The Invisible Stress of Parenting Tweens and Teens
I’ve been a mom for 22 years. Do you want to guess which year was the most stressful? This past year. With a senior in college transitioning to full adulthood, a high school senior navigating the gut-wrenching gauntlet of college admissions, and a newly minted 6th grader adapting to the ugly social world called junior high, I have been juggling the diverse and complex needs of children (and one adult) of multiple ages.
Although they no longer require constant supervision like they did when they were toddlers, they need me in new, unpredictable ways, and gone are the days when I can solve a problem with a hug. In fact, most of the problems don’t have easy solutions, so all I can do is worry, which I do. A lot.
When we think about working moms, most of us picture mothers of young children. But what about the working mothers of tweens and teens? May is Maternal Mental Health month, and I would like to shine the spotlight on the very real but often overlooked stress of parenting tweens, teens, and young adults.
The stress of caring for a new baby or toddler is well-known. Soon-to-be parents expect the early years of parenthood to be stressful, chock full of nighttime feedings, frequent diaper changes, and restless nights. What many parents don’t expect are the challenges that arise when children hit the tween and teen years. First, there is the simple matter of schedules: older children are involved in more activities, which require Herculean effort to schedule and coordinate. They also have more homework, which takes more time and requires extra assistance, which parents must either provide directly or find someone who can.
The second, and less predictable, piece of the puzzle, is social and emotional development. Today’s tweens and teens lost out on two years of essential, in-person socialization as a result of the pandemic, which means that normally clumsy adolescent interactions have become even more so. Social media and the 24/7 pressure it has generated to selectively curate and present one’s life for public consumption have made adolescence an even more emotionally volatile and precarious time than it already was.
Tweens and teens are more likely to be experiencing mental health challenges than they were 10 years ago, and suicide rates are at an historical high. According to the Pew Charitable Trust, “22% of high school students said that they had seriously considered suicide within the past year.” While these rates have increased across social and demographic groups, teenage girls are at particularly high risk, with 30% reporting that they had seriously considered suicide within the past year. The current environment is profoundly stressful for tweens and teens as well as their parents.
Unfortunately, the unpredictable demands of parenting tweens and teens catch many working mothers off guard, and the lack of awareness of their unique needs can leave them feeling isolated and alone. The struggles of working mothers of tweens and teens may be overlooked because co-workers assume that their caregiving responsibilities have decreased. Everyone is aware of the challenges of taking care of a newborn, but most people are clueless about what it is like to be the parent of a 7th grader unless they have been through it themselves.
I’m raising these issues because until I experienced them myself, I never gave them much thought. I looked enviously at the mothers of tweens and teens, wondering what I would do with all the extra time that I wasn’t spending taking care of little kids. I now wish that I had been more aware of and attentive to the challenges they were facing.
Here are three things that mothers of tweens and teens and their advocates can do to create a more supportive environment:
Extend flexibility to everybody, regardless of family status.
There is an implicit assumption that flexibility is only needed in the early years of parenting. This assumption not only misrepresents the reality of parenting, but it also overlooks the caregiving needs and responsibilities that non-parents have. To ensure that all parents and non-parents feel supported, managers and employees should strive to create an environment where employees do not have to justify their needs.
Look for or create support groups for working moms of tweens and teens.
Working moms of tweens and teens do not have much in common with working moms of young children. Some companies have support groups specifically designed for working moms of children of different ages. If your workplace does not, see if it is possible to create one.
Normalize a different narrative.
If you are in a leadership role, use strategic opportunities to highlight the needs of working moms of older children. Refer to your personal experiences when appropriate, and challenge false assumptions when you see them. For instance, if a co-worker suggests that an employee doesn’t need a flexible work schedule because “she has older children,” you might respond by saying, “parenting is challenging at every age.”
It’s time to put an end to the deceptive myth that the stress of parenting decreases as children age so that working mothers of tweens and teens can feel seen.
