Are the parents alright? Why raising children feels harder than ever

She is the daughter of a family therapist and has a social work degree but, still, parenting in 2026 is so complex that Genevieve Muir likens it to “learning an entirely new language” to the one known to previous generations.

Thirty years on from when a Californian sociology professor coined “intensive parenting” for the engagement-heavy style that became the benchmark for western child-rearing, parent educator Muir sees people struggling – sometimes “sinking”. The mother of four is frank about her early battle not to lose it herself.

Muir has worked with 40,000 parents and thought hard on the question, “is parenting more personally demanding now (in well-off countries) than in the past, or does it just feel that way?”

“It’s my favourite subject,” says Muir, whose sons are aged 9, 12, 15 and 17.

Western parents – often influenced by “child-centred, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labour and financially expensive” intensive parenting – certainly think it is tougher. This is reflected in Pew Research Centre data showing 70 per cent believe it is harder than two or three decades ago.

Fears for their kids’ mental health topped the list of parents’ worries in that 2023 study, but by the middle of this year, both the American chief medical officer and the Australian Parenting Research Centre (PRC) had issued warnings about parents’ own perilous psychological state.

In May, Australia’s largest study of parents and carers, the PRC’s Parenting Today, found almost 60 per cent of the 10,000 surveyed were in moderate or high level psychological distress, struggling with loneliness, self-doubt and lack of self-compassion.

The Victorian government and Minderoo Foundation-funded research found 57 per cent of parents feel lonely as carers, 43 per cent feel guilty, and 47 per cent think they are not doing as well as they should be. A staggering 53 per cent “could not forgive themselves for their parenting mistakes”.

Parental wellbeing declined steadily over the past decade, 66 per cent feel sleep-deprived, and nearly half have persistent self-doubt.

Dr Vivek Murthy, the US Surgeon General, warned two years ago that chronic parental stress had become “a critical public health issue”, blaming “new stressors that previous generations didn’t have to consider”.

Muir sees societal changes and the shift towards engagement-heavy parenting in which the stakes feel high as two drivers of the quiet desperation. Work-life has changed, a sense of village has declined, and economic pressure has ramped up so much that two incomes are often vital.

“We have new knowledge about what kids need, so on top of work we’re intensively parenting,” says Muir. “Now, most people only have one or two kids, and we really put a lot of hope into how they will turn out; there is more fear and more comparison.”

Feeling they need to “optimise” all aspects of childhood, rather than just rearing children like parents of the past, has seriously upped the psychological stress.

Information overload – seeing endless content about concepts once confined to clinicians or academics, such as attachment theory, neurological or behavioral science, and child psychology – adds to confusion and self-doubt.

This is supported by Daniela McCann, director at the Australian Psychological Association who says the fast-moving stream of expert advice, information, social comparison and messaging about optimising child development can be overwhelming.

“While that greater knowledge can be really beneficial, the downside is it creates pressure and anxiety; thinking that the standards of good parenting are exceptionally high and mistakes have long-term consequences.”

Technology’s intrusion into the way day-to-day life runs for both parents and kids puts pressure on parents psychologically because it promotes negative feelings about their performance, says child health specialist and parenting expert Dr Kaylene Henderson.

“For the first time, a generation of parents is expected to be connected to workplaces even when they’re at home, and that means mental presence for children isn’t always possible,” she says. “That very much contributes to parental guilt.”

A well-intentioned vicious cycle

The “guilt and shame” that Murthy says is pervasive among parents he has met across America got a big mention in his health advisory.

Henderson says parents feel they need to be so vigilant in part because of the loss of a sense of safety and community they grew up with. They sense their kids need far more supervision than they had, and this at a time when more couple families have both parents working full-time even from early on.

“Parents are definitely more stressed, and more anxious,” Henderson says, and children “definitely seem less resilient, and less capable than they once might have been – we are stuck in a very well-intentioned vicious cycle”.

“Everyone is trying to do their best, but the load feels much heavier,” says the mother of two girls and a boy aged 18, 16 and 14 respectively.

McCann, a pyschologist, agrees, saying parenting has “broadened” for this generation and, while her own parents would have considered something like being bullied at school to be primarily the child’s problem to navigate, now “parents are expected to be caregivers, educators, digital safety monitors, emotion coaches and advocates for all things.”

As well as being more hands-off, past parents had little access to anxiety-inducing information about the minutiae of children’s day-to-day lives. “That expansion to the parenting role has really made it not just feel more complex and emotionally demanding, it actually is [more so] than it was for families of a generation or two ago,” McCann says.

Because schools are aware that more children are anxious, they are adding more communication to the already vastly increased amount sent home in the past. Henderson describes it as “schools calling out louder to parents through their inbox”, even though the attention of many parents is maxed out.

Her reassuring mantra is that simply focusing on the foundational relationship parents have with their children supports both to thrive, and that relationship guides the majority of long-term outcomes parents all hope for.

“We’re the first generation of parents who’ve had access to research that can guide the way we interact with our children, which is positive, but that’s not what’s getting out there – it’s [content by] people with a marketing budget,” says Henderson.

She entered the parent education scene because she felt some information being pitched at parents was setting them up to fail, and “that felt unfair and cruel”.

The extent of distress some are feeling as they struggle to meet their own high standards surprised Dr Catherine Wade, principal researcher of the Parenting Today study.

She describes it as concerning that 12 per cent were reporting such high levels of psychological distress that they should be receiving professional support for anxiety or depression, and almost half said they had moderate distress.

This shocked Wade because it shows parents experience higher levels of distress than Australian adults generally. “There must be reasons why parents these days are, in a sociological sense, feeling more under pressure. We’re putting a lot more on ourselves to be perfect,” she says.

“We’re not forgiving ourselves when we make mistakes, the village is definitely shrinking – the supports around parents, that close sense of neighbourhood. We’re definitely seeing a shift in how connected people feel to each other.”

The study found feeling lonely as a parent at least sometimes was consistent across family types (single/partnered) and locations.

“It’s not just single parents, not just mums, or parents with children with complex needs or a disability, or regional parents; it’s pretty universal,” Wade says. “All types of parents are feeling that subjective feeling of loneliness; they might have lots of people around, but they’re feeling lonely in the role.”

On the upside, she says, “these are things we can do something about”.

Why parent wellbeing matters more than perfection

The irony is that while parents often put their own wellbeing last, according to several of the experts, their welfare is pivotal to the wellbeing of their children. Psychologist and former National Children’s Commissioner, Anne Hollonds, says a debilitating lack of time underlies the increase in parental stress.

“They need you when they are little, and also when they are bigger, but in different ways. We worry a lot about older kids and we are not there with them so much of the time. But as parents we carry the concerns with us,” she says.

The time drought feels constant to parents across the whole of childhood, Hollonds says, and while it is acutely apparent when children are little and need more care, as they become teens the worry about being there can be greater.

Hollonds would like more emphasis put on supporting parents, especially with mental health concerns, in the interests of families. She was surprised as commissioner to hear how often children among the 1500 she spoke with mentioned concerns for their parents’ mental wellbeing.

“We also know the wellbeing of parents is probably one of the biggest factors that affects the wellbeing of children,” she says. “So that’s why we should be worried if there are more issues for parents – more stress and mental health issues, and lack of access to help.”

The good news, and the happy ending to this catalogue of what is putting parents on edge, is that all the experts agree, while perfect parenting is not a healthy goal, “good enough” is both more manageable and better for both parents and children.

Dr Alice Dwyer, consultant psychiatrist and medical director of Parent-Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health at Tresillian early parenting service, says the key concept of the “good enough” parent has been lost as social media projects the idea that constant physical presence with young children, for example, makes for best-practice parenting.

Even babies naturally turn away from parents for a break from the intensity, she says.

Developmental frameworks such as attachment theory have been “social media-fied” and even caricatured, making parents feel they should meet impossible standards of constant availability, but the truth is that more is not necessarily better.

“The perception of what is good enough isn’t widely understood,” says Dwyer. “It comes as a great relief to many parents. The next part is that trying to be perfect could even be a risk for your child.

“So if you really want your child to be secure, we need to take those expectations down a notch – and they will learn that being human is acceptable.”

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