The following is written by Dr. Stephen Madigan, a mentor for mine and leader in the world of narrative therapy. He writes eloquently and in depth to the Surgeon General’s Warning on parental stress:
Setting aside the idea that such a thing as ‘truth’ exists, the concept of speaking truth to power is considered an integral part of the receiving and responding political ecology that shapes the practice of a narrative therapists daily interviewing.
By no means does our therapeutic community hold the truth (about anything) however, we do believe that some ideas seem to be better than others. All is not equal, nothing inside the therapy room is neutral, and so we have to decide – where do we stand and what do we stand for.
In classical Greece speaking truth to power was known as parrhesia. The tactic is similar to what is known as satyagraha (literally, “truth-force”) that Mahatma Gandhi took up in the Indian independence movement that brought an end to British colonial rule.
The popularizing of the phrase speaking truth to power in America is attributed to civil rights organizer and peace activist Bayard Rustin who adapted and condensed this concept as part of co-writing the pamphlet Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence, published in 1955.
Public advisories from America’s Surgeon Generals are infrequent, but when they surface, they arouse a certain kind of speaking of truth to power. For example, in 1964 Dr. Luther L. Terry, top doc under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, went toe-to-toe with Big Tobacco by issuing a landmark report/public warning on the health hazards and consequences of smoking.
Recently, the current U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek M. Murthy, said out loud, what many parents might have only furtively admitted: Parenting today is too hard and stressful. Murthy’s warning makes pubic how parental stress has become a dangerous mental health issue.
I read Dr. Murthy’s report from top to bottom. His public health advisory about modern parenting cited 48 per cent of parents, with kids under 18, feeling completely overwhelmed by ‘their’ stress, and 41 per cent feel completely numb by the stress.
The report writes how financial worries continue to be a top stressor among parents. In a 2022 review of 108 studies (n=250,553 parents) researchers found a significant association between food insecurity and symptoms of parental depression, anxiety, and stress. Making the case of how economic instability, and poverty makes it difficult for many families to meet their children’s basic needs, pay for childcare costs, and provide for children’s health and education expenses.
All in all, I was pleased how the American Surgeon General’s public advisory recognized the deep-rooted relational influence of culture, socioeconomics, structural inequalities and context had on shaping every aspect of parenting life.
The report states that “increases in time spent on work commitments and family responsibilities significantly contribute to work-family conflict, ‘burnout’ (quotations are mine), and stress. And “cultural expectations, societal norms, pressure to meet perceived parenting standards as well as factors of discrimination and racism”, also underwrote all aspects of parental stress.
To state the obvious, without resolute solutions by way of significant policy change across all relational categories of living and expectation parents are interconnected with – this national mental health crisis will remain squarely on the backs of the individual parents themselves.
Parents will blame, shame, and berate themselves, book individual therapy to figure out why they’re not coping/measuring up/feeling like personal failures, ingest medications, and fight vociferously with their partners.
Sadly, and as we well know, living within an individualizing neoliberal pull-yourselves-up-by-your boot-straps context – parents will inevitably individualize their experience.
Even though Dr. Murthy’s report argues that raising children should be a “collective responsibility” buttressed by “societal support through policies—such as those that invest in the health, education, and safety of children—and community involvement through friendship, practical assistance, and emotional support are vital to the well-being of parents and caregivers and beneficial for children as well”.
OK so – if the U.S. Surgeon General’s public advisory resonated for you because it had the ethical and theoretical savvy to recognize the inherent relational influence culture, socioeconomics, structural inequalities and context had on shaping every aspect of parenting life, another important question may be lurking in the wings.
Where is a similar U.S. Surgeon General’s public advisory on the crisis of modern-day intimate couple relationships?
If we use the Surgeon General’s public advisory as a backdrop/template, it may help us contextually explain, and argue on behalf of, the ginormous amounts of overtired, fatigued, no time for sex, busy to the max, and highly conflicted intimate relationship phenomenon we witness in our therapy rooms.
Could the Surgeon General help couple therapists contextually illuminate some of the non-individualist relationally interconnected reasons why 2023 divorce rates were 48% in Canada and 45% in the USA? Hmmm.
Could a Surgeon General health advisory assist the vast majority of popular modern-day methods of couple therapy to seriously re-think and question dominant practices of individualizing couple conflict and relational difficulties? Hmmm.
Could a Surgeon General health advisory begin to move this field of mental health away from viewing intimate couple relationships as dis-embodied-from-culture-socioeconomics-context?
Hmmm. I do take pause to wonder.
Seriously, I cannot for the life of me remember the last time I saw a couple relationship in therapy that didn’t describe their lives as extremely busy. Demanding, tiring, hectic, over-worked, exhausting, harried.
Leaving their intimate relationship to feel, as one couple described this past week – “unreachable, lost, foreign, and sad”. So, my guess is that issuing date nights as a catch all solution – just isn’t going to cut it kids.
As we find in Dr. Murthy’s report, to simply focus on the individual parent’s history/family of origin, deficit attachments, trauma etc. to explain and quantify our current parental public crisis would be grossly limiting.
Likewise, to simply focus on an individual’s history/family of origin/attachments and/or the decontextualized individual couple relationship as the primary site and cause of couple conflict, resentment, arguing, lack of intimacy, divorce, etc. etc., is, equally dehumanizing, degrading, brutalizing and, debasing.
And I think I have a case to argue that, so too is the ever popular and ever-growing expert knowledge couple therapy practice of just simply telling couples not only what to do but – what they should do. Offering up the 1-2-3 steps of how to best communicate, live, love, and disagree. Trying their unaccountable therapeutic best to advance exceptionally normative, middle class (and usually white) – generalized advice, to all couple relationships.
Regretfully, I’m not sure we are anywhere close to dignifying the relational complexities modern couple relationships are experiencing, nor adequately explaining the intimate relationships you, me, and everyone we know are engaged with.
