Where is my village?

At my antenatal group, we were asked to picture our support systems. When the facilitator asked who didn't have family nearby, eight of the twelve of us put a hand up.

It was something I had barely considered before I had my son. It turns out we were fairly typical: Zoopla's 2024 research found that around one in three parents in the UK (32 per cent) receive no childcare help at all. No grandparents, no aunties, no wider family stepping in.

It's not that I don't have family. Both my parents and my parents-in-law have helped us more than I can say. But when your village lives across Ireland and France, it can only stretch so far. They can't pop round on a difficult afternoon, or take him for an hour so I can sleep.

My friends were another thing I hadn't factored in. Around the time my son was born, many had left London, and those who remained were at work all day. So through the long hours at home, just the two of us, there was rarely anyone to call on. And if I'm honest, I also carried a lot of anxiety about leaving him with anyone else. Between the isolation and that fear of handing him over, it was, looking back, a perfect recipe for burnout.

Before he arrived, I worried about making new mum friends. I needn't have. I clicked straight away with one of the mums from my group, who quickly became one of my closest friends: the kind you message first thing to make a last-minute plan with, who understood that some days looked like a train ride to a sensory class and others like a takeaway coffee on a bench. That one steady connection made all the difference. She was also, tellingly, the first person to offer to help when I told her I wanted to build Gentle Space.

It's easy to file all of this under logistics. But it runs deeper, because when it comes to one of the most common forms of exhaustion parents face, parental burnout, connection with other people is the single most protective thing we have.

So what actually is parental burnout?

It isn't simply being tired, and it isn't postnatal depression. It's a distinct condition, studied by researchers Isabelle Roskam and Moïra Mikolajczak, who have spent years listening to exhausted parents. Their finding, put plainly: burnout sets in when the demands of parenting consistently outweigh the resources we have to meet them. They call it the balance between risks and resources, and when the scales tip too far for too long, we burn out. It has nothing to do with loving your children any less, and it is not a character flaw. It is what happens to anyone carrying too heavy a load for too long.

How it feels

Roskam and Mikolajczak describe four things that tend to appear together. Reading them, it finally clicked; there was a name for what I'd been feeling.

• A bone-deep exhaustion in your role as a parent, emotionally drained at the very thought of another day.
• A sense that you're no longer the parent you used to be, or the one you wanted to be.
• Feeling fed up, even saturated, as though you simply cannot give any more.
• Emotionally pulling away from your children, going through the motions but never quite present. This one carries the most guilt, and it's the hardest to admit.

If you recognise yourself in any of those, it's a sign you've been carrying too much, not that you're failing.

Going back to work: the wobble a lot of us don’t see coming

One of the most common moments for burnout to creep in is the return to work. The demands rise, a job on top of a household on top of a small person who still needs you, while rest and recovery are squeezed thinner than ever. If you add in guilt, the childcare juggle and broken sleep, it can all tip almost overnight.

And there's a part no one warns you about: the moment children start nursery, the colds and tummy bugs arrive in waves. Just as you're finding your feet at work, you're up half the night with a poorly little one, and usually catching every bug yourself.

What actually helps

Because burnout comes from an imbalance, we can shift it, not by removing the demands, but by topping up the resources side of the scale. And the most powerful resource, again and again, is other people.

• Connection is protective. Feeling less alone, having people who simply get it, is one of the strongest buffers there is. Finding your people, online very much included, isn't indulgent. It's protective.
• Practical help lightens the load. Someone taking the baby for an hour, a meal you didn't cook.
• Recovery time, however small. Five minutes that are truly your own. Doing something purely for yourself hands you back a sense of who you are.
• Sharing the mental load, not just the tasks.
• A plan for the sick days, before they happen. When childcare calls, and they will, agree in advance who goes, and take it in turns. Left unspoken, it falls to the same parent every time, usually the one already closest to the edge.
• Lowering the bar, on purpose. Your own health and happiness have a powerful, positive effect on your child.

For me, the shift came slowly. I found a lovely babysitter and eased in over a few weeks: first while I was still there, then for two hours, until, at Christmas, when my son was almost one, we had our first proper night out at a work party. We came home at midnight to a wide-awake baby, his eyes like saucers, so exhausted from resisting sleep. It was worth every minute.

And something I hadn't expected: over time, I simply got better at this. My son now goes to nursery a few days a week and leaps into their arms, waving me off without a backward glance. I leave genuinely happy, and that pocket of time to myself feels like the most rewarding thing. A year ago, I couldn't have imagined it.

If you’re in it right now

You are not a bad parent, and you are not alone. Naming it is the first step, and reaching for connection, even one honest conversation, genuinely helps. That's the whole reason Gentle Space exists. Come and find your people, and if you ever need five quiet minutes, our meditation and journal are here too.

If I've learned anything, it's that three things make the real difference: social support, asking for help, and holding firm boundaries at work. I won't pretend the last is easy; in a demanding job it took working with a therapist to put real boundaries in place. And now, as a mother who has started her own business, I'm relearning them all over again, because working for yourself while parenting is a completely different challenge.

That's what I want to write about next. For now, be gentle with yourself. You're doing something hard, and you're not doing it alone.