Is Being a Stay-At-Home Parent the Most Stressful Job in the World?
The research behind a statistic circulating on social media
Source: Elina Fairytale/Pexels
Important note: The term “stay-at-home parent” will be used as short-hand for a parent who does not have formal employment outside of the home. It is an outdated and inaccurate term but unfortunately it remains the most recognized term for this occupation. The term “working parent” will be used as short-hand for parents that are employed outside of the home (or who work remotely from home). Of course, “stay-at-home” parents do not just sit around the house and both types of parents are undoubtedly working very hard. It is also increasingly difficult to categorize parents into just one of these categories given the part-time, freelance, and remote work available to parents now. Finally, nearly all of the research described below includes exclusively mothers. Unfortunately, there is very little research on how men balance career and family and even less on stay-at-home fathers (stay tuned for a future newsletter on this topic though).
A follower recently sent me an Instagram post claiming that stay-at-home mothers have higher levels of cortisol (translation: the stress hormone) than 98% of the highest paid professions. I had to dig deeper and know the truth— is being a stay-at-home parent really more stressful than nearly every other job? Having been a stay-at-home parent myself, I can attest that it sometimes feels this way. Yet, having also been a working parent, I know that there are unique challenges associated with jobs outside of the home. At the same time, it seems that increasing numbers of women are interested in being stay-at-home mothers because they believe that this career path is easier than climbing the corporate ladder (see here to read more about the Trad Wife movement). So the question of whether being a stay-at-home mother is the most stressful occupation feels particularly relevant.
Like many “facts” on social media, it was hard to find the source of this statistic. Finally, I found a clip from a podcast in which psychologist Rick Hanson claimed that “98% of the occupations in the world are less stressful than being home alone with young children or managing their day-to-day activities.” He suggests that this statistic is based on research and states that the lack of control, the interruptions, and the intense emotions of being a stay-at-home parent contributes to its stressful nature.
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Dr. Rick Hanson is a well-respected psychologist yet I couldn’t find the study to which he was referring. I did find a news article about a study conducted by a marketing research company in the UK called the MindLab Organization. According to this article, researchers compared cortisol levels of stay-at-home parents, taxi drivers, nurses, day traders and teachers, and they found that stay-at-home parents showed the highest level of cortisol followed by teachers. However, this data was not based on a peer-reviewed study, meaning that it was not reviewed by experts in the field for publication and that it is not publicly available in order to be evaluated. We do know from previous research that it can be problematic to compare raw cortisol levels in one individual to another because baseline cortisol levels differ. It might be that the type of person that chooses to be a taxi driver has a different baseline cortisol level than the type of person who chooses to be a stay-at-home parent and it has nothing to do with how stressful the jobs are.
So we don’t really know whether being a stay-at-home parent is more stressful than 98% of the occupations but what do we know about the stress of stay-at-home parents? Is being home with children really more stressful than working?
Let’s Turn to the Actual Research…
Research does find that being a stay-at-home mother is associated with worse physical and mental health than being a full-time working mothers. However, this may be because staying at home often means sacrificing financial resources and being more socially isolated and the mental and physical health toll may not be related to the stress of the job itself. In addition, more mentally and physically healthy women may be more likely to choose to juggle both work and home and more likely to keep a job than a parent that chooses to stay at home.
Research has also found that parents show lower levels of cortisol at work than at home (yet this effect was even more pronounced for people without children— see graph below). This finding supports the idea that the demands of being at home may be more stressful than being at work. However, it also suggests that it isn’t necessarily the kids that make being at home more stressful (or it could be that some of the joy associated with kids at home helps to reduce stress levels). One explanation for these results could be that the tasks at home feel endless and there is little recognition for successfully completing them— you certainly won’t be getting a bonus for staying on top of your laundry for example. Another explanation could be that the stakes don't feel as high at work because you can always get another job. It could also be at work, you may only be expected to complete the tasks of your job, while at home, you may still feel responsible for work but also the mental and physical load of running a household and raising children.
However, the story is a little more complicated. Further research finds that working mothers have higher cortisol on workdays versus non-workdays. How do we explain these seemingly contradictory findings? How could work be less stressful overall but workdays are more stressful than non-workdays. These results could mean that it is not working itself that is stressful but the combining of work and family and juggling the two that is stressful, since cortisol samples were collected 30 minutes after awakening when parents were likely struggling to get themselves and their children ready for the day.
Research finds that this pattern of higher cortisol on workdays versus non-workdays is particularly true for mothers with high parenting stress and high job stress. Interestingly, parenting stress by itself was not related to higher cortisol levels, suggesting that parenting stress by itself isn’t enough to raise cortisol levels but only when it is combined with stress from another domain (work in this case). A more recent study found that when family-work conflict occurs with more work demands, higher cortisol levels are found the next day. Again, this is all more evidence that it is juggling multiple domains of responsibilities that causes stress for mothers.
Overall Translation
Is being a stay-at-home parent really the most stressful job in the world? We don’t know, but we do have enough research to know that the answer is likely complicated. We don’t know whether stay-at-home parents are more stressed than working parents or people in high demand jobs, but we do have some research suggesting that parenting is particularly stressful when combined with demands from other domains. This research suggests that some working mothers may be more stressed in trying to juggle these two competing roles but they may get some reprieve from the stress of home at work. Stay-at-home mothers may not get this relative “break” from the stress of home, but they have the benefit of not having to juggle family and work (although they may be juggling other roles such as managing the household, being a spouse, or caring for elderly relatives).
So what should we do? First, we need to respect and support both stay-at-home and working parents. The work of stay-at-home parents should be recognized as “real” work and they should be provided with the same benefits as working parents (breaks, holidays, etc). At the same time, working parents should be supported so they aren't essentially working two (or more!) full-time jobs and juggling the demands of two very different domains. Employers also need to allow working parents more flexibility and change the demands on employees.
The stress of both working and stay-at-home mothers would also be drastically reduced with more equal division of the household work. On average, women still spend over twice as much time as men on housework, even when women are working and earning a similar salary. Interestingly, in one of the studies mentioned above, women reported that they were happier at work than at home, while men reported the opposite. Perhaps this would change if labor was split more equally at home.
Of course, the stress of being at home or at work is dependent on both the nature of the job, the home environment, and so many other factors. There are also several important limitations of the research described above, including that they involve small sample sizes, are correlational (so we don’t know if staying at home versus working actually causes differences in cortisol), and may be dependent on how and when cortisol is collected. Regardless, the most important takeaway point is that both being a stay-at-home parent and being a working parent is very stressful in its own way and it is difficult to really compare these two roles or to compare the work of being a parent to other paid labor. Rather than making it into a competition about which role is more stressful, we should be supporting both types of parents in the unique challenges that they face.
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Welcome to the Parenting Translator newsletter! I am Dr. Cara Goodwin, a licensed psychologist with a PhD in child psychology and mother to four children (currently a 1-year-old, 4-year-old, 6-year-old, and 9-year-old). I specialize in taking all of the research that is out there related to parenting and child development and turning it into information that is accurate, relevant, and useful for parents! I recently turned these efforts into a non-profit organization since I believe that all parents deserve access to unbiased and free information. This means that I am only here to help YOU as a parent so please send along any feedback, topic suggestions, or questions that you have! You can also find me on Instagram @parentingtranslator, on TikTok @parentingtranslator, and my website (www.parentingtranslator.com).
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One additional complicating factor is that "stay at home parent" isn't exactly a homogeneous experience. My niece lives within 5 minutes of 4 grandparents and a great grandparent all of whom are actively involved at a "several times a week" level. I know parents who live in very walkable communities where the cafe 3 minutes away has a half dozen other stay at home parents every morning and there are three different parks within a 5 minute walk where you can trust the other parents you see every day to help keep half an eye on your toddler while they are playing and you are chatting with another adult.
Compare those experiences to the prototypical "stuck at home by yourself because your family is distant/useless in a car based suburbia with few amenities" and they are worlds apart despite all being "stay at home parents".
I have worked part-time, full-time and now stay at home. Thanks for delving in! I have so many thoughts about all of this! But my first thought is about loneliness. One thing I lost when I left paid work was a bunch of adults to chat with, many of them friends. In our highly capitalist culture, work has become the center of adult social lives for most people. I was deeply lonely for the first year I was home and it was HARD! Because we are homeschooling, I actively sought out social relationships and now have a large group of moms I see and chat with throughout the week. I can imagine that many parents don’t find this network, though, and that isolation could be profound. I think we need a huge cultural effort toward community building that shifts our social hubs away from school and work, institutions that often fail people, to more intergenerational and inclusive models.