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Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Health
- Boston Globe
A new study reveals a sharp decline in moms' mental health. Is overparenting part of the problem?
This week, a Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up There's so much in this world to justify our stress. But: Is overparenting burning us out on top of it all? I chatted with Elkins (in between reminding my eighth-grader to stay after school for homework help and clicking 'refresh' on my second-grader's soccer schedule) to find out. Advertisement Let's start with your thoughts about the study, and then we'll go into the overparenting stuff. Advertisement It's confirming what we're all seeing firsthand, which is that moms are really struggling. The focus is really timely, especially in light of last year's surgeon general I liked that they highlighted in the article that [more] research on maternal mental health centers around the perinatal period. … But what about moms whose babies are older than 6 months? We're in this for a while. Maternal mental health is suffering. We can't blame it all on COVID. Sign up for Parenting Unfiltered. Globe staff #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; } /* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block. We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */ Subscribe * indicates required E-mail * Where do you feel it's coming from? Is the problem overparenting? We can't draw clear, direct conclusions between overparenting and declining mental health based on the study. That being said, I think the fact that the study highlighted a decline in maternal mental health across the sociodemographic spectrum suggests that there's more here than structural racism, access to resources, housing insecurity, and other [systemic] factors that are impacting well-being. It suggests, at the very least, that we need to discuss and hopefully study the cultural factors to which I think this generation of parents is exposed and how it influences beliefs and values, which ultimately translate into behaviors. This is where I actually think that overparenting is a timely construct. Are we all competing with each other? What are we doing? I'm an elder millennial. I think that, somewhere along the line, we became convinced that parenting is both really high stakes and also controllable. It's a perfect storm. We came of age during this boom in brain science and child development research, and a growing interest in attachment theory and the impact of adverse childhood experiences. At the same time, media was shifting, so these insights started making their way into headlines. We had this explosion of the science behind [parenting], but also the dissemination behind it. Advertisement Today's parents are often delaying parenthood. A lot of us are older, which often means that we're more highly educated, and that means that we've spent all these years in achievement-driven environments where hard work and problem-solving get results, and we're used to having agency. If something is broken, we fix it, and our boss says, 'Good job.' When it comes to parenting, we're bringing the same mind-set: We're analyzing and optimizing and deep-diving on the internet to figure out research. We're trying to manage every variable. What's the difference between overparenting and snowplow or intensive parenting? Overparenting is a more deeply held core belief. It's not just about hovering behaviors or snowplowing behaviors. I find that it's usually rooted in two beliefs. The first is that negative emotions are unsafe or somehow harmful, and they should be avoided. We feel that the normal emotions that we might all expect kids to be exposed to — shame and fear and sadness and boredom — are somehow bad. We need to protect our kids from them. The second belief is really fueled by the intensive parenting narrative, which is that it's a parent's job — almost their sacred responsibility — to shape every part of their child's life, including how they feel. The belief that whatever is uncomfortable is actually unsafe, then that belief is going to drive us into all sorts of overparenting behaviors because we feel that we're responsible and are going to condemn our kids to a lifetime of emotional floundering if we're not doing this right. Advertisement Is this just an upper-to-upper-middle-class phenomenon? You'd think that it's primarily an upper-middle-class phenomenon. There's some research to show that this might be more prominent among women with a higher educational background. I think the data is a little bit tricky on that, because most of the research is going to come from clinical populations, which tend to skew more white and upper-middle-class, because they're the ones who can access the care. But we do have data indicating that families across the sociodemographic spectrum value the things that intensive parenting values. It's not like they dismiss it; I think perhaps their opportunity to live it out in real time might be diluted. How does this manifest in real life? It's funny: While we were talking, I was mouthing to my eighth-grader to check in with his teacher about a grade as he walked out the door. I guess I'm guilty. What are some prominent examples from your practice? In the child anxiety world, [there is] what we call parental accommodation, the behavioral and clinical descriptor for how overparenting plays out. These are changes that parents make to our own behavior in an effort to decrease the distress of our kids. We see this in clinical populations: [about] 95 to 98 percent of parents of anxious kids accommodate. There's not a lot of research on the prevalence of accommodation in non-clinical populations, because most of this is studied in clinics like mine, but one study found that one in four parents of non-anxious kids report daily accommodation: That's 25 percent of parents changing their behavior daily in an attempt to minimize their kids' distress. … It's related to parents' own core beliefs around what is safe for our kids and what our responsibility is to our kids. Advertisement [We need] warmth with limits. But somewhere along the line, our social media feeds told us that setting limits around your kids' emotions is bad. One example is your kid gets cut from a sports team. Obviously, they feel really upset. Maybe, the overparenting response would be to call the coach and to complain, or to tell the child that they were treated unfairly: 'You were treated poorly, and I'm going to do something about it.' The aim is to protect the kid from feeling shame, rejection, and failure. A love-and-limits approach might be to acknowledge the disappointment, to express a belief in your child's ability to cope with that disappointment, and to put it back on them: 'What do you want to do next? Do you want to try another league? Do you want to do something else?' If your kid is anxious over a really tough homework assignment, the overparenting path might be getting highly involved, giving a lot of scaffolding around the assignment, and maybe ultimately doing the majority of the work. A love-and-limits approach might be validating the distress: 'This is a monster of an assignment,' suggesting one or two coping strategies, but then dropping the rope. It's validation of the distress, but with the narrative that: 'You can cope with this hard feeling, and I bet you can come up with a solution. I'm here if you need a suggestion or a hug.' Advertisement Overparenting becomes such a problem because with a parent's well-meaning intention of swooping in to cushion the distress, the kid gets the message: 'I can't handle this by myself.' Devil's advocate: Parents actually call coaches to complain that their kid got cut from a team? I find that mortifying. This is a thing that happens? Oh yeah. … It's this hyper-awareness of what a child must be feeling in this moment, and that if they feel rejection, they're going to crumple. But the problem is that, if kids haven't had the opportunity to experience normative negative emotions and recover because parents are jumping in, then they flail spectacularly when things get really hard. You know, you've got a kid who trends anxious. They express distress. A parent jumps in, which sort of sets the framework that a kid can't handle it on their own. It becomes a really vicious cycle, and this is all swimming in intensive parenting culture. But mental health is so precarious. Of course, we want to protect our kids, because we hear horror stories about what can happen if your kids are undergoing mental distress. It's hard to unlearn that. We parents have to acknowledge the waters in which we're swimming, to first notice this tendency and get curious about our own behaviors, and the beliefs that might be driving them: What do you notice about yourself when your kid is becoming distressed or anxious? What urges do you feel driven to do? Are there behaviors you're engaging in that you wouldn't ordinarily? Get curious: What's behind these behaviors? You can start challenging yourself to tolerate your own distress in the moment by resisting the urge to jump in. Maybe there's low-hanging fruit: Your kid says that they're stressed because they've got all of this homework and got home late from dance class. You notice the urge to take responsibilities off their plate: They don't have to bring their plate to the sink, and they don't have to walk the dog, even though those are their responsibilities. Do a little exposure: What happens if they're stressed and they still have expectations in place that they participate in family life. Does your kid crumble? They're probably [mad] at you, but can you handle that? What's so bad about your kid being mad at you? It's not a kid's job to make a parent feel good about parenting decisions. So many of the questions I get around this are: How do I explain my decision not to give them a phone? At the core of that question is: How do I make it so that my kid isn't mad about my decision not to give them the phone? Your kid doesn't have to be happy about every decision that you make. Basically, it's: How can you challenge yourself to tolerate your own distress at your kids' distress. This is a micro-exposure to build their resilience, and it builds your resilience, too. Interview was edited and condensed. Kara Baskin can be reached at
Time Business News
5 days ago
- Automotive
- Time Business News
Why Smart Businesses Are Ditching Complex Software Stacks
For years, the standard advice for small businesses was to 'build a tech stack.' Get a CRM, marketing automation tool, invoicing software, social media scheduler, analytics dashboard, maybe even a chatbot — and then spend days trying to make them all talk to each other. On paper, it looked efficient. In practice, it was often a nightmare. Now, a growing number of business owners are going the other way. They're stripping things back, simplifying systems, and choosing tools that do more with less. Because the truth is, when you're running a small business — especially without a dedicated IT team — complexity is a liability. Most businesses don't need five platforms. They need one that works. The problem with stacking too many tools is that every connection becomes a point of failure. One missed payment, one expired API key, or one platform going down, and the whole process can grind to a halt. Leads don't come in. Payments fail. Emails don't send. And suddenly you're not just fixing tech, you're losing revenue. We spoke with Mitchell from Sell Any Car Fast, a Brisbane-based business that buys cars directly from the public. 'At one point, I had forms in one system, CRM in another, emails going out through a third platform, and tracking through a fourth. It was fine when everything worked, but if one link broke, the whole chain collapsed. Now, it's just a simple embedded form and a fast manual follow-up. That's it. Less to manage. Less to break.' And that's not uncommon. More small businesses are realising that reliability beats bells and whistles — especially when you're juggling sales, admin, and customer service all on your own. Here's a typical scenario: you capture leads through a landing page builder like Unbounce. That sends data into a CRM like HubSpot. An automation sends a welcome email through Mailchimp. Then, a different app creates a task in Asana to follow up. Sounds smart, right? Now imagine this: your Mailchimp account lapses because the card expired. Emails don't send. Leads sit cold. You don't notice because HubSpot didn't trigger an alert, and now your conversions are down, and you're left wondering why. This isn't just inconvenient — it can mean lost trust, missed revenue, and hours spent firefighting something that never needed to be that complicated in the first place. What's the alternative? Instead of trying to duct tape tools together, more businesses are choosing all-in-one platforms that do the job well enough, even if they're not best-in-class at everything. • Go High Level: Combines CRM, email, funnels, and scheduling into one dashboard. Great for agencies and service businesses. • Zoho One: Offers over 45 integrated apps for everything from sales to accounting. • Kajabi: Built for content creators and coaches — handles email, courses, payments, and websites all in one. • Square: For retail and service businesses, it merges POS, payments, appointments, and staff management. • Notion (paired with tools like Tally or Super): Many small teams are building DIY systems using Notion's flexible interface. Are they perfect? No. But they're easier to maintain, faster to learn, and often 'good enough' to get the job done without breaking the business every time you miss a subscription renewal. Simplicity doesn't just reduce tech issues — it improves how you run your business. When your systems are streamlined: • New staff can get up to speed quicker • You make fewer mistakes • You spend less time troubleshooting • Your customer experience is more consistent You also free up mental bandwidth. Instead of worrying whether your email sequence fired or if your automation failed, you focus on what matters: delivering value, making sales, and building trust. You don't need to be a tech company There's this subtle pressure on small businesses to act like startups. To be 'automated,' 'data-driven,' and 'scalable.' But the truth is, you're not a software company. You're a plumber. A car buyer. A wedding photographer. Your edge isn't in your stack — it's in your service. Trying to copy how software companies operate (with full-time dev teams and huge budgets) is a fast way to overcomplicate what should be a lean, profitable business. You're better off with one or two reliable tools you understand than a Frankenstein setup that breaks every time you update Chrome. The future of small business software might not be 'more.' It might be less, but better. Fewer logins. Fewer dependencies. More confidence that what you've built won't collapse if Stripe changes a setting or Zapier misses a zap. So before you sign up for another monthly subscription, ask yourself: • Do I need this tool? • What happens if it breaks? • Can I explain how it works to someone else? And if the answer is 'I'm not sure,' maybe the simpler solution is the smarter one. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Evercore ISI Boosts Intuit (INTU) Price Target on AI Potential and Strong Q3 Growth
On May 24, Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne raised his price target for Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) from $685 to $785 and kept an Outperform rating. The revision was prompted by Intuit's strong fiscal third-quarter results, which exceeded forecasts. Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) exceeded the $7.56 billion forecasted for the quarter with total revenue growth of $7.8 billion, a 15% year-over-year increase. Additionally, earnings per share came in higher than expected, at $11.65 as opposed to the projected $10.93. Notably, despite Mailchimp's continuous difficulties, Online Services in the Global Business Services (GBS) division grew by about 20% year-over-year, in line with projections. According to Materne, Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) had a successful tax season, and the company's GBS division was expected to do well, particularly if the Mailchimp business could be improved. The analyst also highlighted the potential of Intuit's new agentic offerings and artificial intelligence monetization as untapped opportunities, especially for mid-market clients. While we acknowledge the potential of INTU to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than INTU and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. Read Next: and Disclosure: None.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Evercore ISI Boosts Intuit (INTU) Price Target on AI Potential and Strong Q3 Growth
On May 24, Evercore ISI analyst Kirk Materne raised his price target for Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) from $685 to $785 and kept an Outperform rating. The revision was prompted by Intuit's strong fiscal third-quarter results, which exceeded forecasts. Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) exceeded the $7.56 billion forecasted for the quarter with total revenue growth of $7.8 billion, a 15% year-over-year increase. Additionally, earnings per share came in higher than expected, at $11.65 as opposed to the projected $10.93. Notably, despite Mailchimp's continuous difficulties, Online Services in the Global Business Services (GBS) division grew by about 20% year-over-year, in line with projections. According to Materne, Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ:INTU) had a successful tax season, and the company's GBS division was expected to do well, particularly if the Mailchimp business could be improved. The analyst also highlighted the potential of Intuit's new agentic offerings and artificial intelligence monetization as untapped opportunities, especially for mid-market clients. While we acknowledge the potential of INTU to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than INTU and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock. Read Next: and Disclosure: None. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Intuit CFO Sandeep Aujla to Present at the Jefferies Public Technology Conference
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 23, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU), the global financial technology platform that makes Intuit TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, announced today that Sandeep Aujla, chief financial officer, will present at the Jefferies Public Technology Conference on May 28, 2025. The fireside chat will begin at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time (11:30 a.m. Eastern Time) and will be available live via audio webcast on Intuit's investor relations website at A replay of the webcast will be available approximately 24 hours after the presentation ends. About Intuit Intuit is the global financial technology platform that powers prosperity for the people and communities we serve. With approximately 100 million customers worldwide using products such as TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp, we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to prosper. We never stop working to find new, innovative ways to make that possible. Please visit us at and find us on social for the latest information about Intuit and our products and services. View source version on Contacts Investors Lisa PattersonIntuit Inc.650-944-2713lisa_patterson@ Media Sara DayIntuit Inc.650-336-3123sara_day@
