Parenting stress damages your well-being, and it may alter the course of your child’s development. But what, exactly, is parenting stress? What causes it? How does stress affect parenting? And what can we do to turn things around?
What is “parenting stress?” What do psychologists mean by the term?
According to psychologists, parenting stress is the distress you experience when you feel you just can’t cope as a parent. The demands being placed on you are too high. You don’t have the resources to meet them (Deater-Deckard 1998; Holly et al 2019).
Typically, this is measured by asking a parent to fill out a questionnaire called the Parenting Stress Index, or PSI (Ríos et al 2022). Parents rate their agreement with a series of statements about their feelings, including their perceptions of their children’s characteristics (“child-related stress”), their own ability to cope (“parental stress”), and the functioning of the parent-child relationship (“dysfunctional interaction patterns”). A high score indicates lots of stress.
What causes parenting stress?
I could give you the airy-fairy answer and say, “parenting stress is caused by your state of mind.” And to be fair, this isn’t altogether wrong.
For example, consider “parenting self-efficacy” — the belief that you have what it takes to be a good parent. Studies confirm that parental self-efficacy is linked with parenting stress and well-being.
When parents believe they have the ability to succeed as parents, they are less likely to report parenting stress and mental health problems (e.g., Liu et al 2012; Albanese et al 2019).
But this isn’t surprising, because the concepts of parenting stress and low self-efficacy overlap. Feeling inadequate, overwhelmed, unable to meet parental responsibilities….these signs of poor self-efficacy are the same feelings that psychologists use to identify parenting stress!
Moreover, parents who suffer from poor self-efficacy are more likely have children with difficult temperaments, and they are less likely to report high levels of social support (Fang et al 2021).
Parents may lose confidence precisely because they are facing such challenges.
So, yes, being stressed-out is, in part, a state of mind — a psychological state. You can likely reduce your feelings of stress by boosting your sense of self-efficacy, and there are a number of proven stress management techniques that can help you cope with daily hassles.
If you retrain your thoughts, you can experience real relief. That’s good news, and you can read more about it in my evidence-based tips for handling parenting stress.
But we shouldn’t pretend that parenting stress always originates in the parent, or that every parent faces the same set of challenges!
That simply isn’t true.
For instance, consider the results of reviews conducted by S. Katherine Nelson and her colleagues (Nelson et al 2014; Nelson et al 2013).
The investigators examined the results of more than one hundred published studies about parenting, childlessness, and psychological well-being. What did they discover?
Sometimes parents report higher levels of well-being than do childless adults. But only when their burdens are relatively light.
In particular, parents tend to be happier than the childless if their offspring have grown up and left the nest. Parents also report greater well-being if they have high levels social support, and/or kids with no problems: Children with easy temperaments, in good physical and emotional health.
But otherwise? It’s a wash, or parents tend to feel worse. And what determines the worse? Any one of these conditions:
- having at least one child with a difficult temperament;
- having at least one child with medical, emotional, or behavior problems;
- having only low levels of social support;
- being a single parent;
- having a young child.
It isn’t hard to see why these factors could reduce parental well-being. They are indicators of a heavier burden, and some are particularly tough.
For example, studies suggest that coping with a child’s exernalizing problems (such as aggression and defiance) is more stressful than dealing with a child’s symptoms of depression or anxiety. And stress levels may be highest for parents raising children who are either on the autism spectrum, or dealing with developmental disorders (Barroso et al 2018).
Moreover, the burden of a child’s developmental disability or a medical disorder is greatly increased if you are lack social and economic support (Dunst 2022).
But the last item on the list above — “having a young child” — needs to be unpacked, because a growing body of research suggests that the youngest children of all (babies) are often associated with the lowest levels of parenting stress. Moreover, many parents find that their stress levels skyrocket when their children are in middle school.
At what age are kids the most stressful?
I have no doubt that the answer will vary depending on cultural factors, and of course it’s also going to vary from one family to the next. But it’s interesting to reflect on the results of two large studies conducted in the United States.
In both studies, researchers surveyed thousands of parents; and, in both studies, parents reported relatively low levels of stress if their children were infants.
For older ages, levels of parenting stress ticked up, with the stress peaking during the preschool years and middle school years in one study (Luther and Ciciolla 2016). In the other study, there was a more generalized trend of elevated stress throughout the age range of 6-17 years (Meier et al 2018).
If you are currently caring for an infant, you might be asking “how can this be?!”
After all, babies require much more hands-on, “survival” care than older children do. As I note elsewhere, it’s undeniable that infant care has a disruptive effect on sleep, and when parents don’t get enough quality sleep, their stress levels intensify.
Furthermore, as Kei Nomaguchi and Marshall Allen report, American mothers employed outside the home feel the greatest job pressure and financial strain when their children are infants (Nomaguchi and Allen 2019).
But it appears that parents tend to experience greater psychological compensations for parenting when their children are very young.
Yes, parenting a baby is more tiring. Mothers, in particular, may tend to feel more “overloaded” during the infant and preschool years.
But during these same years, parents tend to receive less negativity — and more positivity — from their kids (Luthar and Ciciolla 2016). Parents tend to feel happier, and more satisfied with life (Meier et al 2018; Luthar and Ciciolla 2016).
By contrast, these same measures reach a low point during the middle school or adolescent years. Children’s negative behavior and maladjustment tends to peak. Parents feel that they are more stressed, and that their lives are less meaningful (Luthar and Ciciolla; Meier et al 2018).
How do economic factors impact a parent’s mental health?
As noted above, it’s clear that stress levels are intensified when parents lack the resources needed to cope with kids with special needs. And of course the same is true for stressed families without medical challenges. Poverty is a major stressor in it’s own right, and parents experience more psychological distress when they have financial worries (Roubinov and Boyce 2017).
There’s also evidence that societies can reduce the strain on parents by adopting pro-family policies.
For example, when Jennifer Glass and her colleagues examined life in 22 Western countries, they found marked differences in the reported well-being of parents.
Compared to the childless, parents were worse off in countries where parents receive fewer subsidies and lack family-friendly work policies.
Where were parents at the greatest disadvantage? The United States was the worst, with Ireland, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand ranking as runners-up (Glass et al 2016).
The takeaway about sources of parenting stress
Parenting stress isn’t just “in your head.” External conditions matter. Tremendously.
Can kids stress you out? Of course they can, and it’s normal to feel that way.
Can financial problems trigger parenting stress? Obviously.
Can social isolation, or a inadequate support system? You bet. Exposure to hostility, crime, discrimination, pollution, congested traffic? Yes.
Can parenting stress be heightened by self-doubt, fueled by assumptions that only inadequate parents have kids with troubles? Absolutely. Can it be intensified by poor sleep? You bet.
If it threatens your ability to provide for your children — if it makes you worry about your ability to keep them safe, healthy, and thriving — then it can contribute to parenting stress.
Granted, this isn’t the most uplifting message. It’s more pleasant to pretend that parenting stress is a merely a state of mind. Think the right thoughts, and your problems will melt away.
But I believe it’s more helpful to confront reality.
For one thing, it helps us put things in perspective. A lot of parenting stress is caused by — or exacerbated by — structural features of society. Compared with our hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist ancestors, we lack crucial support systems for raising our kids. (Read more about it in my article, “Hunter-gatherers subsidize families…for the benefit of everyone”.)
Family-friendly government policies can help address this gap, but what if you aren’t lucky enough to live in a country with family-friendly policies? You’re left to fight for society-wide change, and — in the meantime — to scramble as best you can.
Still — whatever else you might do — you should reassure yourself that this isn’t a reflection on your worthiness or competence.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, that doesn’t mean you’re an inferior parent. You’ve just got too much on your plate. That’s important to remember, because feelings of inadequacy, defensiveness, guilt — these feelings make parenting stress worse.
The other valuable thing about confronting reality is that helps you identify specific sources of parenting stress.
Are your stressed out because your baby suffers from colic (excessive, inconsolable crying)? Because your toddler throws frequent tantrums? Are you going nuts because of sleep deprivation? Because you’ve got a kid with special needs? Because you’re trying to work at home while taking care of a young child?
Once you zero in a specific problem, you can start working on solutions.
But first you have to acknowledge the goal. You have to recognize that your feelings are worth fixing.
This isn’t something to dismiss, to push aside while you soldier on. It’s really important that you don’t feel overwhelmed, fed up, or burnt out. Not only because your well-being is intrinsically important. But also because it affect your parenting — and your children.
If you need convincing, take a look at the research.
How does stress affect your parenting?
The quick answer is that stress can make us less sensitive to our children — less capable of tuning into their thoughts, feelings, and needs. And the results can be observed in our brains and behavior.
For instance, as I explain elsewhere, it’s normal for parents and babies to experience a kind of “mind-meld” during face-to-face social interactions.
Their brains synchronize, as if they are experiencing similar thoughts and mental states. A specific area in a baby’s brain “lights up,” and immediately after, the parent experiences the same thing: Increased activity in the same, specific brain region.
Parents experience similar effects with older children, too — especially when we’re engaged in cooperative tasks (Reindl et al 2018; Miller et al 2019; Nguyen et al 2019).
More generally, brain-to-brain synchrony can arise between any two people — including two strangers — who attempt to collaborate on a task (Lu and Hao 2019).
And you don’t have to talk, or even gaze into each other’s eyes. Research shows that “brain-to-brain synchrony” can happen when parents and children aren’t communicating one-on-one, but instead just sharing a moment.
Unless the parents are struggling with lots of stress.
Atiqah Azhari and her colleagues explored the phenomenon in an experiment on 31 toddlers and their mothers.
Brain scan experiment: Mother-toddler brain activity is less “in tune” when mothers are stressed
As you can see in the illustration below, the kids sat on their mothers’ laps while both watched video clips on a laptop. In addition, both parties wore electrode caps that recorded their brain activity (via functional near-infrared spectroscopy). This allowed researchers to track brain responses in real time.
The mother-child duos saw several different animated clips, each depicting different characters and different emotions. And as they did, they experienced brain-to-brain synchrony in a region linked with emotional regulation and social reasoning (the medial left cluster of the prefrontal cortex).
But the degree of brain-to-brain synchrony depended on parenting stress.
Before the experiment began, the researchers had given each mother a questionnaire to fill out. This questionnaire asked parents to rate their agreement with statements like these:
- “Since having my child I have been unable to try new and different things.”
- “My child is not able to do as much as I expected.”
- “My child generally wakes up in a bad mood.”
Mothers who tended to agree strongly with such statements were judged to have more parenting stress, and these same mothers were less “in tune” during the joint viewing experience: They showed less brain-to-brain synchrony with their children.
What does it mean?
We can’t know for sure. Maybe the stressed mothers were too distracted to get “on the same wavelength.” They didn’t process the emotional content that their children were viewing, so their brain activity didn’t match up.
Or maybe the children themselves were less emotionally responsive, less savvy to what was going on in the cartoon storylines. For reasons of their own, the toddlers of stressed-out mothers might have been less aware of what was transpiring on the screen, making their emotional states harder for mothers to track.
But either way, the results suggest that the mothers and children weren’t sharing the same emotional reactions as they watched the cartoon content. Parents reporting high levels of parenting stress were less attuned to their toddlers’ inner reactions.
And while this is a single study needing replication, other research — testing for brain-to-brain synchrony during cooperative tasks — has also found modest links between parental stress and reduced synchrony in specific parts of the brain (Azhari et al 2022; Nguyen et al 2020).
In addition, experiments have reported that brain-to-brain synchrony is higher when parents are cooperating on a task and (1) showing warmth, (2) sharing positive feelings, and (3) acknowledging and supporting their children’s perspectives (Liu 2024). As we’ll see next, we’re less likely to display these behaviors when we’re feeling overwhelmed.
Behavioral experiment: Parenting stress makes us overreact…or disengage
Research confirms our everyday intuitions. When parents are stressed-out, they’re at greater risk for two types of maladaptive response. They tend either to
- overreact to their children (blowing a fuse, getting upset to easily), or
- become withdrawn and emotionally unresponsive.
For example, consider a study of how mothers interact with their toddlers.
Melissa Sturge-Apple and her colleagues (2011) recruited more than 150 mothers with young toddlers, and each family received the same treatment.
First, the toddler was left alone in an unfamiliar room with a complete stranger. After a few minutes, the toddler was reunited with his or her mother.
[Note: This is a standard testing procedure called the “Strange Situation.” You can read more about the Strange Situation in this Parenting Science article, but the important point here is that it’s stressful.]
Second, the mother and child were taken to a playroom full of toys. A research assistant instructed the mother to play with her child “as she normally would at home.” Then the research left the family to play on their own.
Throughout the experiment, researchers observed the behavior of mothers and children. They also screened the mothers for symptoms of depression, and monitored maternal stress physiology with a wireless electrocardiogram system.
And the results?
As you might imagine, the toddlers weren’t calm and happy during the Strange Situation. They experienced distress, and their mothers reacted. But mothers didn’t all react the same way. Not during the Strange Situation, and not during the follow-up in the room full of toys.
Some mothers followed a low-stress trajectory.
They did get ruffled when their children were upset during the Strange Situation. But they bounced back quickly, and they responded to their children’s distress in a calm, sensitive way. The best parenting on display.
Other mothers experienced heightened stress responses and hostility.
There was a group that experienced high levels of physiological stress during the Strange Situation. They were distressed because their children were distressed, and they weren’t able to bounce back quickly.
When their kids acted out, these mothers were more likely to respond in ways that were harsh, or hostile. They were also more likely to get bossy during free play — becoming overly intrusive and directive.
And there was a third group of mothers — often suffering from depression — who seemed burnt-out.
These parents showed less sensitivity to their children, and, compared with low-stress mothers, they were more intrusive and bossy. But their most distinctive characteristic was emotional. Of all the parents, they were the least emotionally engaged.
So it appears that stress can make parents less sensitive, and more harsh, bossy, or emotionally withdrawn. What, then, are the consequences for kids?
How does parenting stress affect children?
First, the obvious: We know that stress is socially contagious. Even if we don’t intend it, our stressed-out emotions tend to “infect” those around us.
Kids don’t have to be old enough to understand what’s going on. As I explain in another Parenting Science article, even babies can sense when you’re stressed.
And, as I note here, research indicates that babies experience spikes of cortisol when they overhear their parents fighting.
But what about the long-term? Can parenting stress cause harm to children?
There are plenty of theoretical reasons to think so. Take, for instance, the tendency of stress to make us less sensitive, and more emotionally withdrawn.
When parents are less sensitive and supportive, kids are at higher risk for executive function difficulties (e.g., Lucassen et al 2015; Wei et al 2023), and they are more likely to develop internalizing problems, like anxiety and depression (Gorostiaga et al 2019). If kids have externalizing problems (such as aggression or defiance), they more likely to worsen over time (Pinquart 2017).
Insensitive parenting has also been linked with lower rates of kind, prosocial behavior among school children (Newton et al 2014), and it even predicts the shortening of children’s telomeres — the protective, molecular “bumpers” that safeguard our DNA from premature aging (Beijers et al 2020).
By contrast, warm, sensitive, responsive care can boost a child’s oxytocin levels, reverse detrimental epigenetic changes, and have a positive impact on a child’s health and development (e.g., Meaney 2001; Sharp et al 2012; Luby et al 2013; Sharp et al 2015; Szekely et al 2021).
So that’s one way that parenting stress could steer a child’s development in negative directions, and researchers have suggested several others. For example, distressed parents might have an adverse impact by acting as bad role models: Kids observe their parents’ negative behaviors, and they end up emulating them (Jennings and Dietz 2007).
Is there proof that parenting stress really does push families in these directions? Researchers can’t get answers by subjecting people to controlled experiments. We can’t randomly assign some children to be raised by stressed-out parents. But two lines of evidence — observational studies of humans, and experimental studies of non-humans — are suggestive.
Observational studies of humans: Parenting stress and child behavior problems are a two-way street
When researchers have tracked families over the course of several years, they’ve found evidence for bidirectional effects. Child behavior problems can boost parenting stress, and parenting stress seems to escalate child behavior problems (Neece et al 2014; Baker et al 2003; Jiang et al 2023).
Experiments on rodents and monkeys: Chronic exposure to parental stress can change the way a baby develops
Pressure a mother rat — by making her think a hostile male lurks nearby — and her babies will grow more slowly, eventually becoming adults prone to anxiety, cognitive deficits, and stress-related disease (Pittet et al 2019; Nephew and Bridges 2011; Moles et al 2008).
Overtax a mother monkey — by putting her on an erratic foraging schedule — and her babies will show less interest in play and exploration. As adults, they will be less social, and they may end up with smaller brain volume in several regions of the cerebral cortex and hippocampus (Meyer and Hamel 2014).
How do these developmental changes work? One avenue is epigenetic — a process by which environmental factors can turn genes “on” or “off.”
It’s a process that’s been documented in rats, and research suggests it takes place in humans too.
In one study, teens were more likely to show evidence of epigenetic change if — during infancy and early childhood — their parents had experienced lots of stress (Essex et al 2011).
It seems, then, that parenting stress can lead to a cascade of trouble. What can you do about it?
Feeling guilty or worried isn’t the answer!
Anticipating problems can be a good thing when it allows you to plan ahead and avoid trouble. Guilt can motivate you to avoid repeating mistakes (Tangney et al 2007).
But these feelings become maladaptive when you overreact, hold yourself to unrealistic standards, or get distracted from finding practical solutions. For conscientious parents, worry and guilt may be a major cause of stress.
So, in addition to the social and economic support I mentioned at the beginning of this article, what parents really need is information. Information that helps us feel better — more competent, secure, empowered, and inspired.
For example, if you have a high-strung infant, you need to find practical ways to keep your baby calm and emotionally healthy. See my Parenting Science guide to coping with a stressed-out infant.
If you have a disruptive or aggressive child, you need effective strategies for steering your child in a more cooperative direction. See these Parenting Science tips.
If you have an adolescent who seems to resist every request, you need to understand what kids believe about the legitimacy of authority. (Read more here).
And yes, you should also take direct steps to improve your emotional well-being. For a self-help guide to stress management, see these Parenting Science tips coping with parenting stress.
If you’ve recently had a baby, take stock of your mental health. Postpartum stress is a common problem, and so, too, is postpartum depression. For more information, see my article about postpartum stress, and this Parenting Science guide to postpartum depression symptoms.
More reading
In addition to the articles mentioned above, check out my overview on the way that stress can spread throughout the family.
References: Parenting stress: Why it matters
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Content of “Parenting stress” last modified 2/2024. Portions of the text derive from earlier versions of the article, written by the same author
Illustration of experimental set-up, mother holding infant, by Nur Hasyimah Bte Johari in the paper by Azhari et al (2019) and published by Springer Nature: Azhari A, Leck WQ, Gabrieli G, Bizzego A, Rigo P, Setoh P, Bornstein MH, Esposito G. 2019. Parenting Stress Undermines Mother-Child Brain-to-Brain Synchrony: A Hyperscanning Study. Sci Rep. 69(1):11407.
image of mother leaning forward, covering face, with young boy over her shoulder by istock / PaulBiryukov
Image of mother with hands on face and infant in her arms by globalmoments / istock
Image of father and stubborn child by fizbes / istock