Parenting can be stressful. For nurses, that stress may be overwhelming.
Across the United States and the world, parents are reporting high levels of stress driven by financial pressure, time demands, and the challenge of balancing work and caregiving. National and international organizations, including the Office of the U.S. Surgeon General and UNICEF, have identified parenting stress as a growing public health concern. Outcomes include impacts on mental health, family functioning, child development, and economic growth.
For nurses, this issue is especially urgent. Many nurses are raising young children during the same years that they’re building their clinical careers. At the same time, nursing work is becoming more demanding due to long shifts, staffing shortages, unpredictable schedules, and limited flexibility. These conditions can intensify the strain of trying to meet both professional and family responsibilities. Parenting stress and work-family conflict among nurses are linked to burnout, job dissatisfaction, and intentions to leave the profession.
When we treat work-family conflict as something nurses need to learn to manage better, we miss a much bigger picture.
The limits of “managing better”
Most conversations about parenting stress or work-family conflict tend to focus on solutions such as resilience, time management, or better work-life balance. These approaches can help in some cases, but they inevitably place the responsibility on individual nurses to adapt to difficult circumstances with limited flexibility. UNICEF noted that even workplace solutions, like “family-friendly” scheduling or parental leave, are often framed as optional rather than essential parts of workforce design. According to Hwang and colleagues, this means that the way nursing work is structured can create and sustain both work-family conflict and parenting stress.
Three realities shaping parenting stress in nursing
- The care paradox
Nurses are expected to provide constant, high-quality care to patients. But, as Yildiz and colleagues described, many healthcare systems provide limited support for nurses as caregivers in their own holistic lives. Long shifts, rotating schedules, and staffing shortages make it difficult to meet family needs. The system depends on caregivers, but the system isn’t always designed to support them. Smiley and colleagues have reported that about 40% of unemployed nurses in the United States say they are not participating in the workforce because they are caring for their families.
- The double burden
Many nurses carry primary responsibility for caregiving at home. This creates a double shift: caring for patients at work and caring for family at home. According to Watson and colleagues, even well-intentioned policies can reinforce this pattern if they assume caregiving is primarily a woman’s responsibility or rely on individuals to make it work.
- The invisible caregiver
Many healthcare systems are built around the idea of an always-available worker. Someone who can work any shift, stay late, and prioritize the job above all else. But that model doesn’t reflect reality. When caregiving responsibilities are omitted from workforce design, they become invisible in staffing decisions, scheduling, and organizational planning. As a result, a parenting-related work-family conflict can be overlooked as a system-level issue.
Why this matters for the nursing workforce
Parenting stress actually affects our entire profession. When nurses are forced to choose between their jobs and their families, the consequences include:
- Burnout and emotional exhaustion
- Reduced engagement at work
- Leaving positions or leaving nursing altogether
In a time of ongoing staffing shortages, losing experienced nurses has serious implications for patient care, team stability, and healthcare system performance. Parenting stress and work-family conflict are workforce issues.
What needs to change
If we want to support nurses (and retain them), we need to move beyond telling individuals to cope better and start addressing the conditions that create stress in the first place.
At the policy level
- Expand access to affordable, reliable childcare
- Strengthen parental leave protections
- Support workforce policies that recognize caregiving realities
At the organizational level
- Create more predictable and flexible scheduling
- Build staffing models that account for real-life constraints
- Normalize caregiving as part of the nursing workforce, and not as an exception
At the leadership level
- Encourage open conversations about caregiving responsibilities
- Reduce stigma around flexibility and support
- Advocate for structural (not just individual) solutions
It all starts by shifting how we think
When stress is widespread, predictable, and tied to how work is organized, it’s a structural issue. Recognizing that shift opens the door to real change. Supporting nurse-parents isn’t just about well-being. It’s about sustaining the nursing workforce and securing better patient care for the future.
Adrianna Watson is an assistant professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
References
Hwang M, Lee N, Lee G. How parenting-related characteristics influence parenting stress among nurses with young children in the Seoul metropolitan area, South Korea: A cross-sectional study. BMC Nurs.2025;24(1):1052. doi:10.1186/s12912-025-03643-3
Office of the Surgeon General. Parents Under Pressure: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents. US Department of Health and Human Services; 2024. hhs.gov/sites/default/files/parents-under-pressure.pdf
Smiley RA, Kaminski-Ozturk N, Reid M, et al. The 2024 National Nursing Workforce Survey. J Nurs Regul.2025;16(suppl):S1-81.
UNICEF. How Family-Friendly Policies in the Workplace Contribute to Child, Youth and Caregiver Mental Health: An Evidence Brief. 2024. unicef.org/media/163441/file/UNICEF-Mental-Health-Family-Friendly-Policies-2024.pdf
UNICEF. Global parenting support framework. 2025. unicef.org/documents/global-parenting-support-framework
Watson AL, Nelson B, Houston G. Dual role caregivers in critical care nursing: Matrescence and workforce sustainability. Intensive Crit Care Nurs. 2026;93:104334. doi:10.1016/j.iccn.2026.104334
Watson AL, Tapp DM, Young C, et al. Buying time: Maternity leave policies and critical care nurses’ return to work. Am J Crit Care. 2026;35(2):128-44. doi:10.4037/ajcc2026269
Watson AL, Jackson D, Bond C. Matrescence and missed care in nursing: Implications for practice and workforce sustainability. J Adv Nurs. 2026;1-3. doi:10.1111/jan.70576
Watson AL, Detrick R. Fatherhood as professional transition: conceptualizing patrescence in nursing. Nurs Sci Q. 2026:1-11. doi:10.1177/08943184261423773
Yildiz B, Yildiz H, Ayaz Arda O. Relationship between work–family conflict and turnover intention in nurses: A meta-analytic review. J Adv Nurs. 2021;77(8):3317-30. doi:10.1111/jan.14846
