Someone has calculated the number of hours a parent will spend worrying about their child over the course of their lifetime – and, in what will come as no surprise to any parent, it’s quite the sizeable sum.
Research commissioned by parenting brand Munchkin revealed we will, on average, spend a whopping 63,960 hours of our lifetimes worrying about our child.
And this is probably an underestimation because it’s only based on worrying for five days a week, with the logic being we worry less about them at the weekend, when we’re not working and they’re not at school or in childcare.
But let’s face it, the worry never stops. So if you calculate these worries across seven days of the week, you’re looking at 89,554 hours of worry over the course of your life. Yikes.
The calculation was based on a finding from a survey that parents worry about their child, on average, three hours each day. That’s 21 hours a week.
Astoundingly, this is probably a conservative estimate as a separate survey conducted in America found parents spend 37 hours a week worrying about their children – with the biggest worries being their safety and happiness, their health and whether they are being bullied at school.
Munchkin’s survey of 1,000 parents, timed with the launch of its new Bambou range, also honed in on the top 10 everyday stresses parents face when it comes to their children.
The biggest worry by far was financial challenges related to childcare (impacting 36% of parents) followed by the bedtime routine (31%) and worrying about their child hurting themselves (30%).
The fourth biggest concern was about their child being bullied, followed by making sure their child behaves in public, and worrying whether they’ll fit in at school.
Feeding was the seventh biggest concern, followed by meal times, the school run and getting back into a good sleep routine after a trip away. Yes, even our holidays aren’t sacred.