{"id":78749,"date":"2025-10-30T00:32:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T04:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=78749"},"modified":"2025-10-30T00:32:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T04:32:10","slug":"to-reduce-parental-stress-should-we-move-away-from-the-nuclear-family-model","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/to-reduce-parental-stress-should-we-move-away-from-the-nuclear-family-model\/","title":{"rendered":"To reduce parental stress, should we move away from the nuclear family model?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

I finish my workday and head home, making a quick stop to buy the materials my high school son needs for a project due this week, as well as the ingredients for a quick dinner.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I got home, I checked my daughter’s school website and discovered she’d forgotten to hand in an assignment. When I confronted her about it, she threw a minor tantrum. I mustered all my energy to help her calm down and sort things out. My husband came home with our eldest son, who was feeling down after a small incident at high school football practice. We’ll have to deal with that later.<\/span><\/p>\n

Around the table, we realize that both children have sports practices on Thursday, on opposite sides of town, at the same time as a mandatory parent-teacher meeting. And now, I’m the one on the verge of a nervous breakdown.<\/span><\/p>\n

That evening, I wasn’t experiencing anything exceptional or particularly catastrophic. Scenes like this play out every night in the privacy of our homes. Besides, my family is privileged in that it benefits from a certain level of support that others don’t have.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why is it, despite everything, so difficult?<\/span><\/p>\n

For a long time, I was ashamed of feeling overwhelmed by my role as a parent. How did other people manage to seem to handle everything so easily? Of course, the testimonials shared on social media only fueled this comparison. I often felt like I was lagging behind, missing out on some trick others had discovered to avoid feeling constantly exhausted.<\/span><\/p>\n

In reality, I am far from being the only one to experience what sociologists call ”\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>parental stress<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0“. Defined as the negative psychological reaction to a mismatch between parental demands and available resources, this stress has become\u00a0<\/span>increasingly widespread over the last five decades<\/span><\/a>\u00a0, with significant repercussions: parents who experience it at a high level\u00a0<\/span>see their mental health deteriorate<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and feel less close to their children.<\/span><\/p>\n

I first became\u00a0<\/span>interested in parental stress and well-being<\/span><\/a>\u00a0when, several years after becoming a mother, I left my job as a social worker to enroll in a doctoral program. It was then that I learned something that completely changed my perspective: parents today are under very high levels of stress because, traditionally, people have never raised their children alone. And yet, we are more isolated than ever.<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s when it clicked for me. Parents don’t need to do more or redouble their efforts. What we need is to build more social connections. We don’t need new social media posts titled “The Three Best Ways to Organize Your Family.” We need a paradigm shift.<\/span><\/p>\n

The myth of family autonomy<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Throughout human history, people have primarily lived in\u00a0<\/span>multigenerational and multi-family structures<\/span><\/a>\u00a0. Out of necessity, our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied on members of their clan to provide for their families, including the education of children.\u00a0<\/span>Research conducted over time and across different cultures<\/span><\/a>\u00a0suggests that parents are psychologically predisposed to raise their children within a community, rather than in isolated nuclear family units.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anthropologists use the term ”\u00a0<\/span>alloparents”<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 derived from the Greek ”\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u03b1\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf<\/span><\/em>\u00a0\u00a0“, meaning “other” \u2013 to refer to those adults who support parents in raising children.<\/span><\/p>\n

Research suggests that alloparenting contributes to\u00a0<\/span>children’s well-being, and even their survival<\/span><\/a>\u00a0, in populations with high infant mortality rates. A 2021 study of a foraging population in the Philippines found that alloparents\u00a0<\/span>provided no less than three-quarters<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of infant care and an even larger proportion of care for children aged 2 to 6.<\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast, the ideal of the\u00a0<\/span>nuclear family<\/span><\/a>\u00a0is extremely recent. It developed with industrialization, reaching its peak in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite\u00a0<\/span>significant changes in family structure<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 such as the increase in the number of single-parent families \u2013 since that period, the model of the autonomous nuclear family persists.<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, support for others is a\u00a0<\/span>key factor in family resilience<\/span><\/a>\u00a0. The well-known saying “It takes a village to raise a child” is in fact corroborated by research on social support for\u00a0<\/span>parents in general,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0as well as by\u00a0<\/span>research conducted with children with special needs<\/span><\/a>\u00a0.<\/span><\/p>\n

A “village” for raising a child<\/span><\/strong><\/h3>\n

Social support, often considered a single phenomenon, is actually a set of actions, each with its own function. Sociologists distinguish at least three types of support:<\/span><\/p>\n