Emotional Support for Parenting

Parents and caregivers report varying levels of emotional support with raising children by gender, region, language, education level, and race.

Parenting and caring for young children can be hard work, and when caregivers have someone to turn to for emotional support, families and communities in turn benefit. Caregivers who take care of their own emotional needs can better meet the emotional needs of their children. Parents who seek emotional support from their peers through formal and informal networks report increased sense of confidence to care for their children, decreased family isolation, increased recognition of the importance of self-care, and decreased self-blame when things don’t go as expected. Support also reduces caregiver strain.  

About 70% of parents and caregivers of children in 5th grade and younger in King County had someone to turn to for day-to-day emotional support with parenting or raising children in 2019 and 2021.  There are some clear disparities in how some parents or caregivers are able to receive emotional support.  

• Race and ethnicity: Parents and caregivers who are Asian (56.8%), Black (58.3%), and Hispanic (45.2%) were less likely than the county average to have emotional support with parenting. Parents and caregivers who are American Indian/Alaska Native were most likely to have support, at 87.0%. 

• Income: Parents and caregivers with household incomes below $75,000 were less likely to report having emotional support than parents in households with income at or above $100,000.  

• Region: Parents and caregivers living in South King County were less likely than those elsewhere in King County to have emotional support.   

• Language spoken at home: Parents and caregivers in households that spoke many languages other than English at home were less likely to have emotional support with parenting than parents in English-speaking households. This includes parents and caregivers who primarily speak at home in Amharic (27.1%), Chinese (42.8%), Russian (52.8%), Somali (41.0%), Spanish (28.0%), Telugu (37.4%), Tigrinya (12.5%), Vietnamese (35.7%), and other languages (48.8%).  

• Education: Parents and caregivers with less than a high school education (27.9%) or a high school diploma (57.5%) were less likely to have emotional support than parents with a minimum of some college education.   

• Gender: Male parents and caregivers were less likely than female parents and caregivers to have emotional support.  

Trends: Parents and caregivers were less likely to have emotional support in 2021 (68.1%%) than they were in 2017 (75.5%). This drop was especially pronounced (over 10%) among parents and caregivers who had an annual household income between $50,000 and $99,999; lived in households that spoke Vietnamese; were Asian; or had some college education but no degree.  

Read more about why emotional support for parenting is important and what families in King County had to say about it in this Best Starts for Kids Health Survey data brief.