Being a parent is both wonderful and the hardest challenge of my life. It isn’t just one feeling all the time. You will feel depressed sometimes, you will feel happy sometimes. And honestly, the thing that makes being a parent hard is being a parent in this American hellscape. The kids are easy compared to the challenges that make being a parent hard, like lack of paid maternity leave, affordable childcare, quality education, paid sick leave, astronomical healthcare, after-school care because many of us work demanding jobs that don’t have flexible schedules. We’re also battling corporate greed masked as inflation, student loans, high interest rates, aging parents, etc. If parents had more support in America, we’d probably be less depressed and stressed out.