STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says parenting is hard - so hard that parents' mental health and well-being amount to an urgent public health issue. That's his advisory, and the surgeon general is on the line to talk about it. Welcome back, sir.
VIVEK MURTHY: Well, thanks so much, Steve. Good to be with you again.
INSKEEP: I'm glad you're with us. I know from past conversations that you're a parent, so I got to ask - are you OK?
MURTHY: Thank you for asking. I am doing OK, thanks to some good support - and welcome, much-needed support - from family and friends.
INSKEEP: But you're still concerned about how parents are doing, and as a parent myself, I'm interested. Go on.
MURTHY: Well, I became interested in parents, not only because of my own experience as a parent - you know, struggling, feeling exhausted, stressed and just alone at times - but also because, in my work on youth mental health, Steve, I began to have conversations with families across the country. And it quickly became apparent that parents were, in fact, struggling themselves. As I dug into the data, I found that 48% of parents - nearly half of them - say that most days, they feel completely overwhelmed by stress. That's an extraordinary number. And I also found that parents are struggling with loneliness at disproportionately higher levels, particularly single parents, more than three-quarters of whom report feeling lonely. This has really important implications for the mental health of parents, which we now know, in turn, affects the mental health of kids.
INSKEEP: I'm just thinking about that finding of loneliness. You're a parent. You're driving the kid all over the place. You love the kid, but the kid is not an adult. It's not an adult to talk to. I mean, this is really intense and personal for a lot of people, just the struggle of getting everything done in a day.
MURTHY: It really is. And these time pressures on parents are real, and they've been growing worse. What we find over the last few decades, Steve, is that parents - moms and dads - are spending more time at work, but they're also spending more time with their kids. Now, where is that extra time coming from?
INSKEEP: Yeah.
MURTHY: It's often coming from your time resting, recuperating, in relationships. And, over time, that can really take a toll on parents.
INSKEEP: I would like to know if the evolution in parenting styles, if that's the right phrase, is part of this. We've talked a lot over the years about helicopter parenting, about parents being more and more involved in the minute-by-minute experience of their kids and expected to be more and more involved in the experiences of their kids. We've talked about certain psychological effects on children and their maturity from that, but is this also having a really bad effect on parents, then?
MURTHY: Well, I think it is having a real effect on parents, but I think it's coming from two places in particular. One is that many parents have lost their village. You know, parenting is a team sport. It's not - it may be the primary responsibility of a parent to raise a child, but we need family, friends, neighbors, a community, and many of us have lost that. But we're also mired in this intensifying culture of comparison, fueled by social media, where we're constantly comparing ourselves to other parents - parents we know, many parents whom we may not know. But that is leading us often to feel like we're not doing enough for our kids, we're falling short, and so we scramble to do more and more.
I lay out in this advisory, Steve, a series of steps we've got to take as a country to change this. It starts with recognizing that we've got to value parenting differently. We've got to see it as the invaluable work that it is, because when parents get the support they need, we're all better off. And that can, in turn, fuel policies like paid leave, affordable child care, reliable, mental health care, addressing issues like making social media safer, which can take some of the burden off of parents. But as individuals, I also believe that we can all step up more to offer some moral and practical support to other parents in our lives. And this could mean helping with errands or with, you know, watching a friend's child from time to time, just so that they have a moment to breathe. And it can also mean not waiting for an invitation. As I have found as a dad, sometimes simply having people who can show up and to check on you can make all the difference in the world.
INSKEEP: I wonder if you're doing your most significant thing just by saying this aloud and encouraging people. If you're standing there at school pickup at the end of the day, looking around at the other parents, you know, the people who look normal may not be feeling normal right now.
MURTHY: That is absolutely the case. You can't tell from the outside how people are doing. And sometimes, I think, as parents, we assume that we're the only ones struggling. You know, I have certainly felt that a lot. But when you actually talk to parents, you find that a lot of us are going through the same things. If we can talk openly with one another about this, I believe that we can help find and build the kind of community that all of us need to do parenting well.
INSKEEP: Dr. Vivek Murthy is the U.S. surgeon general and a parent, apparently. Surgeon General, thanks so much.
MURTHY: Thanks so much, Steve. Appreciate it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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