The Secret to Parenting: Do Less of It Conventional wisdom is that child-rearing is stressful, all-consuming, and emotionally taxing. That’s nonsense.
“The amount of time parents spend with kids went vertical in the late 1990s, and there has been no relief since,” write Camilo Ortiz and Julia Martin Burch. (Illustration by The Free Press, images via Getty)
Parenting has become the most stressful verb in the English language. Over the past three decades, the act of raising children to adulthood—the oldest work in the world—has transformed. The amount of time parents spend with kids went vertical in the late 1990s, and there has been no relief since—so much so that a 2023 survey by the American Psychological Association found that 41 percent of parents say that most days they are so stressed they cannot function. That’s about twice the percentage of adults without children. This article is featured in Parenting. Sign up here to get an update every time a new piece is published. Theories abound as to why. These range from plummeting birth rates (fewer kids to soak up all that adult attention) to greater economic uncertainty (parents are more likely to adopt intensive styles when the stakes of success are so high) to increased fears for children’s physical safety (a 2025 Harris poll found that an astounding 50 percent of parents thought that two 10-year-olds playing alone in a park were likely to be kidnapped)...
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