Parenting can be overwhelming. Photo / 123rf
COMMENT:
It started with a jar of Lotus Biscoff spread, then the growing realisation spread, as it were, from there. My children, aged 9 and 7, were demanding it for breakfast. I was firmly opposed: once you let them eat crushed-up biscuits before school, you’ve basically lost the battle. And all battles thereafter.
But recently I surrendered. “Fine,” I said. “Just today. But we’re back to something healthier tomorrow.”
Then the next day they had Biscoff spread, and the day after that, and then I understood that I had given up. I felt helpless. It was easier this way. They got out of bed and ate breakfast without complaining, freeing me up for the trillion other jobs that need doing at 7.45am.
The Biscoff spread for me is emblematic of a dilemma at the heart of modern parenting: we want the best for our children, and we roughly know what the best looks like (healthy diets, limited screen time, homework completed, enough sleep), but achieving it often feels impossibly hard. Faced with an overwhelming set of daily challenges, it seems we are increasingly prone to shrug and say, “What can I do?”
The more I talk to other mothers about it, the more I see how widespread this helpless feeling is. They say they want their children to spend less time gaming, but don’t know how to achieve that. (Or, more truthfully, they do know how but lack the energy for the fight.) They want their children to eat something other than sausages and pizza, but know if they serve these meals, their fussy children will at least eat something.
“I let my toddler eat quite a lot of crisps every day for lunch as she won’t eat much else, but I know it’s not nutritious,” says Isobel*, 37. “I just prefer she eats something, and it avoids mealtime battles.”
“We always let our 7-year-old watch more television than she probably should,” says Anika*, 39.
For Katherine*, 40, ensuring homework is completed has proved too much. “I used to think I would push my children academically. But I work most of the week so it’s hard to find time for their homework, let alone the will. I feel guilty about it, but I often go weeks without even checking what they have been set, let alone getting them to do it. I’d pretty much need to quit my job to get on top of it all.”
This, arguably, is the crux of it, for mothers at least: the feeling that our generation is supposed to do it all, to have a successful career while also being perfect at parenting - and displaying the evidence of us #winning on social media. But, more often than not, we cannot. While the pandemic exacerbated parental burnout - in October 2021, Action for Children published research suggesting 82 per cent of UK parents had demonstrated at least one sign of it - its roots extend further back.
“I think it’s modern life-related,” says parenting expert Sarah Ockwell-Smith, author of .
The general sense of being overwhelmed began about two decades ago but has ramped up in the past 10 years, Ockwell-Smith believes, and is “quite closely linked with feminism.”
It is women, she says, who still do the bulk of the parenting, and still carry most of the “mental load” it brings. But these same women are expected to be in the workplace too, contributing to the economy, climbing corporate ladders or being “mumpreneurs” (Ockwell-Smith observes drily that no-one talks about “working dads”).
“We think we’ve come a long way with parenting equality but we haven’t,” she says. “We have a whole generation of mums who are incredibly exhausted, physically and mentally... [We] feel out of control, because we’re juggling too many balls.”
Recent research conducted by OnePoll on behalf of education provider franchise The Goddard School found the vast majority of parents of young children (83 per cent) have concerns about their behaviour. Some 40 per cent worry about their children’s defiance. Almost half (44 per cent) feel ill-equipped to tackle their concerns.
Separately, Ofcom reported in 2021 that 45 per cent of parents of children who play video games were concerned about them being bullied by other players, while 38 per cent were concerned about the content of the games. So a significant proportion of parents worry about gaming but let their children do it anyway. (The same report found that 70 per cent of children aged five to 15 played online games.)
While we struggle to manage it all, parenting experts and influencers proliferate on social media and in the publishing industry. An Amazon search for parenting books yields more than 50,000 results. Never before have we had such a wealth of advice available to us. But the result, says Ockwell-Smith, is information overload.
“You’ve got exhausted parents who are trying to look good, be successful, renovate their house and nail every element of parenting. They compare themselves to everyone they see on the internet and feel they’re not good enough. They think ‘I have to get my children to eat their veg but must not use sticker charts or bribe them or shout at them’.”
Indeed, the latest wisdom on parenting is that we must do it gently. Ockwell-Smith is among the advocates of this “gentle parenting” method, which rejects an authoritarian approach and, not unreasonably, encourages us to consider our children’s perspective and respond to their emotional needs.
“We’re getting a bit kinder to children so we see less compliance through fear, which is a good thing,” says Ockwell-Smith. “You don’t have that [insistence on] blind obedience that maybe was around when we were children. Parenting styles are changing.”
Dr Becky Kennedy, a popular New York-based clinical psychologist, also advocates a version of this child-centred approach to her 1.8 million Instagram followers. She assures parents: “It’s okay if you feel overwhelmed. Maybe all you could do today is survive and make it through.”
It’s a reassuring message, but if you’ve sought her wisdom in the first place, it’s presumably because you want to do parenting better. The word itself is telling, Ockwell-Smith suggests. “‘Parenting’ is much more a thing now than it was 30 to 40 years ago. We just raised children then, but now it’s something we should do well at and invest time and money into.”
In setting out to do parenting well, we pit ourselves against powerful external influences: cut modern teenagers off from their screens and you cut them off from their friends; attempt to enforce a healthy diet and you’re battling against an industry in which more than half our calories now come from ultra-processed foods.
We can’t enforce the rules from our offices, and when we are at home, we are often tired out by work, so find ourselves taking the path of least resistance.
This is not to say that raising children was ever free of challenges.
“There have always been terrible risks,” says clinical psychologist Linda Blair.
While parents weren’t contending with ubiquitous junk food and screens a century ago, different hurdles existed. But today a set of difficult circumstances have arguably coalesced to add to the feeling of being overwhelmed we may be encountering.
“Mortgages are out of control, food prices are rising every week, jobs might not be secure, and when that happens, you project your feeling of helplessness onto something closer to home,” says Blair.
So how can parents retain a sense of control and reset their relationship with their children? A good therapist would suggest drawing up a hierarchy of everything bothering you about your child, says Blair. We can then identify what we want to tackle most, and accept that not everything can be prioritised at once.
The next part is age-dependent.
“Children need limits but teens need limits with negotiation,” says Blair. “Kids will always fight you; that’s how they learn to set their own rules. When they’re little, [it’s] ‘no negotiation, sorry’, because we have so much better an idea about what will help their development. But when they’re older, you’re trying to help them set their own limits and they won’t be the same as yours, because they live in a different world and you need to listen to their reasons.”
What’s key is a firm and consistent approach, argues Elaine Halligan, director of The Parent Practice and author of My Child’s Different.
“[Parents] don’t want to feel powerless, but it’s not about being powerful; it’s about being influential and knowing what to do in certain hotspot areas,” Halligan says.
Many parents believe their role is to ensure their child is happy, she says. But “authoritative parenting” - “high, but reasonable, expectations while being warm and connective” - is in their best interests.
“Your role,” Halligan tells her followers, “is to accommodate your children’s needs, not wants.”
Perhaps, too, we need to reset our own expectations of ourselves and settle for being what Ockwell-Smith calls the “good enough” parent. Perfection, whatever it means, is impossible.
“[Allow] yourself,” she says, “to have days where you get it all wrong.”
*Names have been changed
Telegraph: Major dry spells are common, but there are ways to get the spark back.