Parenting: Being supermom stressing you out?
Mothers are the world's best jugglers: family, work, money – they seem to do it all. However, all that responsibility can often leave moms feeling overstretched and stressed out. According to a 2010 survey by the American Psychological Association (APA), women are more likely to report physical and emotional symptoms of stress than men, such as having had a headache (41 percent vs. 30 percent), having felt as though they could cry (44 percent vs. 15 percent), or having had an upset stomach or indigestion (32 percent vs. 21 percent) in the past month. The same survey also reported that women are more likely than men to report that they eat as a way of managing stress (31 percent vs. 21 percent).
With Mother's Day fast approaching, it's a good time for moms and their families to recognize the importance of addressing stress and managing it in healthy ways.
"How a mother manages stress is often a model for the rest of the family," says APA psychologist Lynn Bufka, Ph.D. "Other family members will imitate her unhealthy behavior."
In particular, married women in the APA survey reported higher levels of stress than single women, with one-third (33 percent) reporting that they have experienced a great deal of stress in the past month (8, 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale) compared with one in five (22 percent) of single women. Similarly, significantly more married women report that their stress has increased over the past five years (56 percent vs. 41 percent of single women). And, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, 80 percent of family health care decisions are made by women, which saddles mothers with the added role of family health manager.
"It's particularly stressful to be the health care decision maker for yourself, your children, and possibly aging parents," says Bufka. "People who handle stress in unhealthy ways may alleviate symptoms of stress in the short term, but end up creating significant health problems over time, and, ironically, more stress."
APA offers these strategies to help mothers manage stress:
"Mothers often put their family needs first and neglect their own," says Bufka. "It's okay to relax your standards – don't put a lot of pressure on yourself to have the 'perfect' house or be the 'perfect' mother. No one expects you to be Superwoman."
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