Good News Tommy plays badminton with two children and their dog in a sunny backyard while Mom and Dad relax nearby with coffee mugs, enjoying a peaceful family moment.

Why Parents Need Alone Time—and How to Actually Find It

January 29, 2021

Parents are very good at finding time for things that need to be done.

Lunches get made. Shoes get found. Laundry gets washed. Someone eventually remembers where the missing stuffed animal went.

Finding ten quiet minutes for yourself can somehow feel much more difficult.

And when your children are young, even wanting time alone can come with a strange side order of guilt.

But needing a break from parenting does not mean you need a break from loving your children.

Sometimes it simply means you are tired.

Parents Have Needs, Too

Researchers have increasingly studied something called parental burnout—a state involving intense exhaustion related to parenting, emotional distancing and a reduced sense of fulfillment in the parenting role.

A 2018 study of 923 parents found that parental burnout was strongly related to an ongoing imbalance between the demands placed on parents and the resources available to help them manage those demands.

Those resources can take many forms: a supportive partner, family help, time, childcare, stress-management skills or simply fewer demands competing for attention.

A 2020 review of parental burnout research similarly described parental burnout as intense parenting-related exhaustion accompanied by emotional distancing and a loss of parental fulfillment.

None of this means every tired parent is experiencing burnout.

And research does not tell us that a particular amount of “alone time” is a magic solution.

But it does give us a useful idea:

Parents cannot continually give without having opportunities to recover, receive support and reduce some of the demands placed on them.

Alone Time Doesn't Have to Mean an Entire Afternoon

When people hear the words self-care or time for yourself, they may imagine a spa day, weekend away or three uninterrupted hours with a book.

Wonderful if you can get them.

But for a parent of young children, that may also sound roughly as obtainable as a vacation on the moon.

Start smaller.

Ten minutes drinking coffee before everyone wakes up counts.

A walk around the block while another trusted adult stays with the children counts.

Twenty minutes reading, listening to music, gardening, exercising or doing absolutely nothing counts.

The goal isn't to create another item for your parenting checklist.

It's to create a little breathing room.

1. Put It on the Calendar

Parents frequently schedule everyone else's lives before their own.

If something matters, try giving it an actual place on the family calendar.

It could be:

“Saturday, 10:00–10:30 — Dad gets some quiet time.”

Or:

“Tuesday after dinner — Mom takes a walk.”

Scheduling a break won't make every interruption disappear, but it makes the time visible instead of hoping a mysterious empty half hour appears by itself.

2. Trade Breaks With Your Partner

If two adults are sharing the parenting load, one of the simplest arrangements is also one of the fairest:

Take turns.

One parent takes responsibility for the children while the other gets some uninterrupted time. Later, switch.

The important word is responsibility.

If you're technically “off” but still answering every question, finding every snack and refereeing every argument from the next room, you haven't really gotten a break.

3. Ask for Help Before You're Desperate for It

Grandparents, relatives, trusted friends, babysitters and other supportive adults can all become part of a family's resources when they're available.

You don't have to wait until you're completely exhausted before accepting help.

In qualitative 2018 research with mothers experiencing parental burnout, exhaustion was intertwined with feelings of guilt, shame and loneliness. That is one reason it can be useful to normalize asking for support rather than treating parenting as something every adult should manage entirely alone.

4. Lower the Price of Taking a Break

Sometimes parents technically have free time—but first they feel obligated to finish twelve other things.

The kitchen must be spotless.

The laundry must be folded.

Every email must be answered.

Then, if there happen to be seven minutes remaining, perhaps they can relax.

Try reversing that equation occasionally.

The laundry can wait twenty minutes.

Perfectionism itself has been identified among factors associated with greater parental-burnout risk in research examining the balance between parenting demands and resources.

Sometimes “good enough” creates the space a parent needs to recover.

5. Use Children's Quiet Time Wisely

If your child still naps, you already know the temptation:

Quick! Accomplish everything!

Some days, that's necessary.

Other days, consider allowing at least part of that quiet period to be yours.

For older children, a short period of age-appropriate independent play, reading, drawing or quiet activity can also give everyone a little separation without treating children as a problem parents need to escape from.

Of course, young children still require appropriate supervision. A parent's break should never come at the expense of a child's safety.

6. Don't Automatically Fill Every Empty Minute With Your Phone

You finally get ten minutes alone.

You sit down.

You pick up your phone.

And somehow the ten minutes disappear.

There is nothing wrong with checking social media or watching something you enjoy. But occasionally ask yourself:

“Is this actually how I want to spend the break I worked so hard to get?”

Maybe the answer is yes.

Maybe you'd rather sit outside, close your eyes, play music, stretch or read three pages of a book.

The important thing is that the choice is yours.

7. Make Room for Things That Remind You You're Still You

Parenthood becomes a huge part of life.

It doesn't have to become every part of life.

What did you enjoy before children?

Music?

Drawing?

Running?

Cooking?

Gardening?

Watching terrible old movies?

You don't necessarily need hours to reconnect with those parts of yourself.

Sometimes twenty minutes is enough to remember they are still there.

8. Talk About the Invisible Work

Parenting isn't only the work people can see.

It's remembering the dentist appointment. Knowing which child needs poster board tomorrow. Realizing you're almost out of cereal. Planning dinner while helping with homework and wondering whether anyone moved the laundry into the dryer.

If one adult is carrying most of that mental load, simply being told to “take some time for yourself” may not solve much.

Sometimes the more useful conversation is:

“What can someone else take off my plate?”

Reducing demands can be just as important as squeezing relaxation into an already overloaded day.

9. Don't Turn Self-Care Into Another Parenting Competition

You do not need the perfect morning routine.

You don't need yoga at sunrise, homemade smoothies and a gratitude journal before the children wake up.

If those things make you happy, wonderful.

But parental recovery shouldn't become another standard parents feel they're failing to meet.

Your version might be sitting in the car for five peaceful minutes before going inside.

That's allowed.

10. Pay Attention When Ordinary Tiredness Becomes Something More

Every parent gets tired.

But prolonged, overwhelming exhaustion deserves attention.

Research before 2021 had already identified parental burnout as distinct from ordinary parenting stress and associated it with serious difficulties for parents and families. A 2020 American Psychological Association survey also found particularly high stress among parents during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If exhaustion, anxiety, sadness or stress feels persistent or unmanageable, reaching out to a healthcare professional or mental-health professional can be an appropriate next step.

The Goal Isn't to Escape Your Family

That's perhaps the biggest thing worth saying.

Wanting some time alone does not mean you don't enjoy your children.

You can adore Saturday morning pancakes, bedtime stories, soccer in the backyard and ridiculous family dance parties—and still want twenty minutes when nobody says your name.

Both things can be true.

Parents are members of the family, too.

Their needs don't always come first.

But they shouldn't always come last, either.

So instead of waiting until you're completely exhausted before giving yourself permission to stop, try making a little room before you reach that point.

Maybe it's ten minutes.

Maybe it's an hour.

Maybe it's simply a cup of coffee that you actually get to finish while it's still hot.

Sometimes that's a pretty good start.

The science behind this: We looked at research published through 2020 on parental stress and parental burnout. The evidence does not establish a specific amount of alone time parents “need,” so we haven't presented one. Instead, the practical ideas above are based on the broader finding that chronic parenting demands can become problematic when they consistently outweigh the resources and support available to parents.