Parenting
Parents Lose Sleep Worrying About Money and the Future
Modern fathers feel pressured to do it all, new studies find.
Updated March 23, 2026 Reviewed by Margaret Foley
Key points
- A new study shows that most parents are constantly worrying about money.
- Worrying about the future is costing parents sleep, simple pleasures, and well-being.
- Modern fathers feel pressured to be breadwinners as well as caregivers.
This is Part 1 of a 2-part series.
Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice is publishing two new studies, Building Men’s Solidarity for Workplace Equality: A Guide for Workplace Leaders, and the State of the World's Fathers 2026 report, based on data from 8,000 parents across 16 countries. Among the findings: Today’s parents are struggling with financial uncertainty and worry about what the future holds for their children. And as gender roles around men’s parental and household responsibilities shift in comparison with those of previous generations, societal challenges and narratives are affecting fathers differently. I interviewed Dr. Taveeshi Gupta, Senior Director of Research, Evaluation, and Learning, and Christopher Hook, Deputy Director of Strategic Partnerships of Equimundo. In this first post of a two-part series, they shared three highlights from these reports.
Anxiety About Money and the Future
Across a sample of 5,300 fathers and 2,600 mothers in 16 countries, 76 percent of fathers and 82 percent of mothers report that they worry constantly about their future and their family's financial future. This sense of economic precarity is not about being below a certain number of dollars in the wallet or bank—it's a generalized feeling of anxiety around financial stability. It’s not just those who have low incomes, but even parents with relatively moderate incomes are feeling anxious, Gupta noted.
This is compounded by worry about the future of the world that their children are stepping into. Parents are concerned about whether their child will be able to afford a house when they are 25 or 30 years old, or what AI will do to the job market.
As Hook said, every parent wants a better world for their children than the one they were born into. And it feels like this may not be the case for many: “I've been saving the little I can for our son's college education, and my sister said one day, 'What is college going to look like in 15 years when he goes to school?' I don’t have an answer.”
He observed, “We’re seeing the return of traditional wars between great powers, the digitalization of every aspect of our lives, and changes in whole philosophies about a state's obligation to its people. Parents are asking themselves: How do I raise my child to feel confident and happy when I can't feel those things myself?"
Losing Sleep, Pleasures, and Well-Being
As Gupta explained, “Every generation faces financial pressure, but we still haven't solved the core problem—economic anxiety and the way education, employment, and health are intersecting in ways that deepen that anxiety rather than relieve it”.
The data show that people have given up vacations and pleasures to make ends meet. Forty-nine percent of fathers and 51 percent of mothers say they reduced their spending on nonessential activities like shopping, outings, and vacations. They are forced to give up pleasures that make life fun and joyful.
This, on top of wealth inequality, wage stagnation, ruptures in trade, and political polarization, is giving parents sleepless nights. Three out of four parents say they have trouble sleeping.
Fathers Feel Pressured to Do It All
Gupta shared an important observation about how fathers are affected today. Globally, we continue to see that men's roles are tightly tied to being a financial provider. She shared a quote from a Croatian father in the study: If I couldn’t provide for my family, I think that would hit me very hard. I would feel like I’m not enough—not enough for my child, not enough for my family. In Croatia, especially in smaller places, it’s still expected that men provide financially, and that’s seen as a measure of success in society.”
The good news is that millennial and Gen Z dads have increased the time they devote to household chores and caregiving at home by roughly three times in the U.S., U.K., and Scandinavia, compared to previous generations, Hook added. That is something to celebrate. Ninety percent of the sample—both fathers and mothers—agree that men are doing more caregiving in this generation than in their fathers' generation. There is a real attitudinal consensus that things are shifting.
But it also means we are asking men to do more labor than they ever have. So, more men than ever are feeling culturally pressured to "bring home the bacon" and to do unpaid caregiving labor at home. All without the benefit of generational knowledge being passed down or strong role models who show how to balance these different demands and engage in self-care. And just as there was a justified pushback against the idea that women should do it all, men are also encountering the same dynamics.
Hook noted, “The men in my life—I live in a working-class town in the Midwest, USA—are really struggling to be fully engaged caregivers while also holding career aspirations, taking care of themselves, doing therapy, and doing all the things we're told are intergenerationally transforming social norms. There is a huge number of men who genuinely subscribe to the idea that we should be doing better. We heard the messages from the #MeToo movement. We heard the messages from the feminist movement. Many of us voted for Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton without hesitation. And then you go to work and find that paid leave policies haven't shifted. That neoliberal economic policies are reasserting themselves. There's still an age-old bias against men taking on childcare responsibilities or taking flexible time off. We cannot expect a transformative change without serious revisions to how our economies and systems are structured.”
So what can we do next? Read Part 2 of this conversation, where we discuss how Dads Battle Flexibility Stigma and Outdated Media Portrayals.
