I finish my workday and head home, making a quick stop to buy the materials my high school son needs for a project due this week, as well as the ingredients for a quick dinner.

When I got home, I checked my daughter’s school website and discovered she’d forgotten to hand in an assignment. When I confronted her about it, she threw a minor tantrum. I mustered all my energy to help her calm down and sort things out. My husband came home with our eldest son, who was feeling down after a small incident at high school football practice. We’ll have to deal with that later.

Around the table, we realize that both children have sports practices on Thursday, on opposite sides of town, at the same time as a mandatory parent-teacher meeting. And now, I’m the one on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

That evening, I wasn’t experiencing anything exceptional or particularly catastrophic. Scenes like this play out every night in the privacy of our homes. Besides, my family is privileged in that it benefits from a certain level of support that others don’t have.

Why is it, despite everything, so difficult?

For a long time, I was ashamed of feeling overwhelmed by my role as a parent. How did other people manage to seem to handle everything so easily? Of course, the testimonials shared on social media only fueled this comparison. I often felt like I was lagging behind, missing out on some trick others had discovered to avoid feeling constantly exhausted.

In reality, I am far from being the only one to experience what sociologists call ”  parental stress  “. Defined as the negative psychological reaction to a mismatch between parental demands and available resources, this stress has become increasingly widespread over the last five decades , with significant repercussions: parents who experience it at a high level see their mental health deteriorate and feel less close to their children.

I first became interested in parental stress and well-being when, several years after becoming a mother, I left my job as a social worker to enroll in a doctoral program. It was then that I learned something that completely changed my perspective: parents today are under very high levels of stress because, traditionally, people have never raised their children alone. And yet, we are more isolated than ever.

That’s when it clicked for me. Parents don’t need to do more or redouble their efforts. What we need is to build more social connections. We don’t need new social media posts titled “The Three Best Ways to Organize Your Family.” We need a paradigm shift.

The myth of family autonomy

Throughout human history, people have primarily lived in multigenerational and multi-family structures . Out of necessity, our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied on members of their clan to provide for their families, including the education of children. Research conducted over time and across different cultures suggests that parents are psychologically predisposed to raise their children within a community, rather than in isolated nuclear family units.

Anthropologists use the term ” alloparents” – derived from the Greek ”  αλλο  “, meaning “other” – to refer to those adults who support parents in raising children.

Research suggests that alloparenting contributes to children’s well-being, and even their survival , in populations with high infant mortality rates. A 2021 study of a foraging population in the Philippines found that alloparents provided no less than three-quarters of infant care and an even larger proportion of care for children aged 2 to 6.

In contrast, the ideal of the nuclear family is extremely recent. It developed with industrialization, reaching its peak in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite significant changes in family structure – such as the increase in the number of single-parent families – since that period, the model of the autonomous nuclear family persists.

And yet, support for others is a key factor in family resilience . The well-known saying “It takes a village to raise a child” is in fact corroborated by research on social support for parents in general, as well as by research conducted with children with special needs .

A “village” for raising a child

Social support, often considered a single phenomenon, is actually a set of actions, each with its own function. Sociologists distinguish at least three types of support:

• material  : material or financial resources or assistance;
• emotional  : expressions of care, empathy and love;
• informational  : providing information, advice or guidance.

The different challenges of raising children require different kinds of support. When my husband and I realized we had three commitments in one evening, we didn’t need advice on managing the family schedule, but rather someone to take our child to practice. That’s called practical support. When my preteen threw a tantrum over her homework, I didn’t need someone to help us prepare dinner; I needed to draw on what I’d learned from a book on raising teenage girls  : that’s called informational support.

To move away from the myth of family autonomy and return to an ideal of collective care, a paradigm shift is needed at all levels. Systemic strategies such as access to high-quality mental health care, the expansion of programs that support parents and caregivers, and investment in social infrastructure like public libraries and parks could help reduce parental stress, which is a real public health issue.

Change models and ask for help

Parental stress isn’t a problem that only affects those who experience it. But here are five ways you can begin to shift towards a different model.

Take stock of your support network . Evaluate not only the number of people who can help you, but also the type of support they provide. Do you have many people to talk to, but no one to help with meal preparation or to drive your child to an activity? Identify the gaps in your network and consider ways to expand it.

Small steps to start . Introduce yourself to your retired neighbor. Sit next to another parent at a sporting event. Chat with the babysitter you see regularly at the park. Supportive relationships don’t just appear out of thin air; they develop.

Offer your help to others . Although it may seem counterintuitive, people who support others enjoy greater well-being and even longer lifespans than those who don’t. Helping others also creates opportunities for reciprocity. Those you help may be more inclined to return the favor in the future.

Normalize asking for help and accepting it . For many people, asking for help is difficult . It requires letting go of a facade and allowing others into your life. However, people are often more willing to help than you might think. Furthermore, allowing others to help you gives them permission to express their own needs in the future.

Think about your expectations regarding childcare . The way others care for your children may not entirely align with yours. To explore how to expand your network of “alloparents,” consider what practices are non-negotiable for your family, such as limiting screen time, and what you are willing to compromise on , like including vegetables in every meal.

None of these suggestions are easy to implement. It requires time and courage. In our society, characterized by fierce individualism, raising children with a more collective mindset is simply unconventional.

But perhaps this is more in line with how we, as human beings, have raised our children over the millennia.

Author Bio: Elizabeth Sharda is Associate Professor of Social Work at Hope College