comfort. We own our home. I often parent alone because my husband works long hours, but he is paid well. As a freelance writer, I can adjust my workload to suit the kids (this is not without stress and financial risk, but it’s still a privilege). This post is written through the lens of my privilege, and I acknowledge I will get many things wrong. Please call me out on my blindspots.
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So, then. Where to begin?
Right now, it’s 1 pm on a rainy Thursday. I’m sitting in bed, sipping a hot cup of tea and writing. My seven-month-old baby boy is asleep in the next room. My three-year-old daughter is next to me, watching a show about cats on the iPad. There’s a summer storm raging outside, but we are warm and cozy. The washing machine is cleaning up this morning’s mess. Our bellies are full.
We have it good.
And yet. There’s this anxiety around the edges.
Modern (privileged) parenthood is safe, comfortable, and clean – at least on the surface. But, it can also be lonely.
When my son was four months old, he went through what’s known as the infamous 4-month-sleep regression. He woke every hour overnight for about two weeks. I was exclusively breastfeeding and the only one who could settle him. I kept up with his demanding schedule as best I could.
The nights were bearable. Attending to my baby when he cried, comfort feeding him back to sleep, being right there to support him through this developmental leap – this was instinctual. I was exactly where I needed to be.
People often think nights are hard on new parents – and they can be – but the days are harder. After a night of broken sleep, I don’t (often) get to pass the parenting baton to my husband, mother, sister, or cousin so I can rest. My husband must go to work, as do most of my other relatives. That’s the modern world we live in. Some people work outside the home, for money, and some people work inside the home, for free. The problem is, those staying at home – doing the unpaid care work – are often alone. I don’t believe this set-up is truly working for anyone.
I’m an introvert. I adore my own company. Being home alone is heaven to me. But being home alone with two little kids who depend on me for everything – being their whole world for most of the day – this is both my greatest joy and my greatest challenge.
Yes, I have all the modern comforts. I also have a lot of support. My parents and my in-laws help with the kids at least once a week so I can work (and sometimes rest). My daughter goes to kindergarten. I have friends and coffee groups nearby. I use the ‘digital babysitter’ daily. If I have a really, really bad night, or get sick, I know I can call on people to help me out.
And yet. It’s still hard. It’s still lonely. It’s an enormous responsibility to be the lead caregiver for small humans. You’re constantly wearing several hats at once: nurturer, cleaner, cook, health & safety manager, teacher, nurse, counsellor, sleep assistant, playmate.
“That’s just what being a parent is.” I know that’s what many of you are thinking. Parenting is a 24/7 job. It’s emotionally and physically taxing. That’s just what you sign up for when you have kids.
But what if it doesn’t have to be this way? What if it could be better? What if it’s meant to be better?
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The risk with questions like these is they can glorify the past. We talk about “bringing back the village” and look at communal living with rose-tinted glasses. But I don’t believe this is the solution most parents are yearning for – though maybe it should be? I’m not sure.
I also don’t believe paying parents for their work will solve everything, either – although that’s a good and necessary place to start. There’s some brilliant research emerging about the economic value of unpaid caregiving, and I think governments are beginning to realise its importance.
But, I would tentatively argue that it’s phrases like ‘the economic value of caregiving’ that got us into this mess in the first place. Honestly, when did our lives become so full of jargon? As a copywriter, I’m constantly telling my clients to ditch the jargon. It’s unhelpful and confusing. And yet, that’s how most of us describe each other.
We’re given – or we claim – titles that convey our economic and social worth. We’re not just human beings with inherent value – we’re lawyers or journalists or stay-at-home mums or builders or accountants or creative directors or plumbers. We each have some kind of title that says: this is who I am, this is my place in the world, this conveys my economic value, this is where I sit on the human food chain of neoliberal capitalism.
I get it. This is the world we live in. We can’t just ditch all of these titles and go straight to a utopian paradise – and what would utopia even look like? But if we want to better support parents and all carers (and therefore children and our most vulnerable), we must start having deeper conversations about what it means to be a human being. Conversations that go far beyond ‘the economy’.
What are we striving towards? What are our values? What do we want for our shared lives on this planet?
These are exciting, energising questions. I loathe how they are so politically charged. That we’ve become so used to ‘the way the world is’ that we’ve stopped dreaming about ‘the way the world could be’.
It’s like we’ve forgotten that we invented the way we live today. We invented the economy. We invented electricity, the internet, we even flew humans to the moon, so tell me: why is it we can’t invent a better future? Where caring for each other and our earth is our highest priority? Because that’s what we all want, right?
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It’s now 9 am on a Saturday morning. My baby is once again asleep, my daughter is once again watching television – this time, it’s a show about a girl with magic powers.
What would I do if I had magic powers?
Kids love answering this question. It’s fun. Adults suck at it. Ideas come – end suffering for all, stop climate change, eradicate poverty – but then our adult mind kicks into overdrive and lists all the reasons why these noble dreams would be too difficult.
For kids, magic is all about possibility. For adults, magic reminds us of how much is broken.
Even as I write this article, my adult mind is in overdrive. I’m trying to write about parenting, but I’m also thinking about how all professional caregivers are underpaid, like nurses and teachers. I’m worrying about the world’s ageing population and how many older people are experiencing extreme loneliness. I’m writing from the point-of-view of a mother, but I’m also thinking about fathers and their unique struggles. I understand my unease with modern parenting is part of a greater unease about our capitalist culture, but I also run my own business and believe money can be an incredible tool for good in the world.
Perhaps segmentation is part of the problem. It’s ALL connected, it always has been. But our adult minds try to compartmentalise each issue – parenting, education, healthcare, business – because this feels much more achievable. Rational, even.
But I think the most rational thing we can do right now is to put aside our adult minds for a moment. To unlearn all this jargon that helps us ‘make sense’ of modern existence. Because we’re missing the point of life.
Imagine you are a baby again. What’s your worth? What do you deserve? What are your most basic needs?
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Most people agree that children need protecting and that childhood suffering of any kind is abhorrent.
Most people also agree that – in our current system – money makes the world go round, and without money you’re going to struggle.
And yet. Early childhood teachers are underpaid. Teachers are underpaid. Nurses are underpaid. Caregivers are underpaid. Parents are extremely underpaid, or not paid at all.
Which brings me, finally, to modern parenthood: loneliness, perfectionism, and anxiety.
Parents are lonely because they are often parenting alone (even if they have a partner), they feel isolated from family and friends (even if they live in the same neighbourhood), and there’s a stigma attached to asking for too much help (‘your kids, your responsibility’). Parenting is seen as a relationship between parent-and-child, that happens mostly behind closed doors, instead of an intrinsic part of what it means to be human. We all have parents. Whether you become a biological parent or not, experiencing parenting is a universal human experience.
Parents have perfectionistic tendencies because human life is at stake. If they are parenting alone, they alone are responsible for their children’s safety and wellbeing in any given moment. It doesn’t matter how little sleep you’ve had, how overwhelmed you feel, how much you love the idea of free-range parenting and building resilience – you are still responsible for keeping your child safe. And that’s just the safety part!
Parents are also under pressure to raise healthy, well-rounded, resilient, polite individuals who meet certain milestones at certain moments and will go on to be productive, valued members of society. (See how much jargon there is in that one sentence?).
And then there’s the research. Oh, the research. Parents are swimming in a sea of information and marketing about food, play, sleep, and the rest. It’s pretty hard to trust your intuition when you’re subconsciously bombarded with information on social media, television, and everywhere else you look. We’re subliminally encouraged to be hyper-vigilant about our children’s development while at the same time relaxed about it – as long as being relaxed results in a healthy, resilient, well-rounded, polite individual that meets certain milestones at certain moments and will go on to be a productive, valued member of society. Right?
Parents are anxious because they want their children to be okay in a world that’s really not okay. Yes, the world has come a long way. Scientists such as Steven Pinker argue that the world is actually getting better, not worse. Pinker looks at metrics such as global poverty, healthcare, access to education, and concludes the numbers are generally trending upwards. Fantastic.
But what about the climate emergency? Mass displacement due to natural disasters? Racism? Suicide rates? Cyber-bullying? Filters on smartphones that allow people to edit their appearance? Conspiracy theories? Um, global pandemics?
I’m not a nihilist. I’m an idealist. I’m extremely hopeful about the future. Despite all this, I desperately want more kids, not less. I guess that’s why I’m so fired up about this topic. I feel like life could be better for everyone – it’s a question of political willpower and placing value on the right things. I’ll say it again: we flew humans to the moon. Why is it so hard to care for one another?
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So, what’s the solution? I don’t have a list of Five Ways To Feel More Optimistic About Parenting in 2021. Most days, I don’t even have time to think about this stuff. Day-to-day, I mostly enjoy this wonderful-yet-flawed life. I do cliche things like find joy in the present moment, meditate, and keep a gratitude journal. I don’t walk around thinking I hate parenting.
I guess if I did have magic powers – like the superhero on my daughter’s favourite tv show – I’d start by making everyone dream for a while. I’d gently lift everyone off the hamster-wheel of more-more-more and place them somewhere warm, safe, and loving. A place where all their needs are met and they feel safe to imagine a different future. A place where they can escape the rationality of the adult mind and open their hearts to what else might be possible.
What do you value? What do you want more of? What do you want for our children?
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I dream of a world where caring for each other and our planet is our highest priority as a global community.
I dream of a world where we can honour our innate instinct to look after people – young and old, and every age in between – without fear that we will ‘fall behind’ or become financially compromised as a result.
I dream of a world where a mother can wake up to her young baby every hour overnight – and not be left alone the next day.
I dream of a world where we treat human beings with dignity and respect for their entire lives – not just when they are babies.
I dream of a world where you’re worthy because you exist. Because you are, because you breathe. And that’s enough.
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Magic powers and dreams aside, here’s something more concrete, but also more complex.
Capitalist society doesn’t seem overly concerned about how parents are doing. Parenting is seen as a ‘lifestyle choice’, regardless whether parents actively choose this path or find themselves on it.
In my culture, parenting tends to be viewed as an ‘optional add-on’ that complements the rest of your life. Or worse, a burden to the community, the economy, and the planet. Yep, we now talk about children in terms of their carbon footprint, and actively encourage people to have fewer children to “save the world”, while simultaneously hoping the very people who will save the world are yep, you guessed it – our children. The next generation. It’s a lot.
On that note, I’d like to end with a line from Glennon Doyle: “There’s no such thing as other people’s children.”
But I believe we should take this concept one step further.
There’s no such thing as other people’s parents. Look after parents, and you look after children.
There’s also no such thing as other people’s problems. Look after other people, and you look after yourself.
Maybe, just maybe, there’s no such thing as other people. Other people are us. You are me. I am you. We’re in this together.
Too far?
Sit with it for a while. See what comes up.
With love and hope and dreams,
Jess x