The Greatest Threat To The Nuclear Family: Parental Burnout

I have just one hour to write. I am going to do it against the clock. I’ve never done this in the two years since I have been writing Recalculating. I’m going to talk about time, about mothers and fathers who are burnt out, and about the nuclear family.

It reminds me of fragmented writing, which mothers have always employed: crafting while the baby sleeps, or when the baby is in their arms, or playing alone for ten minutes. It’s something I hadn’t considered, until a novelist friend told me about it whilst she was providing feedback on an article of mine. The lesson still applies:

“Your article is written by a father who is with his child. It’s what women have always done. It is written as we also live: doing as much as we can, many times in a fragmented way. If you look at the work of women writers, you’ll see the same happens to them: at times, their works are fragmented.”

Time is one of the great themes of parenting: where do you find time in this new phase of life where you have kids, when chores crop up which are so demanding mentally and physically? How much influence does context have?

When kids come onto the scene, there is no other way but to manage your time in another way and to accept that even the best-laid plans can change in an instant. As Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote more than 200 years ago, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

What I tend to see — and what usually ends up happening with us — is that the cutting of time impacts our time off and individual health. As problematic as it is, we also end up losing time and energy which brought us to being here — namely, in our relationship.

Doing what you can

Since last year, Irene and I have been trying to go out, just the two of us, at least once a week. It took us years to get to such a routine. To be precise, for the first five years as parents, we only went out together, without the little ones, two or three times.

One of our first outings last year was an evening at the beach right in front of our home. Three hours of conversation felt like a whole day. We left with the idea of making it a weekly tradition — and we’re still trying to make it happen.

One Wednesday we went to the cinema to enjoy the Athens Hispanic Film Festival (FeCHA). Irene was already in Athens, waiting for me. I put the boys to bed, with the au pair there for the night, and left for the 50-minute drive into town.

If the nuclear family feels like a trap, it’s because of how little support we’re given to live differently.

The second I left, I called a friend who I’d prearranged a call with. This is fatherhood: snatching and maximising any moments of time (opportunities). It’s also a bit of self-exploitation when it comes to efficiency: doing two things — driving, and speaking hands-free.

Two blocks away from home, I spotted a couple with a crying baby. It was a sight I was used to: 8 in the evening, end of a day at the beach, everyone tired. I didn’t need to know what was being said to recognize the tension in the situation. The couple’s body language and my own personal experience was enough.

I saw them as the encapsulation of the great majority of parents of this era: doing what they can, but alone and tired. I smiled as a gesture of having spotted them, that I wasn’t going to run them over. She, with her baby in her arms, returned a smile. I thought I saw them sigh.

Why do couples stick together?

“So why does a couple keep on going when it is so difficult,” my friend E. asked me on the other end of the phone when I described the situation to him. He is nearing 50, does not have children, and spent a month with us the other summer. “I never understood what it took to raise children,” he had told us.

I feel like raising kids is a bit like what happened during the pandemic: reality tenses its grip on you, and whatever lies under the rug comes to the fore. Why do couples stick together when it is so difficult? Strictly speaking, many don’t even make it past this step. (By the way, Anne Helen Petersen has written a lot about divorces and I found her “Ask a divorced person” article very interesting.)

I have two main thoughts about why couples with kids stick together:

1. Because of inertia. Since we got this far, we may as well keep going, since where will we go otherwise? What will we do, otherwise?

2. They know it is a difficult time, despite the hardships and differences, but they choose and believe in a life together, and for that to be possible, they don’t forget to appeal to and nourish this box where they keep their individual and joint dreams together, or wishes, ambitions and fantasies for the future.

Nuclear family is not the best option

In Argentina, journalist Gisele Sousa Dias has translated burnout to “quemadísimos” (which translates to “the very burned out ones”). The thing with understanding burned-out parents is that you have to take account of the context of the times, which are dominated by nuclear families. Personally, I am not sure if it is a trap, a jail sentence or even both.

This blew up in my face around six years ago when Lorenzo was born and I became his primary caregiver since he was too small to go to nursery, we were living a nomadic lifestyle, and then because the pandemic came along. I was with him all day, every day, while Irene was the primary breadwinner. This is how Recalculating, this newsletter, was born.

Every week, I learn that the nuclear family is not the best option. I feel like this mostly in those daily moments which become too distressing to bear; when even something as simple as going to the bathroom becomes too complicated.

Parenting wasn’t meant to be done in solitude.

I have to leave the bathroom door open when I go and juggle distracting León, but also ensure he doesn’t throw things in the toilet (ranging from toys, mobile phones, to tickets…)

I also confirm that nuclear families feel like a curse when I experience the opposite effect. That is, when I spend days surrounded by people, participating in activities with friends or family. In those moments, children access experiences they wouldn’t have if they were alone with us, and each of our energies flow differently. We can shift our focus away from the kids and have conversations with other adults. The tension I mentioned earlier disappears in community.

These struggles aren’t just personal — they’re shaped by structural issues that go beyond individual families. Workplace policies, economic pressures, and cultural expectations all contribute to the isolation of parenting. Parental leave policies, flexible work arrangements, and shared childcare solutions could ease this burden, but too often, the system assumes that families will “figure it out” alone. If the nuclear family feels like a trap, it’s not just because of how we live, but because of how little support we’re given to live differently.

A ticking time bomb

Many conversations focus on why many women today choose not to marry or have children — inequality, lack of policies, and the burdens placed on mothers. But what about those who do? What makes relationships and parenting sustainable for them?

One key idea I’ve been playing around with is learning to embrace discomfort. Honest, thoughtful conversations may be unsettling, but discomfort doesn’t mean disconnection — it’s something to breathe through, not a sign of failure. Expressing one’s truth, even when it makes a partner defensive, is essential for long-term connection.

Another crucial point is rejecting the isolation of nuclear families. Parenting wasn’t meant to be done in solitude. Friends, extended family, and neighbors should all be part of raising our children, but too often, these support systems are only built once kids start school — when they should exist from the start.

You have to make time for your partner and for yourself.

Ultimately, the hardest realization for many parents is understanding that raising a child alone, within the confines of a single household, is unsustainable. A nuclear family is a ticking time bomb. The pressure to “figure it out” alone, to instinctively know how to parent without asking for help, is damaging. Every time a mother finds herself alone with her children for hours, she may wonder: Where is everyone else?

Building community isn’t just helpful — it’s necessary.

As the journalist David Brooks wrote in his 2020 article “The nuclear family was an error” for The Atlantic: “The family structure we’ve held up as the cultural ideal for the past half century has been a catastrophe for many. It’s time to figure out better ways to live together.”

Create a space for yourselves

A week on from starting this post, I feel like I still stand by all that I said. The nuclear family is a prison sentence. That’s why you have to make time for your partner and for yourself. You have to put them (and you) on the agenda. You have to connect.

It’s really hard to keep this connection going meaningfully in the hustle and bustle of the domestic every day: washing the kids, getting them dressed, “what’s for dinner today?”, “ohh… that sounds like a nasty cough, shall we go to the pediatrician?,” washing up, cleaning the house, dealing with a tantrum here and a tantrum there… to no-one’s surprise, as time goes by, we don’t know our names by the end of the day, and who exactly is standing on our side. It’s easy to lose yourself.

However, forcing ourselves to create this exclusive little space for us — going out once a week — meant we could have those same kinds of discussions which drew us towards each other over 12 years ago: we spoke again about our fears and challenges, our dreams, our desires, our fantasies, ambitions. Our own, and our shared ones.

It can also be an opportunity to appreciate what we have experienced up until now. Knowing that inertia lies just around the corner again, it is also an opportunity to consciously keep choosing each other. These types of encounters can either push us closer or further apart, but it’ll be coming from an active place, knowing who the other is, what’s going on with them and who this new reality is changing that person into.