Making room for joy

And the healthy overlap between stress and meaning making

adapted from artwork by: J614 for iStock

“The problem with the research isn’t the way it presents caregiving as a burden, but how it presents it only as a burden, with little curiosity on what makes it a burden, and even less on what makes it an opportunity.”

– Elissa Strauss in When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others

There is a tendency in our caregiving+parenting narrative to overemphasize the hardship. The burden. The stress of it all. I am guilty of leaning towards that perspective – I have an entire map constructed to identify these exact stressors!

But, I don’t have a map of how wonderful caregiving and parenting can be. How joyful. How rewarding. How powerful it can be to love and be loved by someone who benefits from your care. Maybe I should.

Author

Elissa Strauss

wrote a book to shine light on this side of the care conversation. In When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others, Elissa challenges us to reset how we think about care, how we value care, how we acknowledge the incredible benefits of caring for other human beings. She also points out how it is the broken systems and lack of structural support that either mask, or make it impossible to experience, those positives and skew our view.

This quote especially broke me open:

“it is not the making the soup or feeding the soup that is horrible; it’s the inability to work a job and have time to make the soup, or the fact that one never gets a break from making the soup and therefore has no time to rest, exercise, or take a restorative break—like eating the soup, alone, in a quiet room. So often, it’s the bills we can’t pay because we are caring that ruin our lives. The more people feel supported in their care by government policies and still feel as though they are in control of their own life, the happier they are as caregivers.” – Elissa Strauss in When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others

Lack of control is a key characteristic of the stressors that we internalize. A key factor in how stress affects our health. With this quote, Elissa points out how it isn’t always the physical demands of caregiving that is stressful. It is the missing support and our lack of control. When we add in the support and allow for a sense of control, we can dull the actual stress associated with caregiving. We can make room for the benefits and allow happiness and joy to bubble to the surface.

This got me thinking. Joy is an incredible stress buffer. I talked about it a bit here.

Social connection and companionship also buffer the effects of stress. That is something that Dr. Allison Applebaum talks a lot about in her book, Stand By Me, and it is something Allison and I have discussed as a counterbalance to the inevitable stress of family caregiving.

What if the flip side of the maternal stress load is the maternal stress relief that hinges around how we access joy in the care experience?

I started wrestling with this dichotomy in the context of time. Grappling with how the research narrative of caregiving = chronic stress that I overly relied on, may actually be grounded in a lopsided view of the topic:

The stress of time

Then I dug even deeper with Elissa…

Below is an edited version of our lovely coffee date conversation:

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MOLLY:

One of the key points that your book lodged into my head was considering the balance of joy and stress when it comes to caregiving and parenting.

When I started bouncing around the concept of what would become the Maternal Stress Project, I was focused on the negative – the stress and the ways to relieve the weight of that stress. I completely failed to see or acknowledge how the experience of caring for another human could, in and of itself, serve as a form of protection – a stress buffer.

I found it really eye opening how you bring in the positive side of caregiving/parenting. The joy component and the benefits you get from the experience: acquiring a whole new skill set, gaining all the new neural connections related to caregiving, expanding your capacity as a human being.

That view adds such an interesting angle – how these two sides of the care coin could positively or negatively impact each other. The benefits of care ( joy and love and growth) could positively impact the inevitable stress of parenting/caregiving by softening how we internalize that stress. OR the stress that relates the dysfunctional support system around caregiving/parenting could negatively impact those same benefits of care. Maybe how one positively impacts the other is actually a middle zone between the two sides?

As it relates to health specifically, we tend to discuss how caregiving negatively affects health. But, as you point out in your book, a lot of this narrative comes back to how caregiving has been studied in the past. There is a lopsided view that is more related to study design (e.g. methods start with the assumption that caregiving = chronic stress) that allow for these studies to employ a human model to examine the health impacts of chronic stress¹.

“The benefits of care (joy and love and growth) could positively impact the inevitable stress of parenting/caregiving by softening how we internalize that stress.” — Molly

When the primary goal of most available research focuses on measuring negative health outcomes, of course, the outward narrative would continue as caregiving = chronic stress. But that paints the wrong picture.

Do we have any research that starts from an earlier point? From the perspective of what led to that level of stress? Or how do we reduce that stress? Data on those specific questions don’t really exist yet. Right?

ELISSA:

[As it relates to parenting, specifically] there is a little bit of research on what causes the stress. Jennifer Glass did a cross national study about parental happiness and that research does show very clearly that societal support has a direct impact on the level of stress. So I think we have some hints.

Also, there is another meta analysis that came from economists in Europe and they found a clear connection between financial stability and parental stress. Basically, the more worried parents are about money, the less happy they are. Imagine that. So we do have some data sets out there to suggest the impact of societal support and trying to understand exactly what the main stressors are.

At the same time, the stress of parenting is different at every age. I have a seven and a 12 year old. I feel like it could not be more different than when I had a small child. We often talk about the experience of parenting and the stresses of parenting in the first three years but it's actually this incredibly long, different journey. There's so much more texture to the story and we're just starting to peel off the layers and see what we don't know and recognize “oh, we've oversimplified this.”

It’s important to point out that we’re only just beginning to take “care” seriously, as a research discipline. We haven’t paid attention to this field until about 30 years ago. Consider all the progress humanity has made since the Middle Ages, since the Enlightenment. In that context, “care” research is like five minutes old, relatively speaking.

“Some of those moments of stress might cause us struggle, but push us closer towards meaning and growth in a way that ultimately leads us to joy… I am talking about those life experiences when your sense of meaning and purpose may really expand. That is what gives your life heft and body.” — Elissa

As for stress, what interests me a lot is not just how we measure it, but also how we talk about it.

I think about the Venn diagram of stress and joy, and there is some overlap, right? Some of those moments of stress might cause us struggle, but push us closer towards meaning and growth in a way that ultimately leads us to joy. I’m not talking about simple, day-to-day, un-conflicted happiness, which is hard to achieve for most of us in the best of circumstances, and especially when your kids are little and they're incredibly demanding. Instead, I am talking about those life experiences when your sense of meaning and purpose may really expand. That is what gives your life heft and body. And it is a kind of joy, right?

There is overlap between the stress and the meaning making, and, I think we really need to trust that that's true. So many other endeavors – a hard job or great physical feats – have that meaning making experience that counterbalances the stress, or makes it feel worth it in the end.

Not all stress is necessary, and not all stress is useful, but some of it actually is, not inherently bad. What do you think about that middle part of the Venn diagram?

MOLLY:

I think that's right.

I’m tempted to move away from using the word “stress” here for reasons we can get into later so maybe it's best to think about the Venn diagram in relation to challenges and benefits?

I’m picturing the challenges circle on the Venn diagram as a spectrum with one side concentrating “bad” stress – the stressors that can add up and affect our health – and what you might think of as “good” stress – those jobs/tasks that push us to a limit but are ultimately rewarding. The benefits circle on the Venn diagram would relate to that meaning making and joy side of the coin. And then the overlap is where you tackle the challenges, accomplish the tasks, and experience that meaning making.

This overlap and the benefits circle alone could be the exact counterbalance you describe. The feeling of accomplishment, the “worth it in the end” satisfaction, could effectively be a stress buffer. It can decrease the impact of the overall stress load.

The challenges that are less controllable, less predictable, less “conquerable” will be more stressful. These types of challenges will be further away from overlapping with the benefits circle on the Venn diagram. They are also more likely to relate to societal challenges of parenting and caregiving – the financial instability, the workplace tension, the cultural expectations, the guilt and the shame and disproportionate emotional labor relating to that guilt and the shame and societal expectations.

“Climbing a mountain is a huge physical feat, but it’s not a stressor in and of itself. Climbing a mountain in an unexpected storm with failing equipment and no one to rescue you when you fall into a crevasse is a huge physical feat with intense exposure to stressors. Is enduring this stress what allows for meaning making when you make it to the top? Or is enduring this stress taking away from the joy of the experience?” — Molly

For example, there's research starting to suggest that cognitive or physical tasks related to parenting may not be as stressful as the emotional labor related to those tasks. The sense of failure, the feelings of judgement or inadequacy, likely underlies how our brain and body physically respond in a way that could affect our health.

You can face a physical or mental challenge without negative health-impacting stress. Climbing a mountain is a huge physical feat, but it’s not a stressor in and of itself. Climbing a mountain in an unexpected storm with failing equipment and no one to rescue you when you fall into a crevasse is a huge physical feat with intense exposure to stressors. Is enduring this stress what allows for meaning making when you make it to the top? Or is enduring this stress taking away from the joy of the experience?

Maybe it is somewhere in the middle and that is where the overlap exists?

It feels like some of this comes back to that sense of failure. If you don’t get to the top of the mountain, you have failed, you don’t get the benefits of meaning making. Maybe failure, or a sense of failure, plays a role in defining what makes one challenge “bad stress” and another challenge an opportunity for the benefits?

Also, failure could relate right back to those societal and cultural elements, the support or lack of support. In theory, those are all addressable. We can create a world with more overlap in the Venn diagram.

I do think that the more overlap we allow – joy and love and companionship and meaning making through challenges – the more access we have to these as stress buffers. The size of the benefits circle and the extent of the overlap could decrease the impact of the inevitable stress of parenting and caregiving or at least lessen the perception of that stress.

But the only way to get the full benefit of joy and optimize the overlap is to have the space and the time to access those feelings, right?

ELISSA:

Yes, and the way to access these feelings is to live in the present. But that is so hard for women who always have to be thinking about the future! Or feel like they do because of a mixture of social conditioning and gender inequity in the home. Meanwhile, it seems like men have such an easier time living in the present.

“Who bears the weight of always being two steps in the future relates back to who will bear the consequences. If things fall apart, it's almost always on the woman, the mother.” — Elissa

It is very hard to be in a relationship and receive another human if you're living in the future. I think it really compromises our connection with our kids because we're constantly two steps forward. Of course, to a large degree, being in the future sometimes is part of the job of parenting, it's not something that will be magically erased. So what we need is not to get rid of that part, but rather for men to do more of it and women need to do less.

Who bears the weight of always being two steps in the future relates back to who will bear the consequences. If things fall apart, it's almost always on the woman, the mother. For us, personally, I still have tremendous guilt that our kids go to private school, but the switch to private school took a lot of the weight of future thinking off of my mind. This is truly a place that emotionally and practically supports our children. For me, the significant decrease in the mental load of parenting – knowing that there are people who will help my children navigate small things and big things, where they have the capacity to help our kids through hard and sad moments – is huge. I don't have to worry all day because I know they're in good hands. I cannot tell you how much that helps me receive them in the present. When they return home from school at the end of the day. I just kinda trust things were fine, that someone else took over the big picture caring role for a bit.

MOLLY:

Future thinking = anticipatory stress!

I love this example. The emphasis that there are all these little opportunities to chip away at the load that we carry as mothers.

I appreciate that you acknowledge feeling conflicted about having your children in private school, but the reality of having access to those benefits you bring up – the benefits FOR YOU – is an important consideration in all of this. Having the opportunity for your children to learn in an environment that decreases the weight of your own future thinking, that’s an important part of the narrative shift. This scenario is better for your health, this is better for you as a human, this is better for you as a parent.

ELISSA:

I have a few more questions for you regarding the challenges vs stressors idea. I could talk about this for hours more because I don’t think it is something we acknowledge enough, or dig into in detail. The two simplified, social-media friendly narratives have either been that “the stress from motherhood is noble, so shut-up”, OR “the stress is inevitably unjust and we need to put a stop to it”. How do we separate (and what do we have any research on) the positive stressors of parenthood? The idea that some of harder, more self-sacrificial moments aren’t necessarily bad?

Because caring for another human is hard, always — but there is, I believe, a Hero's Journey element. And when you go on a Hero's Journey, there is stress and obstacles to overcome – go into the seventh layer of hell, fight demons for ten minutes, whatever – but then you come out of it. You've learned things. I think that is part of the narrative shift.

Is there room to complicate parental stress this way? Or is this just making it too complex when it would be best to keep it simple so we can focus on the problem?

MOLLY:

Stress is complicated enough!

I have been trying to be careful about the language that I use around stress and this is why I really struggled with the “good” stress vs “bad” stress that came up earlier. There are so many words that we throw around about stress to differentiate the positive and the negative and the chronic and the healthy and not healthy. All the things. So I tend to reserve the word stressor to refer to a challenge that will physically affect us and potentially contribute to a chronic stress state that negatively impacts health.

“The problem is that modern humans don’t ‘fight demons for 10 minutes’ and then continue on their quest. Modern humans activate this response over and over and over again. Modern humans see the need to ‘fight demons’ in some of the most mundane, day-to-day things. Modern humans want to ‘fight demons’ that may or may not crop up in the future.” — Molly

In that context, our bodies have adapted to respond to acute stressors.

Acute stressors fit into your “fight demons for 10 minutes” scenario. Those stressors relate to a challenge that is short and can be addressed relatively quickly. Our bodies respond dramatically, but they also recover, the internal mess is cleaned up, and then we're good. The problem is that modern humans don’t “fight demons for 10 minutes” and then continue on their quest. Modern humans activate this response over and over and over again. Modern humans see the need to “fight demons” in some of the most mundane, day-to-day things. Modern humans want to “fight demons” that may or may not pop up in the future. When that happens, we’re more likely to respond in an inappropriate way that leads to chronic stress and affects our health negatively.

Putting the acute stress response aside, what I’ve started considering from your work, the way you discuss the topic, and from available research (for example, the studies from Darby Saxby’s lab at USC) are those positive sides of the challenges related to caregiving and parenting. The meaning-making that we discussed earlier and also the positive impacts on things like brain plasticity, the neurobiology of care and the resulting beneficial brain changes. How do we package that message up? It seems like an opportunity!

We accomplish some incredible feats when we tackle these challenges thrown at us in parenthood. I think what you are getting at with the Hero’s Journey is that rising up to the challenge, and accomplishing the thing, can feel really good in our body. Again, I wouldn't call it a stressor. Let’s go with “healthy challenge.” A healthy challenge might get our blood pumping and our adrenaline racing but even those ‘fight-or-flight’ elements subside quickly. This type of challenge also presents a good point of psychological and physical focus and anything that helps us focus in a way that distracts our brain from the usual stressors (forward thinking!) and gives us that sense of accomplishment, allows for positive reward. That is all beneficial. It’s a stress buffer! I wonder if this is related to the research that connected cognitive tasks of parenting to positive health effects (well, mostly in men)?

Clearly, I am still trying to figure out the best languages to use. I keep coming back to failure vs. accomplishment. Maybe there is something about accomplishable tasks that don't overwhelm? Tasks that challenge us but also allow the space and freedom to reflect and recognize that “I accomplished this thing!”, “I climbed the mountain!“, “I fought those demons!”. I do think there are opportunities for growth when you are challenged in a positive way. Plenty of opportunities for learning and practicing new skills and feeling that sense of accomplishment when it comes to parenting challenges, especially the ones that don’t overwhelm.

Another point that you have made that I keep coming back to, and something we don't talk about enough is the brain expansion related to the experience of caregiving. To me that feels like a big selling point! Right? How do we get to a place where we can say “you do not reach your full brain capacity until/unless you care for another”?

ELISSA:

From my understanding based on all the current the research is that we don't really have any definitive answers. We know the brain restructures, but we don't have definitive answers, from a neurobiological perspective, if that creates long term benefits.

If anyone knows of this research -- please share it with me! I would love for this to be true! Just haven’t seen it yet.

MOLLY:

Yes, the research is really really new. For example, the study that came out about the neurological restructuring during pregnancy was the very first time a human brain had been thoroughly scanned during those changes. That research came out THIS YEAR.

This comes back to your points about how available research has limited us. That we're just starting to catch up to the idea that brain changes might relate directly to the aspects of doing the care work like playing with and caring for a baby or an older child or caring for an adult. I guess I’m just stuck on this hopeful future that we’ll be able to say bold things like “humans do not reach their full brain capacity until they care for another” and almost entice folks to jump in and do the work?

One can dream?

ELISSA:

Can we say it anyway, with a slight hedge? “It seems as though humans do not reach…”

MOLLY:

Yes. Perfect.

ELISSA:

I think if you look at Ruth Feldman's research you see some evidence for this. She looked at non-birthing parents who were active caregivers, but didn’t have the cascade of care hormones set off during pregnancy that primes birthing mothers for care. Though, I should note, this cascade doesn’t always work well — and even when it does, it’s hardly the love-at-first-sight explosion of love Hollywood sold us.

Anyway, Feldman found that the active-caregiver, non-birthing parents’ brains were being changed by care, too. What this tells us, and as I write in my book, is that we don’t care because we love. We love because we care. The care comes first.

Her work shows that when we engage in care, our brains adapt to care and become caregiving brains. This isn't the capital M maternal instinct that's garbage and oppressive, but a real, tender and vulnerable caregiving instinct that lives inside almost everyone, men and women. But you have to do the care in order for them to turn on.

I’m a Humanities gal, ultimately, and not a scientist, so I am going to be unscientific and say that I feel like we can trust our intuitions on this one as well. Our intuitions are not going to tell us exactly what's going on inside the brain. But I think we know, as people who have cared for children and maybe been in some other care relationships, we know that something big is going on. Something is fundamentally different from other relationships.

“We don’t care because we love. We love because we care.

The care comes first.” — Elissa

That's really where the heart of the curiosity for my book came from. Thinking about this whole relationship that humanity really depends on, in many ways more than friendship or long-term romantic partnerships, and yet we've never really dug into it. What does it do to us?

We have considered what it is like to receive care. We've thought a lot about what good care is for children. In the mid 20th century Winnicott and Bowlby broke a lot of ground on how care impacts children, but they they had little interest in how mom was being changed.

We are still in a big correction mode, making up for lost time, and there is no better place to start than with our own experiences. We need to be saying them out loud, and treating them with real curiosity, thinking deeply about what's going on for us. I think the science is going to follow it.

We know it's true, in our hearts and minds and bodies, that this is this radical, wild thing.

MOLLY:

I think this all comes back to the Venn diagram and the narrative shift. Another part of this and the points of overlap – how do we give ourselves the space to acknowledge the inevitable stress, acknowledge the “burden”?

And I ask that knowing how you often talk about putting the term “burden” aside.

ELISSA:

No, no, I don't think we need to put the term “burden” aside. I think we just need to see care in its wholeness. I feel like we were locked into the fairy tale versus nightmare binary but I'm here for the messy middle. The human, messy middle.

I think we need to say “burden,” and label those burdens very clearly, so we can make sure that the burdens are lightened up. I want to see the burdens distributed equally with our male partners as much as possible, and also lessened by society through policies like paid leave and universal childcare -- and also, read Brigid Shulte’s new book Over Work, that talks about making our workplaces more caregiver friendly.

“we need to better support parents just not because it is hard… but also because it is this big, full part of life and we deserve to experience it in all its bigness and fullness without undue stress.” — Elissa

So overall, I am not anti-burden, the language or the concept, I just want us to be able to talk about all the parts of care. To treat the subject with a sense of abundance, and believe that we need to better support parents just not because it is hard, and unnecessarily hard because of all the unsupportive crap we deal with, but also because it is this big, full part of life and we deserve to experience it in all its bigness and fullness without undue stress.

We need to hold both in our hands, the good parts and hard parts. Some people make the case that , “we're not gonna get change unless we go all in on the burden narrative.” Basically, we have to make it sound just awful that way we wake up those in power to make it better for us. I get it, but I don’t ultimately agree with it. I think it subtly just reinforces that care is a slog, something that subtracts from our lives, and not something that adds to it.

MOLLY:

I agree with you. I always think about how, in order to get more people to want to step into these roles (especially men), you have to scratch the itch of “what's in it for me?” and add value to the work.

If we can reframe it with the beneficial side, the helpful side, the “conquer the mountain!” side, the “your brain is going to be healthier” side, I feel like it, it's more appealing to more people. Who wants to take care of a dirty diaper? Nobody wants to do that work. So how do we make it about something that still scratches the “what’s in it for me?” itch. Add value to it.

ELISSA:

Totally. We need to really dignify the work.

I’m going to take us to paid caregivers because I think it helps create a more clear distinction about the risks of only focusing on the burden side of care work. I’m thinking about this one woman, June, a home health care worker I interviewed for my book. She is a home health care worker, she's held six people's hands as they die. She's had a lot of abuse in her job. She should be paid more for her job. But to only focus on the hard parts of her job is actually missing that she is doing some of the deepest, most sacred work one could ever imagine.

And it's easy to say, “gosh, I want to focus on her burdens” because I know she's been mistreated, like many people in her field, and I know she’s underpaid, and it’s ridiculous. But then I realized that if I only focus on her burdens, then I’m ignoring the things she said to me that were the same things that these care philosophers working at universities were saying. Her understanding of the nature of life, and self and other, is so rich. I learned so much from her, and that's where I really genuinely struggle with how to balance focusing on the mistreatment of these workers and the difficult conditions in which they work, and how rich, revelatory and transcendent this work can be.

Overall, what we need is political change and narrative change. I want men to show up in their care roles with curiosity, not a pure sense of helping or just obligation, but actual curiosity about this wild and rich human experience they are embarking on. I want them to see June as a hero, someone they aspire to be like, and build a world in which her accomplishments are part of a more mainstream definition of success.

I just realized something the other day – out of all the emails I've gotten from total strangers that say “your book meant so much to me,” almost all of them have been from men. So some men are getting this. And that’s a good thing, because we need men to complete the work of both policy and narrative change.

MOLLY:

Absolutely agree. The male-inclusive / gender neutral narrative is also key to political change (this annoys me, but it's the reality right now).

When we see and accept the value of care, how care impacts everyone – especially how it can POSITIVELY impact our lives and health and wellbeing – we have more leverage in those care policy conversations.

I think culture and narrative shift, especially in our own homes and in our communities, is where the biggest opportunities for change exist right now.

Let’s keep moving that needle!

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1. Ah, yes, I am 100% guilty of this —