Science
Q&A: Parent burnout is real. Here's what you can do about it
It’s been several years since kids returned to their classrooms and workers went back to their offices. We dine indoors at restaurants and don’t hesitate to board a plane for a family trip.
COVID-19 isn’t disrupting our lives like it did in the days of lockdowns, social distancing and mandatory masking. So why are so many parents still struggling like it’s the height of the pandemic?
A report released Wednesday by researchers at the Ohio State University College of Nursing sums it up in two words: parental burnout.
“When the pressures of parenting lead to chronic stress and exhaustion that overwhelm a parent’s ability to cope and function, it is called parental burnout,” the report explains. This condition leaves moms and dads “feeling physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted, as well as often detached from their children.”
In a survey of 722 working parents conducted in June and July 2023, 57% reported symptoms indicative of this modern-day malady. That’s only a small improvement from the early months of 2021, when 66% of parents surveyed were described as burned out.
Report authors Kate Gawlik, a family nurse practitioner, and Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk, the university’s vice president of health promotion and its chief wellness officer, found that people struggling with parental burnout were straining to live up to unrealistic expectations. They felt judged by family and friends if they hadn’t steered their children onto the honor roll and an all-star sports team while planning a picturesque vacation and keeping their homes neat and tidy.
Bernadette Melnyk, left, and Kate Gawlik led a study that reveals how expectations to be the perfect parent contribute to burnout, stress, anxiety and depression among working parents.
(Ohio State University)
Those are the wrong goals, Gawlik and Melnyk said.
The survey found that the more extracurricular activities a child was involved in, the more likely he or she was to have trouble with concentration, get into fights with other kids, have low self-esteem and exhibit other behaviors that can lead to poor mental health.
However, those risk factors became less likely when children had more time for unstructured play and spent more quality time with their parents.
Not only is there no such thing as a perfect parent, but also, the more you try to be one, the more your efforts will backfire, Gawlik and Melnyk said. They spoke with The Times about what they’ve learned about parental burnout and how to overcome it.
What prompted you to study parental burnout?
Kate Gawlik: We really got interested in this idea of parental burnout during the pandemic. When it started, I had four children, and my oldest was in second grade. I was trying to work and be a parent and home-school and everything. I just had this constant feeling of having to do everything all the time.
I had heard the term “burnout,” but I never really related it to parenting. One day I heard the term “parental burnout” and I was like, that’s what I’m feeling. It’s not like depression, it’s not like anxiety. It’s this very focused burned-out feeling related to being a parent and having to do everything.
We’re in a much better place than we were back then. Does that mean parental burnout is better too?
Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk: People assumed that once the pandemic was over, things would just automatically improve. Our current study shows that’s really not the case. People didn’t just bounce back like a lot of people thought they would.
Gawlik: That’s why we wanted to study this again now. We don’t have the same stressors we had before. We wanted to look at what the stressors are now.
And what are they?
Gawlik: I feel like parents now are trying to make up for everything they lost, or felt they lost, during the pandemic.
We have really latched onto this culture of achievement. I see that and I feel that every day. Parents feel this continual pressure to keep up with everybody else. If their kids aren’t in honors classes, they need to get them tutoring so that they are. If they’re not the best at sports, they need to be putting them in even more practices.
It’s this continual cycle of more, more, more, more. How can you not feel burned out?
It’s this continual cycle of more more more more. How can you not feel burned out?
— Kate Gawlik
Melnyk: If a parent feels they’re a good parent, there’s not as much burnout and mental health issues. But if they aren’t feeling good about their parenting, there’s more burnout, more depression, and the kids have more issues. So the self-judgment piece is really key.
What makes someone prone to parental burnout?
Gawlik: Social media is very powerful, and very parent-shaming. A parent can look at social media and be like, “They look like they’re doing everything and they’re so happy and their house doesn’t seem chaotic at all. What’s wrong with mine?”
Melnyk: This whole “perfect parent” image that so many people strive for — it’s really important that parents know there’s no such thing.
Were you surprised to find that parental burnout was still so prevalent?
Melnyk: It was right about where we expected it to be. The pandemic didn’t resolve and then everybody gets back to normal. It takes time.
Were there other findings that did surprise you?
Gawlik: One of the things that I think was so striking was the relationship between child mental health and the number of extracurricular activities that children participate in. This is a great example where maybe as a parent you’re like, “OK, you can get back into sports, you can do everything.” But it’s almost to the detriment because we know that kids need time just to play.
Kids’ work is to play, and they’re not getting to do that. We’re robbing them of those opportunities because of all this structure. It’s all good intentions — we’re doing it to help our children — but the results of our study show that’s not where we need to be putting our time and focus.
Does burnout at work contribute to burnout at home?
Gawlik: When you’re with your kids, you’re always thinking about the things you need to get done at work. And then when you’re working, you’re always thinking about how you need to help your children. So you’re constantly in this state of turmoil, where you’re feeling this tug from both areas.
Melnyk: Honestly, in all likelihood, if you’re a working parent with children — especially if they have mental health needs — you’re not going to have work-life balance most of the time. That’s another unrealistic expectation.
In your report, you talk about ‘positive parenting.’ What is that?
Gawlik: The goal with positive parenting is building a relationship with your child. A lot of times we miss that relationship piece, or we put it second to what others are expecting of us.
For instance, everyone got very attached to our electronics during the pandemic. We were attached before, but this was on a whole new level because everything now was via Zoom, or via your phone. What that says to a kid is, “My parent is working. My parent is on their phone. I am a second-class citizen to that.” You have to think about how that makes a child feel.
What can parents do to overcome their burnout?
Melnyk: Quality playtime with your kids is so key. Not just being with them and listening with one ear and working on something else at the same time. It doesn’t have to be hours at a time. Whether it’s 10 minutes or 20 minutes, to give your child undivided attention is worth its weight in gold.
Adults need time to still do the things that bring them meaning and joy. If you’re not making time for them, you’re going to burn out much faster. Parents do a great job taking care of everybody else, but they often don’t focus on their own self-care. You can’t pour from an empty cup, and that’s what a lot of parents are trying to do.
If a parent is feeling stressed and overwhelmed, the idea of making a change may seem even more stressful and overwhelming. How do you break the cycle?
Gawlik: That can be tricky. When you get into this cycle of burnout — even a cycle of feeling like you’re not a good parent — it can be really hard to break out of it. You’re going to have to make an effort.
When you feel like you can’t literally put one more thing on, that’s when it comes back to shifting your priorities. What can you give up to make the mental capacity to do it? It’s going to look different for every parent.
My house is a mess 90% of the time and I’m not feeling bad about it anymore. I’ve just tried to reframe it. My kids are creative. Our toys are all over because the kids are playing with them and not sitting in front of a screen. I’m OK with the fact that my house is not clean all the time now because I can’t do that along with everything else that I’m doing and feel like I’m successful.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The sun had barely risen over the Pacific Ocean when a small motorboat carrying a team of Indigenous artisans and Mexican biologists dropped anchor in a rocky cove near Bahías de Huatulco.
Mauro Habacuc Avendaño Luis, one of the craftsmen, was the first to wade to shore. With an agility belying his age, he struck out over the boulders exposed by low tide. Crouching on a slippery ledge pounded by surf, he reached inside a crevice between two rocks. There, lodged among the urchins, was a snail with a knobby gray shell the size of a walnut. The sight might not dazzle tourists who travel here to see humpback whales, but for Mr. Avendaño, 85, these drab little mollusks represent a way of life.
Marine snails in the genus Plicopurpura are sacred to the Mixtec people of Pinotepa de Don Luis, a small town in southwestern Oaxaca. Men like Mr. Avendaño have been sustainably “milking” them for radiant purple dye for at least 1,500 years. The color suffuses Mixtec textiles and spiritual beliefs. Called tixinda, it symbolizes fertility and death, as well as mythic ties between lunar cycles, women and the sea.
The future of these traditions — and the fate of the snails — are uncertain. The mollusks are subject to intense poaching pressure despite federal protections intended to protect them. Fishermen break them (and the other mollusks they eat) open and sell the meat to local restaurants. Tourists who comb the beaches pluck snails off the rocks and toss them aside.
A severe earthquake in 2020 thrust formerly submerged parts of their habitat above sea level, fatally tossing other mollusks in the snail’s food web to the air, and making once inaccessible places more available to poachers.
Decades ago, dense clusters of snails the size of doorknobs were easy to find, according to Mr. Avendaño. “Full of snails,” he said, sweeping a calloused, violet-stained hand across the coves. Now, most of the snails he finds are small, just over an inch, and yield only a few milliliters of dye.
new video loaded: This Parrot Has No Beak, But Is at the Top of the Pecking Order
By Meg Felling and Carl Zimmer
April 20, 2026
For months now, menopausal women across the U.S. have been unable to fill prescriptions for the estradiol patch, a long-established and safe hormone treatment. The news media has whipped up a frenzy over this scarcity, warning of a long-lasting nationwide shortage. The problem is real — but the explanations in the media coverage miss the mark. Real solutions depend on an accurate understanding of the causes.
Reporters, pharmaceutical companies and even some doctors have blamed women for causing the shortage, saying they were inspired by a “menopause moment” that has driven unprecedented demand. Such framing does a dangerous disservice to essential health advocacy.
In this narrative, there has been unprecedented demand, and it is explained in part by the Food and Drug Administration’s recent removal of the “black-box warning” from estradiol patches’ packaging. That inaccurate (and, quite frankly, terrifying) label had been required since a 2002 announcement overstated the link between certain menopause hormone treatments and breast cancer. Right-sizing and rewording the warning was long overdue. But the trouble with this narrative is that even after the black-box warning was removed, there has not been unprecedented demand.
Around 40% of menopausal women were prescribed hormone treatments in some form before the 2002 announcement. Use plummeted in its aftermath, dipping to less than 5% in 2020 and just 1.8% in 2024. According to the most recent data, the number has now settled back at the 5% mark. Unprecedented? Hardly. Modest at best.
Nor is estradiol a new or complex drug; the patch formulation has existed for decades, and generic versions are widely manufactured. There is no exotic ingredient, no rare supply chain dependency, no fluke that explains why women are suddenly being told their pharmacy is out of stock month after month.
The story is far more an indictment of the broken insurance industry: market concentration, perverse incentives and the consequences of allowing insurance companies to own the pharmacy benefit managers that effectively control drug access for the majority of users. Three companies — CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx — manage 79% of all prescription drug claims in the United States. Those companies are wholly owned subsidiaries of three insurance behemoths: CVS Health, Cigna and UnitedHealth Group, respectively. This means that the same corporation that sells you your insurance plan also decides which drugs get covered, at what price, and whether your pharmacy can stock them. This is called vertical integration. In another era, we might have called it a cartel. The resulting problems are not unique to hormone treatments; they have affected widely used medications including blood thinners, inhalers and antibiotics. When a low-cost generic such as estradiol — a medication with no blockbuster profit margins and no patent protection — runs into friction in this system, the friction is not random. It is structural. Every decision in that chain is filtered through the same corporate profit motive. And when the drug in question is an off-patent estradiol patch that has negligible profit margins because of generic competition but requires logistical investment to keep consistently in stock? The math on “how much does this company care about ensuring access” is not complicated.
Unfortunately, there is little financial incentive to ensure smooth, consistent access. There is, however, significant financial incentive to steer patients toward branded alternatives, or simply to let supply tighten — because the companies aren’t losing much profit if sales of that product dwindle. This is not a conspiracy theory: The Federal Trade Commission noted this dynamic in a report that documented how pharmacy benefit managers’ practices inflate costs, reduce competition and harm patient access, particularly for independent pharmacies and for generic drugs.
Any claim that the estradiol patch shortage is meaningfully caused by more women now demanding hormone treatments is a distraction. It is also misogyny, pure and simple, to imply that the solution to the shortage is for women’s health advocates to dial it down and for women to temper their expectations. The scarcity of estradiol patches is the outcome of a broken system refusing to provide adequate supply.
Meanwhile, there are a few strategies to cope.
- Ask your prescriber about alternatives. Estradiol is available in multiple formulations, including gel, spray, cream, oral tablet, vaginal ring and weekly transdermal patch, which is a different product from the twice-weekly patch and may be more consistently available depending on manufacturer and region.
- Consider an online pharmacy. Many are doing a good job locating and filling these prescriptions from outside the pharmacy benefit manager system.
- Call ahead. Patch shortages are inconsistent across regions and distributors. A call to pharmacies in your area, or a broader geographic radius if you’re able, can locate stock that your regular pharmacy doesn’t have.
- Consider a compounding pharmacy. These sources can sometimes meet needs when commercially manufactured products are inaccessible. The hormones used are the same FDA-regulated bulk ingredients.
Beyond those Band-Aid solutions, more Americans need to fight for systemic change. The FTC report exists because Congress asked for it and committed to legislation that will address at least some of the problems. The FDA took action to change the labeling on estrogen in the face of citizen and medical experts’ pressure; it should do more now to demand transparency from patch manufacturers.
Most importantly, it is on all of us to call out the cracks in the current system. Instead of repeating “there’s a patch shortage” or a “surge in demand,” say that a shockingly small minority of menopausal women still even get hormonal treatments prescribed at all, and three drug companies control the vast majority of claims in this country. Those are the real problems that need real solutions.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, the executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at New York University School of Law, is the author of the forthcoming book “When in Menopause: A User’s Manual & Citizen’s Guide.” Suzanne Gilberg, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Los Angeles, is the author of “Menopause Bootcamp.”
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