'Parental Burnout' in the U.S. among highest in world

[Tatetopa]

3 hours ago, Xeno-Fish said:

personally feel at times that I'm working for the privilege to live. That unless I'm cranking in 40+ hours a week I don't deserve anything. I'd rather have an off grid life with a garden, maybe a few chickens and a 20 hour work week. 

I can identify with that.  I had that feeling of being undeserving unless I over performed.

I am not  good at self-analysis.  When I got to retirement age,  I kept working,  did not ask myself why until four years has passed

.During that time I asked myself enough questions to know I was not concerned for security, I had enough. I wasn't looking to collect more stuff, our place is full of stuff we never use.  I was not looking to prove anything to anybody, nobody cared.

I have one son, and I think my wife and I did pretty well by him.  He did not get everything he wanted, but he got enough, and a lot of attention and personal time.

Still, if someone had asked me what I did, I would have answered engineer immediately.  That defined me more than being a parent, even though I am aware enough to know how much my son and being a parent has taught me.

All this is preface to my conclusion.  We are self involved and selfish.  We focus on the importance of the individual and not the family or larger group. Our societies encourage it because they can extract more value from us. 

Parents get burned out because of the expectations society lays upon us not just to enjoy and nurture our children but to hang on them visible, society-approved signs of  our own hard work, sacrifice, and success.  Parenting becomes a display of our own worthiness in the eyes of society. Society conspires with our children from they earliest age they can absorb media to demand those signs.

Adding this on top of our self absorption, personal interest and quest for acceptance by working longer and harder can be too much to handle.  Maybe not the fault of parenting as it has been done for the last 50,000 years but our societies' interpretation of it. 

[toast]

Am I right, assuming that the people who claim to suffer a parental burnout are from the same group of people who say "OMG!" at least 35 times a day ?

[XenoFish]

2 hours ago, toast said:

Am I right, assuming that the people who claim to suffer a parental burnout are from the same group of people who say "OMG!" at least 35 times a day ?

I don't know, but I spent roughly 14 years with a constant thought "Hmm, kids are quiet...." Yeah, that means trouble.