By Capital Blue Cross –  THINK (Trusted Health Information, News, and Knowledge) is a community publication of Capital Blue Cross. Our mission is to provide education, resources, and news on the latest health and insurance issues.

 

Parents comprise at least 40% of the workforce, and nearly half of those parents rate their daily stress levels as overwhelming. Here are five things employers can consider doing to help.

Parents aren’t just part of most companies’ staff – they’re a huge part.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, parents comprise at least 40 percent of the U.S. workforce. Nearly three-quarters of mothers – 73% — are either in or want to join the workforce, a number that balloons to 94% among fathers.

So the fact that parental stress levels are soaring across the country, according to a recent advisory from U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, is a potential red flag for many businesses. Murthy’s advisory reports that 48% of parents rate their daily stress levels as completely overwhelming, and that parents are 65% more likely to say they’ve faced high stress levels in the past month than other adults.

“Parental stress is both an enormously significant and under-addressed issue,” said Jen Carricato, Senior Health Education Consultant at Capital Blue Cross. “Millions of American moms and dads deal with multiple challenges every day, and it can sometimes simply be too much.

“Yet as common as it is, there has been too little in the way of organized approaches to cope with this problem on either personal or societal levels, and we need to change that.”

A Case in Point

Saying that Hilary Baude has a few things going on is like calling Times Square sort of crowded.

Baude is a 42-year-old mother of 11- and 5-year-old girls. She’s a full-time kindergarten teacher, an Ironman athlete and marathon runner, a kidney donor, and a doctoral candidate in her dissertation year.

“Every single moment of my day is occupied with the demands of a full-time job plus the typical motherhood routines, coupled with the requirements of my personal endeavors,” Baude said, adding that her stress “often manifests itself in ways that make me not present in the moment with my children.”

“For example,” she says, “I read to my daughter every night before bed, and being a kindergarten teacher, I can read pretty much any children’s book with expression and engagement. However, I have found myself not even remembering what I had just read to her because I was thinking about the several other things I needed to do before the morning.”

How Employers Can Help

Employers looking to lessen their employees’ parental stress could consider:

1. Expanded policies and programs that support parents and caregivers in the workplace, such as paid parental leave, subsidized childcare, and flexible work hours.
2. Training for managers on stress management, work-life harmony, and optimum working hours for parents and caregivers.
3. Flexible scheduling for sick days and medical appointments.
4. Developing an Employee Resource Group for working parents and caregivers.
5. Providing comprehensive, affordable healthcare plans that include quality mental health coverage. Capital Blue Cross, for instance, offers a VirtualCare telehealth option and can connect members to behavioral health professionals online or by calling 866.322.1657. Some companies, including Capital, offer employee assistance programs that make it easy for employees to access mental health professionals for any issue.

Members covered by many Capital employer plans also enjoy access to the insurer’s parenting-support app, which include comprehensive maternity and family health programs that include guidance and health coaching. The app also guides employers and employees through resources such as parental-leave and return-to-work frameworks, a supporting-families checklist, and other family planning information.

Support That Shaves Stress

What’s most important, Capital’s Carricato said, is that employers begin to pay greater attention to parental stress, acknowledge its importance, and take steps to address it.

“Not only for the parents’ sake, but also for their children’s well-being,” she said. “Because there is an obvious trickle-down – if a parent is struggling badly with stress to the point of being perpetually overwhelmed, that will inevitably carry over to the kids.”

Which brings us back to Hilary Baude, the multi-tasking, athletic, goal-oriented – and sometimes overwhelmed – supermom of two, who says that employer support for stressed parents is critical.

“Having a supportive employer is incredibly important for my mental health as I try to balance my personal goals with my role as a mother,” she says. “My employer is flexible with allowing me to take time for my children’s school events and sports, understanding that my ability to give my best to my students requires that I feel fulfilled in my personal life and my relationships.”

You can find more useful articles at https://thinkcapitalbluecross.com/

Information provided to TVL by:
JERRY REIMENSCHNEIDER
Senior Public Relations Specialist | Brand & Market Strategy
https://www.capbluecross.com/