Stressors that come with parenting can affect the entire family, expert warns

Parents and caregivers can experience a multitude of stressors that can be expected or unique while raising children.
Experts say parents must recognize the signs, so they can keep stress from building up.
“Making sure that you are well so that you can function in your work, so that you can function as a parent, and so that you can notice any challenges that are facing your child,” Dr. Christine Crawford told Scripps News.
Common stressors for parents can include things like financial strain, economic instability, poverty, time demands, health and safety.
Other issues parents and caregivers often stress over include feeling isolated and lonely as a parent, various aspects of social media and technology, and cultural pressures or worries about their children’s future, the
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HHS says, “Circumstances like family or community violence, poverty and racism and discrimination, among other circumstances, can increase the risk for mental health conditions. Further, the mental health conditions experienced by parents and caregivers can manifest differently based on the gender of the parent and the family structure, among other factors.”
Stress can bring about burnout, which comes when parents start to feel tired most of the time or even find they have difficulty sleeping or are sleeping too much.
The burnout symptoms can include memory and concentration issues, muscle tension, having a hard time making decisions, losing empathy and getting physically sick more often, according to a
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UNICEF says, “Many of life’s demands can cause stress, like work, relationships and juggling being a parent. When you feel stressed, it can get in the way of dealing with these demands and can affect everything you do. You can begin to feel stressed with even the simplest of tasks.”
Crawford is an associated medical director at the National Alliance on Mental Illness. She says a new warning put out by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy on the dangers of parental stress will get parents and employers to take this issue seriously, to a greater degree than they already have.
“I hope that this will result in some policy changes around having more flexible work schedules … thinking about childcare vouchers. Just making lives easier for parents, and for families,” Crawford told Scripps News.