When the U.S. Surgeon General issued his advisory last summer on the mental health and well-being of parents, I was pleased to see a high-level administrator take the mental health of post-COVID parents seriously enough to issue a public health warning. In my work with families with young children, I see what Dr. Murthy sees: worry about the physical and emotional safety of their kids, uncertainty about how to effectively manage tech and social media, concern for their economic futures, challenges with friends and peer groups, questions about how to gauge and communicate how scary the world actually is, etc. The list goes on and on.

But my college history major tugs at me whenever I hear officials position issues as new, worse, or unprecedented. When has parenthood not been stressful? Millennia of recorded history is full of distraught, confused, and lost mothers and fathers who have found the sacrifices and fears........

© Psychology Today