Why the intensive parenting style is causing burnout—not just for moms

There’s a strange kind of silence that hits after bedtime. The toys are packed away. The last sippy cup has been rinsed. The white noise machine hums softly down the hallway. You should feel peaceful, proud. Instead, you’re left with a blank stare and a tired question: Why do I feel like I disappeared today?

For a growing number of parents—especially mothers—this isn’t just exhaustion. It’s a symptom of a cultural condition that has quietly become the standard: intensive parenting. What began as a well-meaning evolution of involved caregiving has morphed into a 24/7 performance of optimization, self-erasure, and emotional labor. You’re not just raising a child. You’re managing their development like a high-stakes startup with no off-switch.

The term “intensive mothering” was first coined in the 1990s by sociologist Sharon Hays to describe a parenting model that demands time, energy, and expertise from mothers in increasingly unrealistic proportions. Nearly thirty years later, it has leveled up. TikTok parenting accounts, Reddit threads, school WhatsApp groups, even pediatrician blogs now reinforce the same underlying message: If you love your child enough, you’ll give them everything. And that “everything” has expanded to include structured enrichment, emotional attunement, digital literacy, food safety, physical activity, sensory exposure, gentle discipline, and future readiness—delivered with enthusiasm, without complaint.

There are days where it feels like your entire worth has been outsourced to the algorithm.

It would be easier to dismiss this as just another parenting trend if the consequences weren’t so quietly devastating. Researcher Raquel Herrero-Arias, PhD, based in Norway, has recently voiced interest in studying how this style of parenting affects the whole family—because early signals suggest that it doesn’t just stretch parents thin. It hollows them out. In her words, intensive parenting might be “doing too much” in ways that undermine everyone involved.

You don’t need a PhD to feel that truth. Just scroll through your phone on a Sunday night. Another parent’s TikTok shows their four-year-old reading chapter books. A mom on Instagram has color-coded her toy bins using Montessori shelf logic. The comments are filled with praise and quiet despair. “How do you have time for this?” one parent asks. “I can’t even keep up with laundry.”

That’s the quiet grief underneath all this curated effort: the sense that no matter how much you pour in, someone else is doing more—and doing it better. But this isn’t just about comparison. It’s about collapse. What’s happening to parents isn’t a content problem. It’s a systems failure. Because when parenting becomes a full-time performance of perfection, something has to give. And usually, it’s the person doing the caregiving.

In many households, this system still defaults to mothers—even in families that pride themselves on being “modern” or “egalitarian.” While fathers are more involved than ever, societal expectations still center women as the default parent. They’re the ones researching milestones, managing health appointments, remembering birthday parties, emailing teachers, and packing the right kind of snack for school. It’s not always visible, and it’s rarely acknowledged. But it adds up. And the pressure to “do it all” only grows louder in a digital world that showcases idealized parenting 24/7.

This isn’t a rant against parental involvement. On the contrary, responsive caregiving and strong parent-child bonds are protective and healthy. But the problem with intensive parenting is that it asks for total immersion, often at the cost of parental identity. It turns daily tasks into moral imperatives. It rewires love into overfunctioning.

And the irony? Kids don’t necessarily benefit from this hyper-involved model.

Studies show that while young children do thrive on attention and consistency, too much parental control or over-scheduling can actually hinder the development of autonomy, resilience, and emotional regulation. Children need space to be bored, to explore, to fail. They need moments of unscripted life. But when every minute is managed and every problem pre-solved by a parent in the wings, those opportunities vanish. What’s left is a child who might be competent on paper—but who’s quietly unsure of their own capacities.

It’s not just the children who pay a price. The intensive parenting style reshapes adult lives in ways that are hard to reverse. Many parents who’ve followed the “all-in” model find themselves burnt out, resentful, or adrift once their children gain independence. Marriages quietly deteriorate under the weight of child-first scheduling. Careers stall. Hobbies disappear. Sleep suffers. Friendships fade. Identity narrows. And when your entire purpose has been defined by someone else’s needs, even joyful milestones—like sending a child off to college—can trigger an existential collapse.

Still, the logic persists. If parenting is a job, then the best parents are those who go above and beyond. It doesn’t matter if it’s unsustainable. It just has to look intentional.

And social media? It rewards that intentionality. The parent who plans a color-themed birthday party, complete with hand-crafted banners and an organic cake, gets more likes than the one who orders pizza and calls it a day. The mom who shares a “day in the life” reel full of slow-mo clips and choreographed voiceovers isn’t just showing off. She’s participating in a culture of proof. If you didn’t document the sensory bins, the toddler charcuterie board, the emotionally validating tantrum response—did you even do it right?

What used to be private has become performative. What used to be good enough is now a baseline to exceed.

And that’s the trap. Because intensive parenting disguises itself as care. But what it often delivers is control. Control over outcomes, over perception, over uncertainty. It says: If I do everything right, nothing bad will happen. But life, of course, doesn’t work that way.

What’s happening now is a slow, quiet rebellion. Parents—mostly women—are beginning to voice their doubts. Some are stepping back from curated routines. Others are choosing “good enough” parenting over the intensive gold standard. They’re letting their kids watch TV during dinner. They’re skipping the enrichment activity and going for a walk instead. They’re letting silence and space back into the rhythm of the day.

Not because they’ve stopped caring. But because they’ve started to notice what this parenting model was costing them. It’s not about doing less out of laziness. It’s about doing less out of clarity.

The shift isn’t just emotional. It’s generational. Millennial and Gen Z parents, many of whom were raised by working mothers and achievement-focused families, are trying to raise kids in a world that feels unstable. Climate change, economic precarity, political polarization, gun violence, mental health crises—the background anxiety is real. And so the impulse to over-parent makes sense. It’s a way to feel agency in a chaotic world.

But the irony is that the best thing a child can learn in such a world may not be perfection. It might be adaptability. And adaptability comes from watching a parent be human. Tired, flawed, trying. Honest about needs. Capable of saying “I need a break” without guilt. That kind of modeling can’t happen when a parent is constantly performing resilience instead of living it.

And what of fathers? The intensive parenting conversation often centers mothers, but dads aren’t immune. In fact, many modern fathers are caught in a strange double bind—praised for basic involvement, yet excluded from the emotional labor expected of “serious” parenting. The intensive model sidelines dads as assistants, unless they too adopt the language, routines, and aesthetic of online motherhood culture. It creates a lopsided emotional load that leaves both parents vulnerable—to resentment, to burnout, to disconnection.

So where does this leave us? Somewhere in between rebellion and reset.

The future of parenting may depend on rebalancing presence with personhood. On valuing structure without sanctifying it. On remembering that children do not need perfect parents. They need real ones. That may mean giving up the fantasy of control. Letting go of the Pinterest birthday. Opting out of the TikTok-ready playroom. Choosing connection over curriculum. Being okay with doing less, and trusting that less—when offered with love, consistency, and clarity—might actually be enough.

Parenting shouldn’t require martyrdom. And childhood shouldn’t be a performance project.

So the next time you feel the itch to overdo, overthink, overplan—pause. Ask yourself who you’re doing it for. If the answer isn’t clear, that’s okay. Start with this one: Would I want my child to grow up and parent the way I’m parenting now?

If the answer is no, maybe that’s your permission slip to stop. Not stop caring. But stop disappearing.

You don’t need to narrate every moment. You don’t need to optimize every hour. You don’t need to be everything. You just need to be there—and be you. Because in a culture that asks parents to give more, the most radical thing you can do might be this: Give yourself back to yourself.