How to Cope With Parental Anxiety and Stress

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsSymptoms of Parental AnxietyCommon Causes of Parental AnxietyOther Sources of Parent AnxietyEffects of Parental AnxietyHow Parental Anxiety Affects ChildrenStrategies to Help You CopeWhen to Get HelpTakeaway

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

Symptoms of Parental Anxiety

Common Causes of Parental Anxiety

Other Sources of Parent Anxiety

Effects of Parental Anxiety

How Parental Anxiety Affects Children

Strategies to Help You Cope

When to Get Help

Takeaway

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At a GlanceParental anxiety is something many new parents experience, but eventually lessens as people gain more experience and become more comfortable and confident in their role as caregivers. When parent anxiety is severe or long-lasting, it can affect a parent’s ability to function, create distress, and may increase a child’s risk of developing an anxiety disorder. While such feelings can be challenging, there are self-help strategies and professional treatments that can help.

At a Glance

Parental anxiety is something many new parents experience, but eventually lessens as people gain more experience and become more comfortable and confident in their role as caregivers. When parent anxiety is severe or long-lasting, it can affect a parent’s ability to function, create distress, and may increase a child’s risk of developing an anxiety disorder. While such feelings can be challenging, there are self-help strategies and professional treatments that can help.

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Signs and symptoms of parental anxiety include:

Anxiety is one of the most common mental health problems for U.S. adults, affecting approximately 31.1% of people over the age of 18 at some point in their lives.

Parental anxiety involves excessive fear and anxiety about a child’s physical, social, emotional, or cognitive well-being. Parents may find themselves worried about things such as illnesses, developmental milestones, friendships, bullying, and school performance.

While it is more common in new parents with infants, parental anxiety can affect people with kids at any age.

Some parents continue to be anxious and feel some stress about things though, such as if their child:

And with everything they might read on the Internet, parents can even be anxious about the decision to get their kids vaccinated and protected against vaccine-preventable diseases.

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Of course, just about any parenting problem can become a source of parenting anxiety. From a preschooler who starts waking up in the middle of the night to a toddler who doesn’t want to become potty trained.

While these are normal parenting problems that many of us face at one time or another, the anxiety usually comes when a parent begins to feel that the issue won’t ever be resolved.

When parents start thinking like this, it is easy to see how they can become stressed out and anxious, especially if they think they will never get to sleep through the night again or that their child is going to start kindergarten and still not be potty trained. Bedwetting, frequent temper tantrums, and picky eating are other parenting issues that often lead to some parenting anxiety.

Besides common parenting issues, money is another big source of anxiety. For a long time, parents had to simply worry if they were going to be able to save enough to send their kids to a good college. Today, more and more parents have to worry about keeping their homes out of foreclosure or even keeping or getting a job.

Worry about money and the economy also spills over to worry about the future of our children for many parents. Will there be jobs and careers for our kids when they grow up so that they can raise kids to worry about themselves?

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Parental anxiety and stress can take a serious toll on health and well-being. Stress and anxiety increase the risk of a number of serious health conditions, including:

Experiencing parent anxiety can also increase your risk of developing depression, substance use problems, and other mental health conditions.

Research also suggests that parental anxiety may increase the risk that children also develop anxiety disorders.Anxiety disorders are heritable in part, and evidence also indicates that modeling anxious behaviors in the home can increase this risk.

One 2019 review found that having a parent with an anxiety disorder increased the risk that a child would also later develop an anxiety disorder.

To help cope with thestress and anxiety of parenting, it is important to remember that just about every parent thinks about these types of things and even worries about them from time to time, no matter how smart their kids are, how much money they have, or how bright their futures may seem.

And worrying about our kids and their future isn’t even a new thing. The bookAnxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearingdescribes polls in the 1930s in which parents ranked their long lists of worries and describes the 20th century as a “century of anxiety about the child and about parents' own adequacy.”

Talk to Your Partner or Co-Parent

Talk to your partner more, especially about the things you are worried about, but also about everyday issues so that maybe you can catch yourself before you start worrying about them.

Find Social Support

Talk to other parents, including friends and family members, about the parenting issues you are facing and things you are anxious about. This is especially important for dads who rarely talk about these types of things with their friends or other dads.

It is often helpful to simply know that other people are going through the same things and have the same worries.

Enlist Expert Help

Get professional help, like from your pediatrician, for parenting problems that you aren’t comfortable handling yourself or that aren’t getting better, whether it is about potty training, sleep problems, or a biting toddler.

Practice Self-Care

Consider seeking professional help for yourself from your doctor, a psychologist, or a psychiatrist if your stress and anxiety are causing severe or lingering symptoms so that it is hard to sleep or do your daily activities.

Effective treatments are available that can help reduce symptoms of anxiety.Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)is a type of talk therapy that can be particularly helpful for anxiety.This approach involves identifying and changing the negative thought patterns that contribute to feelings of anxiety.Medicationmay also be beneficial in some cases.

Most importantly, remember that there is no magic formula for parenting success. Your child could be the most popular, the smartest in the school, or a star athlete but that doesn’t mean that they will grow up to be happier, get in less trouble, or be more successful than any other kid.

The best we can likely do is to raise our kids so that they feel loved, are happy and healthy, and develop as much self-confidence as they can so they can then build on their strengths and interests.

If you or a loved one are struggling with anxiety, contact theSubstance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helplineat1-800-662-4357for information on support and treatment facilities in your area.For more mental health resources, see ourNational Helpline Database.

If you or a loved one are struggling with anxiety, contact theSubstance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helplineat1-800-662-4357for information on support and treatment facilities in your area.

For more mental health resources, see ourNational Helpline Database.

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7 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents.National Institute of Mental Health.Any anxiety disorder.NIH News in Health.Understanding anxiety disorders.Gottschalk MG, Domschke K.Genetics of generalized anxiety disorder and related traits.Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2017;19(2):159-168. doi:10.31887/DCNS.2017.19.2/kdomschkeGinsburg GS, Schleider J, Tein JY, Drake KL.Family and parent predictors of anxiety disorder onset in offspring of anxious parents.Child Youth Care Forum. 2018;47(3):363-376.Lawrence PJ, Murayama K, Creswell C.Systematic review and meta-analysis: Anxiety and depressive disorders in offspring of parents with anxiety disorders.J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2019;58(1):46-60. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2018.07.898Carpenter JK, Andrews LA, Witcraft SM, Powers MB, Smits JAJ, Hofmann SG.Cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and related disorders: A meta-analysis of randomized placebo-controlled trials.Depress Anxiety. 2018;35(6):502-514. doi:10.1002/da.22728

7 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents.National Institute of Mental Health.Any anxiety disorder.NIH News in Health.Understanding anxiety disorders.Gottschalk MG, Domschke K.Genetics of generalized anxiety disorder and related traits.Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2017;19(2):159-168. doi:10.31887/DCNS.2017.19.2/kdomschkeGinsburg GS, Schleider J, Tein JY, Drake KL.Family and parent predictors of anxiety disorder onset in offspring of anxious parents.Child Youth Care Forum. 2018;47(3):363-376.Lawrence PJ, Murayama K, Creswell C.Systematic review and meta-analysis: Anxiety and depressive disorders in offspring of parents with anxiety disorders.J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2019;58(1):46-60. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2018.07.898Carpenter JK, Andrews LA, Witcraft SM, Powers MB, Smits JAJ, Hofmann SG.Cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and related disorders: A meta-analysis of randomized placebo-controlled trials.Depress Anxiety. 2018;35(6):502-514. doi:10.1002/da.22728

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents.National Institute of Mental Health.Any anxiety disorder.NIH News in Health.Understanding anxiety disorders.Gottschalk MG, Domschke K.Genetics of generalized anxiety disorder and related traits.Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2017;19(2):159-168. doi:10.31887/DCNS.2017.19.2/kdomschkeGinsburg GS, Schleider J, Tein JY, Drake KL.Family and parent predictors of anxiety disorder onset in offspring of anxious parents.Child Youth Care Forum. 2018;47(3):363-376.Lawrence PJ, Murayama K, Creswell C.Systematic review and meta-analysis: Anxiety and depressive disorders in offspring of parents with anxiety disorders.J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2019;58(1):46-60. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2018.07.898Carpenter JK, Andrews LA, Witcraft SM, Powers MB, Smits JAJ, Hofmann SG.Cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and related disorders: A meta-analysis of randomized placebo-controlled trials.Depress Anxiety. 2018;35(6):502-514. doi:10.1002/da.22728

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents.

National Institute of Mental Health.Any anxiety disorder.

NIH News in Health.Understanding anxiety disorders.

Gottschalk MG, Domschke K.Genetics of generalized anxiety disorder and related traits.Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2017;19(2):159-168. doi:10.31887/DCNS.2017.19.2/kdomschke

Ginsburg GS, Schleider J, Tein JY, Drake KL.Family and parent predictors of anxiety disorder onset in offspring of anxious parents.Child Youth Care Forum. 2018;47(3):363-376.

Lawrence PJ, Murayama K, Creswell C.Systematic review and meta-analysis: Anxiety and depressive disorders in offspring of parents with anxiety disorders.J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2019;58(1):46-60. doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2018.07.898

Carpenter JK, Andrews LA, Witcraft SM, Powers MB, Smits JAJ, Hofmann SG.Cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and related disorders: A meta-analysis of randomized placebo-controlled trials.Depress Anxiety. 2018;35(6):502-514. doi:10.1002/da.22728

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