Overwhelmed summary

We all know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed. Balancing your work and your private life is hard enough even when you have no dependents, but more so if you’re a parent with mouths to feed and diapers to change.

There’s no question that parents today are stressed, having to juggle long working hours while raising a family. This balancing act places a great deal of pressure on an individual’s already limited time.

In one 2008 study, the Families and Work Institute asked American workers about their daily lives and found that half of the respondents felt they had too many tasks for a typical workday. Some two-thirds felt they didn’t have enough time for themselves or their spouse; and three-quarters reported they didn’t have enough time for their children.  

This sense of being overburdened is particularly prevalent among women. Since the 1970s, the percentage of employed women has risen dramatically, which has led to circumstances where, to carve out and maintain a job that generates enough income, many mothers need to work full time.

Another study performed in 2004 asked mothers with children under six if they could say they often had any free time. None of the women in the study said they did! Yet a lack of free time isn’t just a problem for mothers; only 5 percent of fathers queried in the study said they had any free time.

Unsurprisingly, a lack of free time has led to high rates of stress and anxiety in the United States.

The American Psychological Association reported in 2011 that Americans as a whole are chronically overstressed. Earlier, a 2007 study by the World Health Organization found that Americans, while living in one of the world’s richest countries, are on average the world’s most anxious people.

So life is stressful – but is stress that big of a deal? It is, and we’ll learn why in the next blink.