Parental Mental Health Crisis: New Study Sounds the Alarm
Parents aren’t failing. The systems are.
A major new study in JAMA Internal Medicine confirms what many already feel deep in their bones: parental mental health is in sharp decline. In just seven years, the number of mothers in the U.S. reporting “excellent” mental health dropped from 38.4% to 25.8%. Reports of poor or fair mental health rose by more than 50%.
And the impact is hitting hardest among single mothers, those with lower incomes, and those already relying on support systems that are stretched too thin to offer genuine care. The study also highlights that mental health declines occurred across all socioeconomic subgroups, but female parents consistently reported poorer mental health compared to their male counterparts.
The decline in self-reported well-being among mothers and caregivers reflects something far deeper than individual burnout. It reveals a systemic failure: our society does not value caregiving as the vital, foundational work it is.
The Real Cost of the Nuclear Family: Unpacking the Emotional and Structural Roots of Parental Mental Health
For many parents, especially mothers, the work goes far beyond what is seen. The challenges of parenting aren’t limited to the visible labour, such as cooking, cleaning, and school pickups. There’s also the invisible load: keeping track of appointments, remembering birthdays, soothing tantrums, noticing everyone’s emotional needs, and anchoring the family’s emotional well-being. This constant vigilance, often referred to as the mental load, is a source of chronic stress and isolation when it goes unacknowledged or unshared.
Studies have found that mothers handle 71% of household tasks requiring mental effort, significantly more than fathers. This imbalance is not only unfair, it’s unsustainable. When one parent is overburdened emotionally and cognitively, the entire family system suffers.
When we think of “family,” a particular image often comes to mind: a married, heterosexual couple with children, likely white, middle-class, and living in a suburban home. This idealized nuclear family is a social construction, not a universal truth.
This modern social construction, popularized in the mid-20th century and aggressively reinforced by government policy, advertising, and media, may have provided stability for a narrow slice of the population for a brief period, but it came at a significant cost, especially for women.
By centring the home as the sole domain of women and positioning men as sole breadwinners, the nuclear family model effectively reduced women to unpaid domestic and emotional labourers. And when hyper-individualism gained momentum in the 1960s, many families found themselves increasingly detached and unsupported, expected to meet every need within the household, with little to no collective or community support.
Mental health disorders didn’t decrease in this model; they escalated. And while the nuclear family has often been presented as the ideal, it has never been accessible or functional for everyone. Today, its legacy still shapes our expectations: who does the labour, who gets support, and who carries the blame when things fall apart.
Birth Trauma: A Silent Epidemic in Maternal Mental Health
The lasting impact of the nuclear family model, with its isolation, unequal burdens, and lack of support, only sets the stage for further challenges many parents face. One of the most overlooked yet profoundly damaging contributors to the parental mental health crisis is birth trauma. Approximately 1 in 10 mothers report experiencing obstetric violence, and 1 in 25 develop PTSD following childbirth.
These experiences are not simply "bad birth stories"; they are legitimate traumas, often dismissed by healthcare providers and invisible to postnatal support systems. Birth trauma can erode a parent’s confidence, disrupt early bonding, and leave lasting psychological scars. The shame and silence around these experiences only deepen the mental health burden. For mothers who begin their parenting journey already traumatized, the climb toward wellness becomes steeper and lonelier.
Just as hyper-individualism has reshaped how we parent, placing the full weight of responsibility on individuals, it has also impacted how parents navigate complex medical systems, often alone and without support. The medical system itself reflects these individualistic values, resulting in fragmented and impersonal care, as well as minimal continuous support.
As a result, many mothers/birthers experience obstetric violence, ranging from coercion and neglect to outright mistreatment, without recourse or validation, contributing to the shame and silence that surround birth trauma. In contrast, cultures with stronger communal support systems tend to have lower rates of birth trauma and better maternal mental health outcomes.
The Social Construction of Family, and Who Gets Left Out
Social constructions shape our expectations.
Social constructions shape how we interpret roles, behaviours, and expectations. One way to identify a social construct is to see how it shifts over time and across different cultures. Take breakfast, for example. In Canada, we expect bacon, eggs, toast, or cereal. However, across the world and within diverse communities, what constitutes "breakfast food" looks very different. Despite this variability, we still form expectations about what’s “normal” based on what is most commonly practiced in our society.
The same applies to families. While family structures have always been diverse, single-parent, LGBTQ+, multigenerational, rural, families with incarcerated members or disabled caregivers, our institutions still cling to one dominant image: a white, middle-class, married, heterosexual couple raising kids in a suburban home. This belief not only shapes how we perceive others but also how we perceive ourselves. This myth of the “normal” family reinforces harmful norms about who is worthy of support and recognition.
This narrow ideal continues to shape how we design policies, school events, intake forms, and support services. “Mother” and “father” checkboxes, marriage-only tax benefits, Daddy-Daughter dances, and inaccessible materials all reinforce one acceptable model of family. These structural preferences subtly (and not-so-subtly) send the message: You don’t belong.
This mismatch between lived reality and cultural ideal creates both external exclusion and internalized shame. If you don’t fit the mould, the message is clear: you don’t belong. That message, repeated subtly and systemically, shapes internal and external dialogues with lasting consequences for parental mental health.
These structural and symbolic exclusions silently undermine well-being by making support conditional on conformity.
Why This Matters for Maternal Mental Health
The pressure to conform to a narrow family ideal doesn’t just marginalize parents, it exhausts them. Mothers and primary caregivers often carry the heaviest load, expected to manage not only the physical demands of parenting but also the emotional and mental labour. When caregiving is framed as a private, gendered duty instead of a shared, supported responsibility, parents are left to meet impossible demands alone.
Social justice isn’t limited to protests, policy reforms, or political action. It begins at home—in how we divide tasks, whose needs we prioritize, and who is allowed to rest.
This isn’t just about individual well-being; it’s about building strong, healthy communities.
When caregivers are overwhelmed and unsupported, their capacity to nurture, emotionally, physically, and psychologically, is depleted. This doesn’t just impact them; it affects their children, their relationships, and the broader social fabric. A mother in burnout cannot be the parent, partner, employee, or citizen she wants to be. A father denied emotional space cannot fully show up for his family. A queer parent navigating systems that erase their identity cannot parent in peace.
Viewing parental mental health as a social justice issue shifts the blame from the individual to the system. It acknowledges that a parent struggling to cope is not weak or failing—they are being failed by a culture that still treats caregiving as a private, gendered duty rather than a collective, supported responsibility. This framing exposes how our systems set parents up for failure.
Viewing parental mental health as a social justice issue shifts the blame from the individual to the system. It acknowledges that a parent struggling to cope is not weak or failing; they are being failed by a culture that still treats caregiving as a private, gendered duty rather than a collective, supported responsibility.
Too often, conversations about parental mental health stay at the surface, offering self-care tips or individual therapy referrals, as if exhaustion and distress are personal failings rather than predictable outcomes of an unsupportive system. This framing ignores the deeper, structural roots of caregiver burnout and minimizes the mental health impact of chronic undervaluing, exclusion, and inequality.
The real drivers of parental distress are not just internal; they’re systemic:
High childcare costs
Inflexible workplaces
Inaccessible healthcare
Racial and gender disparities in maternal care
Lack of postpartum support
Birth trauma and medical gaslighting
The erasure of non-traditional families from institutions
These aren't inconveniences, they’re systemic barriers that erode well-being over time. They make parenting feel impossible and unbearable for far too many.
When caregivers are left to navigate these challenges alone, the result is predictable: chronic stress, emotional exhaustion, and mental health struggles that ripple through families and communities. These are not just inconveniences; they are justice issues.
A National Reckoning with Caregiving
In 2023, former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released a landmark advisory titled “Parents Under Pressure,” calling for a national reckoning with how society treats caregiving. His message was clear: parenting is not just a personal responsibility, it’s a public health priority and a societal investment.
Dr. Murthy highlighted the unrealistic expectations placed on parents, particularly mothers, and urged employers, policymakers, and communities to adopt a framework of collective care and support. That includes:
Paid family leave
Affordable, high-quality childcare
Accessible mental health services
This matters—deeply—because when we talk about parental mental health, we’re not just talking about individual well-being. We’re talking about the emotional heartbeat of families, the stability of homes, and the health of entire communities.
Behind every statistic is a mother lying awake at night, bone-tired and overwhelmed, wondering if she’s enough. A parent crying in the shower so their children won’t hear. The invisible, unpaid labour of caregiving quietly erodes a person’s sense of self.
When we fail to support parental mental health, we pass the cost onto the next generation. Children grow up in homes shaped by stress, trauma, and emotional depletion. Relationships fracture. Communities fray. The ripple effects are wide and lasting.
However, when we invest in real, sustained support and build systems rooted in care, dignity, and equity, we plant the seeds of resilience, empathy, and connection. We create space for parents not just to survive, but to thrive.
This isn’t about being performative. It’s about real, authentic, intentional change. Because parental mental health is not a personal issue, it’s a collective responsibility. And when we care for caregivers, we create the conditions for everyone to flourish.