Why does parenting feel lonely and isolating? “Parenting can be the loneliest job in the world—surrounded by little voices all day, yet craving to be truly seen, heard, and understood.”
Isolation happens and everybody feels lonely at times but usually, we know how to fix it.
If somebody tells us they feel alone, the advice is often quite easy to give.
Spend some more time with your friends, family, or even work colleagues.
And, even if this is impractical, there are still ways you can feel less alone, like Social Media? or other online spaces.
Parenting is full of surprises and misconceptions that catch even the most prepared off guard. Maybe you expected to enjoy every moment of the parenting experience, or that your kids will always react in the ways you expect.
For me the biggest surprise of parenting was the loneliness and isolation that accompanied it being a parent.
“It was during the long bus journeys on school runs, especially on the way back home or returning to fetch him at the end of each day”.
“It was in the hours I spent alone while he was at school. Too short a duration to do much but long enough to feel isolation”.
“It was in all the moments when I was with my wife but understandably my son needed most of her attention”.
“It was every time people asked how my son was but nobody ever asked how my wife or I were feeling”.
“And in the earliest parts of raising him, it was the small hours of the morning spent alone feeding and soothing him”.
Parenting is a paradox of noise and silence, love and isolation.
Or course, it’s hard to discuss these feelings without feeling guilty. How can you have this loneliness paradox when you love them so much and are blessed to have children and family?
But maybe this is also part of the reason why you do feel this way.
So how did we end up here, and is there anything you can do?
Why Parenting Can Feel Lonely
The key to understanding why you feel this way is to know that loneliness is way more complicated than just being alone.
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In reality, it’s a lot more complicated than this and touches on feelings of being seen, fostering strong connections with like-minded people while having the time and energy to spend enough quality time with people. Children can’t really validate or empathize the way adults can.
Long days spent caring for chatty children can feel like too much company. But is it the same as the connection of a date night, a few hours in the pub, your hobbies, or chatting to your good friend at work? You may be talking to your children, are they meeting your individual social needs that came with your personality?
There’s then the danger you end up only having conversations about the kids, logistics, routines, and the things that require doing. You never talk about anything deeper.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t love your family, or that you don’t enjoy spending time with them, but as adults we will have many and varied needs.
If parenting falls mostly on one parent – because of work, the way roles are traditionally split, or you are a single parent raising a child then the sense of isolation may be much worse. The loss of identity may be deeper, especially if the workload feels unfair.
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As parents, we will try to seek a balance and still see our adult friends and acquaintances.
I did so myself, but the younger your offspring, and the more of your friends that start their own families, the more it feels like snatched moments and stolen freedoms.
That is, if with your friend’s commitments you have the same free-time and the money or energy to use it. Often you will feel guilty leaving your children, or your partner, to babysit alone.
Modern lifestyles frequently lead to families and friends living greater distances apart, making time spent together as adults, or the warm support of family, is inevitably rarer.
Speaking from my own experiences, as my time as a parent progressed, my identity changed.
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In fact, as soon as I held my son for the first time, a switch flipped in my head,
and I knew things would never be the same again.
The old me, that loved a rock band, a long bike ride or a few beers in the pub, faded into the background.
It wasn’t just that I was distracted, worrying my son was OK at home. Sadly it just didn’t feel the same any more. It was fun for an hour or so, but soon I wanted to get back to my young family.
Eventually, though, you are actually neglecting your individuality, and in the worst cases you are hiding your loneliness by deliberately keeping busy with family.
Nobody asks parents how they are, only about the children. This only deepens the sense of isolation.
Now my son is older and more independent, I find that I have time to look again at my own needs and work out what to do with any new-found free time.
It’s a chance to reconnect with my own peer group, and re-find my own identity in a way you can’t achieve with a young child.
Finally, when parents contrast themselves with other parents both online and off, admitting you are lonely is to admit that you are struggling. You had expectations of how it would feel as a parent, how can you admit you are falling short of this?
Society tells parents to be always grateful and never put their hands up to say they are not doing as well as you might think.
In the perfectly presented social media world, you feel you should compete with the other parents that make it look just so effortless. How could you possibly admit you are lonely now?
Especially when inevitably you feel guilty about feeling this way.
From feeling isolation to a sense of community
Realising that you might be lonely because you are a parent is one thing, improving this is another thing entirely. This is especially true when you need to also work around the limitations that come along with parenting.
This meant for me, that after four hours a day on buses taking my son to and from school, caring for him and getting him to sleep, I had limited opportunities to try and prevent feeling lonely,
With a bit of creative thinking, teamwork, flexibility and some help from technology it’s possible to lessen the sting of feeling lonely.
It’s often said that it takes a village to raise a child. I heard this advice more than once when I became a dad!
Strength in Family
Having a team behind you can benefit more than just your children.
With willing friends and family behind, maybe there’s now an option for a date night, or for one parent to have some ‘me time’.
This can be win-win more than most parents realise as it gives relatives treasured time with their young relative, and gives you the chance to refresh and reset and to come back as a better parent.
Having some time to yourself is definitely not something to feel guilty or ashamed about as its an important chance to rest and recover,
Reconnecting with yourself physically and emotionally is a great way to be the best parent you can be.
Even if you can’t meet up with friends as much because of the challenges of working and parenting, often there is a chance at the end of the day to spend some time with that special someone.
If you share your life with a significant other, put some time aside to reconnect, discuss how your day went and plan to talk about something other than parenthood, however briefly this might be.
It’s understandably easy to get into a routine and forget to do this, but it can be a powerful way to not feel quite as lonely.
This probably sounds somewhere between ironic and sarcastic considering the topic of this blog, but your own child can be a great remedy too!
It becomes more true as they grow older, but if you try to forget for a brief moment that they feel like a weighty responsibility. That they are an individual thinking and feeling person (just a smaller one) then you have a source of constant conversations.
Young children can be good company as they are often very funny and have refreshingly honest viewpoints.
Often, on school runs or after scouts night I took my son to the coffee shop and just chatted with him about shared interests – as a young person, not just as my child.
Micro connections
If, as parents, we are short of time, money and energy to combat loneliness then we can choose to accept this and embrace the opportunities that we do have.
Although technology is blamed for a lot of modern harms, especially for children; it can be very useful socially.
Even if it’s late at night, or you are rushing during a school run, a mobile phone means you can still text friends and acquaintances. Most people always have their phone with them.
Aside from this you could interact on social media, have a quick gaming session with a friend or listen to podcasts that reconnect you to the wider world.
Briefly socialising doesn’t have to be just digital or virtual as we can also hopefully grab moments in different ways. They might just have to be adapted to your new lifestyle as a parent.
This can mean socialising locally to where you live much more often and hanging out with people that are also in that same parenting boat.
I personally found myself spending more time with friends living locally to me, or having a coffee with groups of parents during the school run.
Solutions not shame
Whatever works for you, especially while you are working on parental loneliness, it is vital to not feel ashamed.
Feeling embarrassed or isolated can only hinder you from connecting with the wider adult world and realising just how many parents feel this way. When I ignored any stigma and spoke to other parents about how I felt, it felt like a weight lifted and we were able to find solutions together. Being open about isolation and feeling that no one understands your situation is more common than I thought
Feeling lonely does not mean that you do not love your children, it just means you have other needs as a parent.
Embracing these feelings also stops resentment from building, which is toxic for you and your whole family.
Hobbies
Remembering who you are, even for a few snatched moments, is a great way to tackle loneliness. Oddly even doing something alone can have a positive effect on loneliness because it can also be about reclaiming your identity and having space to feel like you.
Furthermore, hobbies have the potential to grow friendship circles based on mutual interests.
Summing up
The reason I think I found some aspects of parenting to be challenging and why many parents have harder periods is because it is all such a big surprise.
Perhaps the most repeated parental cliche is that there is no manual for being a parent and while this is true is doesn’t mean you can’t seek the expereince and knowledge of other parents who have walked in your shoes. This was the very reason we set up CosyChats to be a resource for people to share a feeling or emotion with someone who understands and says. i know what its like when no one in your family understands or is really listening. To find support that does understand your situation and what you and your family need.
Feeling’s of loneliness and isolation were a huge surprise because we did not expect it.
Like me, you probably saw families as the way people nurture the strongest sense of belonging.
A belonging that can last a lifetime.
But we did not realise that a family is different to the company you get from relationships like friendships with peers.
Parenthood is a responsibility and, mostly, young children can’t give the same feelings or empathy, and nor should they.
The stress and upheaval of parenthood can take away your identity and make you start to chase being busy to not feel lonely – and end up trapped in a rut.
My parental loneliness came mostly in my son’s intense early years, and this is when it can be hardest to deal with.
Fortunately I had family to help give my wife and I small breaks, and I found local friends. Because I have always loved technology I learned to find ways to communicate with people in other ways. To enjoy my hobbies in smaller doses. Finding like minded people helped my feelings of isolation.
The key is to realise that, like many things in parenting. Challenges come in different quickly passing chapters, and that you are not alone in sometimes feeling alone. There are like minded and supportive people and parents out there. Isolation is a common feeling among st parents.
If you want to talk about this or any other parenting issues, please feel free to contact me on CosyChats. My name is Andrew and I’m a father from Leicester-shire in the UK.
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👍🏼🚨CosyChats is a personalised parent support Service that can provide support to parents across a wide range of parenting issues. Including how to bring up happy and well round children.
As parents we understand how lonely and isolating being a parent can be even when your surrounded by friends and family. As they don’t understand or appreciate your situation. Many adopters for instance find this where there isn’t a history of adoption in family. Or friends or where people close to you don’t understand or appreciate ADHD for example. Isolation can happen when your surrounded by people just as much as when your not.
Whatever you feel we’re here to listen and if you want, share our experience and knowledge.
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