WBUR: Here and Now
Even Before Pandemic, Working Parents Struggled To Achieve The 'Dreams Of The Overworked'
It's no secret that parents are stressed out.
The fortunate ones are working remotely from home, trying to balance the needs of their jobs and their children being home 24/7. They are also facing the prospect that there will be limited or no in-person school again in the fall.
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But as a new book points out, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, working parents were severely stressed: juggling the demands of careers, their families and their health, all with varying degrees of success.
In "Dreams of the Overworked: Living, Working, and Parenting in the Digital Age,” authors Christine Beckman and Melissa Mazmanian studied nine families who are struggling to encapsulate what they call the three ideals: the ideal worker, the ideal parent and the ideal body.