By Brendan Churchill, University of Melbourne and Lyn Craig, University of Melbourne
As any mother or father will tell you, being a parent is hard. Being successful at it is highly dependent on the personal and material resources of parents, and the emotional, mental and physical needs of children.
There is a culture of expectation around parents, especially mothers, to be “good” parents, regardless of their chidren’s needs or challenges. Some people find parenting very stressful, which can cause a form of psychological strain known as parenting stress.
What is parenting stress?
Parenting stress can involve feeling overwhelmed by responsibilities, feeling trapped and exhausted, finding parenthood more work than pleasure, and experiencing difficulties in your relationship with your child.
Parenting stress can affect children as well. Children of parents with higher levels of parenting stress have poorer developmental outcomes, are more likely to experience behavioural problems and have strained relationships with them.
What reduces parenting stress?
Much of the research has focused on maternal parenting stress. This is because mothers are more likely to be primary caregivers, even though fathers have become more active in childcare.
Research on fathers and parenting stress tends not be on their parenting stress, but on their role in alleviating the mother’s parenting stress. Fathers who spend more time with their children, engaging in shared activities, such as reading and playing, have partners with lower levels of maternal parenting stress.
Fathers who spend more time with their children, engaging in shared activities, such as reading and playing, have partners with lower levels of maternal parenting stress.
And when fathers take on child-related chores, such as caring for children while their partners are busy, mothers are found to report lower levels of stress.
In short, mothers’ parenting stress is lessened when their burden of care is reduced through fathers’ active participation in parenting. This is what sociologists call “role delegation”: strain can be reduced when social roles or aspects of them can be delegated to someone else.
Can the use of nonparental care reduce parenting stress?
Our research, which uses data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, looks at whether the use of non-parental care might reduce parenting stress for mothers and fathers in the same way.
It is possible that non-parental care might increase, rather than reduce, parental stress, because of the associated time demands of organising childcare. Childcare can be unpredictable and unstable, which can affect work-family schedules, creating stress. So, using nonparental care might lead parents to feel pressed for time, which can lead to poorer mental health.
Also, parents are likely to worry about their children’s health and well-being even when they are in care. The use of childcare services can add to stress financially with childcare fees costing up to $30,000 a year for some parents.
Our research also looks at whether different types of childcare are associated with more or less stress. Australian childcare varies by type, covering formal day care and informal arrangements, such as the use of family and friends.
Families also vary in the packages or patterns of usage. For example, some households may use formal-only or a mix of informal and formal childcare. Grandparent care is by far the most common form of informal care, and around 40% of grandparents look after their grandchildren at least once a week.
