Children’s Mental Health Meets the Impossible Culture of Parenting

I recently attended a brilliant training on perinatal mental health led by Olivia Scobie, and I wanted to share some reflections. Perinatal mental health as a specific field of practice is new to me, and it involves learning about the unique needs of caregivers who are pregnant and/or post-partum, and who are understandably struggling.

The theme of the training centered on the “Impossible Culture of Parenting”, in which caregivers feel the immense pressure to carry, birth, and parent “perfectly”. What stood out to me the most from our discussion was that we live in a culture where sacrifice is equated with good parenting… as in, the more that parents suffer for their children, the better parents they are seen as being. This reminds me of the idea in our culture that our vocational status and busyness is associated with success and worthiness. Both of these ideas essentially reward people for running themselves into the ground, and they better be doing it with a social-media worthy smile while they're at it. During this time of immense pressure, parents are touted with the view that in the age of widely accessible meditation and self-care resources, if they are suffering mentally, it must be their fault.

We talked about the pressure to "get it right" regarding screen time, breast feeding, feeding a family, caregiver relationships, body image, and much more. We reflected on the “mindful parenting movement” that requires parents to be present in every moment and make every moment magical, all while holding on to a seemingly infinite amount of information in their working memory, juggling a demanding work and social schedule, teaching moral development, life skills, and providing academic support.

We also considered the perspective of intersectionality, where populations who experience multiple levels of marginalization are met with increased surveillance during the perinatal period. In this period of physical, emotional, and financial vulnerability, women especially are piled with criticism of what they are doing wrong without the supports required to do differently (think: the startling amount of single mothers living in poverty, the exorbitant cost of daycare, the lack of domestic violence training for professionals in the family court system.... I could go on, and at some time I probably will.)

Having trained in children’s mental health, attachment, and developmental trauma, attending this training caused me to experience that sweet discomfort that comes with self-reflective practice. I wondered about whether my practice, which takes into account a family systems perspective, and yet, is heavily focused on the attunement of a caregiver towards a child/adolescent, was inadvertently perpetuating the impossible parenting culture that we live in. I wondered about the hundreds of caregiver sessions I've facilitated, and the number of mindful parenting workshops I’ve run, and whether there’s a way to both focus on the skills that can help parents experience increased attunement with their children while at the same time acknowledging their needs, the intense pressures to be a perfect parent, and the structural/societal factors that contribute to perinatal/parental mental health challenges.

Moving forward, it is my goal to continue to shift from a child-centered model to a family-centered model, where the needs of all family members are holistically considered. It is my goal to continue to learn about the mental health risks for caregivers associated with pregnancy, birth, and parenting, and to continue to embrace the core principle of social work to “do no harm” when providing clinical services.

To end off, I'll leave you with a quote that Olivia shared with us, from writer Bunmi Laditan, that couldn't help but make me chuckle:

How To Be A Mom in 2017: Make sure your children's academic, emotional, psychological, mental, spiritual, physical, nutritional, and social needs are met while being careful not to overstimulate, understimulate, improperly medicate, helicopter, or neglect them in a screen-free, processed foods-free, GMO-free, negative energy-free, plastic-free, body positive, socially conscious, egalitarian but also authoritative, nurturing but fostering of independence, gentle but not overly permissive, pesticide-free two-story, multilingual home preferably in a cul-de-sac with a backyard and 1.5 siblings spaced at least two year apart for proper development also don't forget the coconut oil.

How To Be A Mom In Literally Every Generation Before Ours: Feed them sometimes.

Have an imperfect and that's-okay day , everyone!