It’s always nice to get some outside validation, right?
At least, that’s how some people are reacting after pop superstar Chappell Roan recently said parents seem pretty miserable — “in hell,” actually.
Roan’s hot take, which she made on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast last week, have some stressed parents saying they feel seen, or, to quote a commenter on the podcast’s TikTok post, “Finally someone is speaking my language.”
Of course, she’s also angered a lot of parents online, where some are rebutting that motherhood has been their greatest joy, or that, as one person wrote in the podcast’s TikTok comments, “When you do it from a source of love, it’s not hard at all.”
Either way, people have opinions, and the controversy has sparked some tough conversations about modern parenting.
Grammy-winning best new artist Roan — who has skyrocketed to fame with hits like Good Luck, Babe!, Red Wine Supernova, Hot To Go! and Pink Pony Club — was answering a question about her friends back home in the March 26 podcast episode when the conversation turned to parenting.
Host Alex Cooper asked Roan, 27, if she was still close with her friends. Roan answered yes, but added that most of them are now married with kids. When asked if she wanted that for herself, Roan, who is openly queer, pondered if it would even still be legal that point, likely a nod to U.S. President Donald Trump’s conservative agenda.
But then, the singer added, “All of my friends who have kids are in hell.”
“I actually don’t know anyone who is like happy, and has children, at this age. Anyone who has light in their eyes, anyone who has slept.”
Modern parents are really stressed
OK, ouch. But also, as many are asking: is she wrong?
The recognition that having children is increasingly costly, time-consuming and stressful was reflected in a recent public health advisory issued by the U.S. surgeon general. Last August, Dr. Vivek Murthy warned about the impact of modern stresses on parents’ mental health, saying today’s parents face unique challenges, such as the rising cost of living, social media and the youth mental health crisis.
In fact, modern parenting has become so intense that researchers now have a term for it: the intensification of parenting. As examples, data shows parents today spend more time with their children than in previous generations, and the predominant modern parenting style centres on acknowledging a child’s feelings — leaving many parents feeling burned out.
Children’s sports are more competitive and demanding, and child care has become so coveted that parents are making daycare deposits in their first trimester and booking summer camps in January.
Kelley Daring shares stories on TikTok from parents who write to her anonymously about their feelings of regret. She hopes their experiences help others make informed decisions about whether or not to have children.
Roan’s comments also come at a time where a growing number of parents are sharing their complex feelings about parenting.
“You have to be 100 per cent sure that that is what you want to do,” Calgary mom Tanya Ryan told CBC’s The Current in February.
“And it’s not necessarily going to be that you just look in your baby’s eyes and everything shifts and the world changes around you, because that’s not everybody’s experience.”
Nothing to do with the kids
In the comments on TikTok, some have pointed out that if Roan’s friends are also in their 20s, their children are likely quite young and at one of the most difficult ages to parent. Others have called her a “rich celebrity dissociated from the real world.”
Others agreed with Roan, saying, “being a parent is hell,” and that “half the people I know with kids are miserable, too.”
“The people who have made me most scared to become a mother are mothers … I’m afraid that what Chappell said is all I see,” said podcast host Recho Omondi in a TikTok video with 1.7 million views.
In another reaction video, singer and mother Maren Morris said she doesn’t have any issue with Roan’s comments, and that it is hard to be a parent, but also, “really hard to not be a parent and have that pushed on you all day every day, especially as a woman. Especially as a woman in an industry like music.”
But the real issue, Morris said, isn’t Roan’s hot take, but why so many people feel like parenting is so miserable.
“I think the bigger conversation should maybe be about why this country makes people feel like this at all,” she said.
A public health advisory says today’s parents face unique challenges that can impact their mental health. Some parents from older generations say raising children has always been, and always will be, a struggle. Can we really say which generation has had it the worst?
“Mothers are just so unsupported in this country,” Morris said. “It doesn’t support children once they’re out of the womb. We don’t have health care, we don’t have child care.”
And that’s what so many others are saying online: that parenting is hell, but it’s not because of the kids. As parenting news site Scary Mommy points out, it’s the lack of systemic support for parents holding them back.
“So yes, maybe the mothers Chappell Roan knows are having a hard time,” wrote Scary Mommy’s Katie McPherson. “It will likely get easier when their kids aren’t so young. But it also, really, has nothing to do with the children at all.”
