Why Exhausted Parents Keep Snapping at Their Kids |
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Parents experiencing burnout have cortisol stress levels even higher than people experiencing chronic pain.
When your window of tolerance narrows, your child's ordinary behavior can feel genuinely unbearable.
In Euro-centric countries, up to 9% of parents burn out versus less than 1% where community support is strong.
You snap at your child over something tiny:
They won't stop asking questions while you're trying to think.
They're taking forever to put on their shoes.
They’re resisting toothbrushing. Again.
And you feel terrible for snapping at them. Again.
Maybe you believe that good parents sacrifice everything for their children.
That putting yourself first is selfish.
That if you just tried harder…had more patience…were a better person…you wouldn't lose it over something so small.
But what if none of those ideas are true?
Iris, a parent I worked with, told me about a day at the park with her three-year-old daughter, Malaya. She'd packed snacks for both of them, but she was still hungry - really hungry, the kind where your blood sugar is dropping and everything starts to feel hard.
Iris asked her toddler for some of the snacks. Malaya said, “No.” Wouldn't share. Then a crow swooped in, knocked over the container, and all the food spilled onto the ground.
Iris told me she felt a hot rage coming up from her gut. Malaya started crying because she could sense that energy. And Iris felt awful - she recognized something primal in being denied food, even though logically she knew Malaya wasn't actually denying her anything on purpose.
But the real gut punch came later, when Malaya asked out of genuine curiosity: "Mama, why are you always angry?"
Not "why are you angry right now?" But always angry.
Here's what research on parental burnout tells us: Meeting your own needs is actually how you become the parent you want to be.
The Problem: When Your Needs Go Unmet
There's a concept in psychology called the window of tolerance. It's basically the zone where you can handle stress and stay regulated. When you're inside that window, your child whines and you can breathe, maybe even get curious about what's really going on for them.
When you're outside that window—when it's gotten really narrow—that same whining seems unbearable. Everything your child does triggers you. The mess, the defiance, the constant requests for your attention.
Hunger narrows your window of tolerance. So does exhaustion. So does a lack of connection. So does the overwhelm of everything you're trying to juggle.
The physical reality of this is striking. Researcher Moïra Mikolajczak at the University of Louvain studied hair cortisol levels in hundreds of parents experiencing burnout, compared with parents who weren't burned out but had the same family situations. (Hair cortisol gives you a measure of stress hormones over the past three months)
Parents in burnout had cortisol levels that were twice as high as other parents. Their stress levels were even higher than people experiencing severe chronic pain. Higher than people experiencing marital abuse.
That's the physical reality when your needs go unmet for too long.
The isolation of modern parenting
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One parent in a research study on parental burnout said, "I am the one who is responsible for what they will be later. What they will become depends on what I do now."
Can you sense the weight in that statement? The pressure?
Modern parenting carries this impossible burden. You're told you're responsible for everything your child becomes. There's pressure from other parents, from social media where everyone posts only their best parenting moments, from schools, from society at large.
And you're trying to do all of this essentially alone. Maybe it's you and a partner—or maybe just you. But that’s not how humans raised children for most of our history—in communities where many adults shared the care.
There's a reason that the African proverb says, "It takes a village to raise a child." Because it does. And most of us don't have that village.
Research bears this out. In countries with strong community support systems, less than 1% of parents experience burnout. In Eurocentric countries, where parents are more isolated? Up to 9%.
This creates a vicious circle: Your needs go unmet, which narrows your window of tolerance, which means you get triggered more easily, which leads to shame about not being a good enough parent, which makes you neglect your needs even more…because good parents shouldn't need breaks, right?
Kelly, another parent I spoke with, described it as racing like a train that couldn't be stopped. Her husband said it was like trying to stop a very heavy train - he couldn't do it. She just kept going and going and going.
Until one day, she had a breaking point. She was away for work in another city, sat down on a low wall, and had a total blackout. She didn't know what to do or where to go.
She called her husband, and he helped her find a train. He drove halfway to meet her. When she got in the car, she collapsed. She cried for hours. For days afterward, she was in bed, feeling like she had a terrible flu. Her body ached. She was so emotional.
The day before, she'd had plenty of energy. Then suddenly, she couldn't do anything.
That's what happens when you push through for too long. Your body's stress response system—the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis—eventually collapses. You literally run out of the cortisol that gives you energy to face life.
When your needs go unmet for too long, your body pays a real physical price. Your window of tolerance gets narrower and narrower until everything your child does feels unbearable.
You're experiencing the predictable result of trying to do an impossible job without adequate support.
In the next post, we'll look at why parental guilt makes self-care even harder, and what actually happens when you're already running on empty.
To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
Lumanlan, J. (n.d). Why You're So Angry with Your Child's (Age 1- 10) Age-Appropriate Behavior - and what to do about it! Masterclass. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/triggersmasterclass/
Brianda, M. E., Roskam, I., & Mikolajczak, M. (2020). Hair cortisol concentration as a biomarker of parental burnout. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 117, 104681. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2020.104681
Fries, E., Hesse, J., Hellhammer, J., & Hellhammer, D. H. (2005). A new view on hypocortisolism. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 30(10), 1010–1016. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2005.04.006
Lumanlan, J. (2022, February 20). SYPM 019: Why are you always so angry?. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/iris/
Lumanlan, J. (2020, April 26). 111: Parental Burn Out. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/captivate-podcast/burnout/
Lumanlan, J. (n.d). Needs List. Your Parenting Mojo. https://yourparentingmojo.com/needs/
Office of the Surgeon General. (2024). Parents under pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the mental health & well-being of parents. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK606662/
Roskam, I., Aguiar, J., Akgun, E., Arikan, G., Artavia, M., Avalosse, H., Aunola, K., Bader, M., Bahati, C., Barham, E. J., Besson, E., Beyers, W., Boujut, E., Brianda, M. E., Brytek-Matera, A., Carbonneau, N., César, F., Chen, B. B., Dorard, G., Dos Santos Elias, L. C., … Mikolajczak, M. (2021). Parental Burnout Around the Globe: a 42-Country Study. Affective science, 2(1), 58–79. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-020-00028-4