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Our parenting expert, an award-winning TV broadcaster and author, Vicki Broadbent, who is a mom to a teen, tween, and toddler, says there are many potential worries lurking around.
"I think there are many contributing factors to parental stress: the cost of living crisis and the post-pandemic struggles, the lack of infrastructure for working parents, the cost of childcare and inflexible working... The list goes on," the woman behind the acclaimed blog Honest Mum told Bored Panda.
In Britain, for example, 61% of parents have concerns about their mental health, with those on lower incomes most likely to be affected, a poll for the charity Unicef UK found.
Parents said they had felt overwhelmed (49%), anxious (43%), unsupported (36%), and lonely (26%) all or a lot of the time in the last 12 months.
Meanwhile, 70% of parents with babies and young children said it was getting harder every year to be a parent in Britain, and 70% believe that being a parent today is harder than it was for their parents’ generation.
Parents also said housing costs (78%) and the dangers of social media (75%) are making raising kids more difficult for their generation.
Additionally, 68% of respondents said they believed the government was not doing enough to support them as parents.
30% of parents said that they had been working longer hours in the past year due to increased financial pressures, with 37% having less time to read, play, and cook healthy meals with their children.
"I think it's important to learn how to manage that stress and to implement free but effective tools such as deep breathing techniques (like the 4-7-8 breathing technique, where you inhale for the count of 4, hold the breath for 7, then release for 8). It will help your children too," Vicki Broadbent, the author of books Mumboss (UK) and The Working Mom (US and Canada), added.
As we can see, the stark reality is that a considerable number of families with babies and young children are worried about their future, so we have to remain empathetic to one another.
"When I think of my own work, creating and consuming humorous content has helped me process some of the hardest times in my motherhood journey," Broadbent shared. "The two traumatic births I struggled with and the postpartum periods too. I think balance is key and I share the good with the bad, the humorous with the challenging. Ultimately no one should feel alone and isolated in their experiences."
This is the underlying message behind these memes too. Even though they might seem silly, if they help even one parent feel understood, that's enough.
