Parenting is relentless, exhausting, isolating in overwhelming, hell and unbearable. There’s not much clocking off for parents, even less for sole ones or people from disadvantaged backgrounds. It’s one of the hardest things
1) The Mundane Daily Grind
Parenting has a million tedious aspects to it that are seemingly never-ending. You start off the parenting gig with months (or years) of sleep deprivation that you never quite seem to catch up from. You think about what to feed these little people several times a day, every day. You deal with their bodily functions — spit-up, potty, snot, boogers, ear wax, fingernails, teeth and hair, etc every single day, for years on end. You field 625,897 questions, half of which are unanswerable, just in a kid’s 4th year of life alone.
2) The Immense Responsibility
That was a very heavy realization. And a dozen years later, it continues to be heavy. You only get one chance to be the parent of your child’s childhood. Not that you have to do everything perfectly, but you really don’t want to screw it up. These little people’s safety and health — physically, emotionally, spiritually — falls on your shoulders. It’s on you. That’s no small thing.
3) The Incessant Worry
Like the daily grind and the sense of responsibility, the worry never really stops. The stakes become so much higher when you’re a parent, in every area of life, that worry is something you have to constantly keep at bay.
4) The Time and Energy Juggling
Imagine someone coming up to you with three eggs and telling you to keep them all in the air as much as possible. It’s partially the time juggling that’s tricky, but it’s also the emotional juggling that gets you. Your attention and energy are constantly two or more places at once. And again, the stakes are high. If you drop an egg, it’s really hard to put back together again.
5) The Fact That It’s Not, In fact, A “Real” Paying Job
Being a parent comes with more responsibility and stress than any occupation, but there’s no paycheck, no seasonal bonuses, no monetary compensation of any kind. And generally speaking, the more time you spend parenting, the less money you make. There’s also no paid leave from parenting. In fact, much of the time, you have to pay someone else to watch your kids so you can have “time off.”
