What working parents are really carrying: Clinical Psychologist Dr. Sarah Bren on mental load, screen time, and workplace support

As ambitious career moms, the mental load never really turns off. We are managing deadlines and school pickups, performance reviews and permission slips, all while trying to be present for our kids in workplaces that haven’t quite figured out what support we need. The list is never-ending, and most days it feels like there's no roadmap for doing it well.

With Parents Day around the corner, it felt like the perfect time to bring this conversation to our Corporate MomSense community — one that gets honest about the workplace pressures, competing priorities, and mental load so many of us are carrying, and offering real, tangible ways forward.

I sat down with the amazing Dr. Sarah Bren, a licensed clinical psychologist and co-founder of Upshur Bren Psychology Group. With over a decade of clinical experience, including training in relational psychotherapy, child development, and neuropsychological assessment, Dr. Bren has built her career on understanding how the brain responds to stress, attachment, and overwhelm. She's also a mom of two and the host of Securely Attached, a podcast ranked in the top 2% worldwide, so she knows this world from both the clinical side and the lived-it side.

Dr. Bren partners with us to bring parent coaching directly into organizations, helping working parents build the tools and confidence to navigate this exact overload. She also works with leadership teams to build more parent-informed cultures, and sees families through her own clinical psychology practice, which gives her a pretty rare view into what's happening for parents right now across multiple settings.

In this conversation, we dig into the actual psychology behind mental load overload, practical ways to address it before it becomes burnout, and the new set of challenges parents are facing in the workplace that simply didn't exist a few years ago.

Listen to the full conversation at the audio link below or continue reading for key takeaways from the transcript and real ways to apply Dr. Bren's insights today.

Q: You work at this very specific intersection between clinical psychology and workplace culture. How did you come to focus on group parenting support inside companies? 

Dr. Sarah Bren: It was interesting — I kind of fell into it because I was doing so much work supporting parental mental health and child development, and I realized those two things are so intertwined but rarely talked about together. If you want to raise healthy kids, you have to start with a healthy family system. And parents spend most of their time in two places: the home and at work.

Working parents have a unique level of pressure, stress, and burnout, they're juggling so many roles, holding up so many roofs. So I thought, where can I get in front of these parents to actually give them tools? Working with employers to create not just a workplace culture that honors parents' needs, but actual functional support. Healthy individuals, healthy teams, and then those people go home and share that health with their family system.

Kate: That's exactly why I saw the value in bringing you into the organization I was working in. It's so important that our people can show up as their whole selves, and so many of our staff were working parents. Having your support woven into the actual fabric of the everyday, not just as an occasional perk, made a real difference.

Q: Could you share a little about what the programs actually look like — the structure and format?

Dr. Sarah Bren: I have to say, working specifically with you and PeopleSense, I've really appreciated the intentionality of setting programming up from the inside out — not "would you like this group?" but "what does this unique workplace actually need?" It's not that different from the family systems work I do clinically. I don't just run a therapy protocol for a family. I look at this unique group of people and ask what are their strengths, their challenges, where are the gaps.

From there it can take a lot of forms, a moms' group, a dads' group, a structured workshop series, or my favorite, which are small, intimate groups that meet monthly, where parents share a win or a challenge from the last month. I run a dads' group right now, and it's incredible to see how they think about fatherhood and how it ripples into their work. Other times it's less employee-facing and more systems-facing, working directly with leadership teams to identify blind spots.

Kate: I think what you are touching on is a real nuance from a typical employee resource group. ERGs are wonderful — there is so much value in rallying around your team and sharing the challenges you are facing every day. But what you add on top of that is the actual tactical solutions for navigating modern motherhood and modern fatherhood. That is a special layer.

Q: Trend-wise, what are the gaps you're seeing, and what can management action on to better support employees?

Dr. Sarah Bren: Flexibility, but not in the way people usually mean it. It is not just "can I work from home,” it is flexibility as the absence of rigidity. Any parent knows your week can flip in an instant with a call from school, or a sick kid. Parents are some of the most agile people, out of necessity. When employers recognize and accommodate that, people feel genuinely seen.

The other big one is not defaulting to assumptions about who the "primary" caregiver is. Sometimes moms get passed over for opportunities because the assumption is "she can't do evenings." Sometimes dads get piled on because the assumption is "he is not the one doing pickup." Just asking someone what their outside responsibilities are, instead of assuming, goes a long way.

And there is a modeling piece, when leadership talks openly about their own roles outside work, like leaving early for a kid's baseball game, it sets the tone and gives everyone else permission to bring their whole self to work too.

Kate: That really resonates. I had a boss who was a baseball coach and left work early a few days a week, and the whole organization knew it. That signaled that he was proud of it, and that gave everyone else permission to do the same.

Dr. Sarah Bren: Yes, the pride piece really matters. Historically that was something people hid, like it wasn't "professional" to mention. When leaders instead say "I'm so proud of where I'm going," it sets such a powerful tone and permission to be a parent.

Q: From a clinical perspective, what is mental load actually? What' is happening in a parent's brain that makes it so exhausting, even on days when nothing "hard" technically happened?

Dr. Sarah Bren: Think of it like a computer browser with 500 tabs open. Each tab is an unfinished task, project, or responsibility your brain is holding onto. When something's finished, you close the tab. But parenthood generates an infinite number of tabs, especially the ones that never really end — like packing lunch, which isn't just packing lunch, it's inventory-tracking, meal-planning, and troubleshooting five things at once.

You are carrying your own tabs, your kids' tabs, your partner's tabs, the household's tabs, and unlike a computer, you cannot always shut the browser down. That is what makes the mental load of parenthood so distinct. It is constant, and so much of it can't be closed.

Kate: I am smiling because I feel this in my bones. I live every day with so much in my brain to remember. I want to show up and perform for my clients, but I also want to prioritize my kids and their wellbeing. When it is all combined, it can be genuinely overwhelming. I definitely struggle with this. Any tips on how to actually navigate it?

Dr. Sarah Bren: I like to shift the metaphor from tabs to juggling balls. Some balls are glass, some are rubber, but when you're overwhelmed, everything feels like glass. Stepping back and asking "is this actually glass, or would it bounce if I dropped it?" requires pausing, which is hard to do mid-juggle, but it's the whole game.

It is also about registering when something has actually been resolved. We forget to log the wins, like maybe a sleep regression that ended, and so we just feel like we are perpetually "going." Taking a breath and letting your body register "that one's done" matters more than people realize.

Kate: That's really great advice. I need to take more intentional breaths, I appreciate that.

Q: What are parents dealing with right now that feels different than even a few years ago — and why should employers care?

Dr. Sarah Bren: I was just on a colleague's podcast about fatherhood, and we were talking about recent research showing fathers are doing more now as parents than any generation before. Which is genuinely amazing. But here's the thing: if that father is in a partnership, the extra work he's doing isn't displacing his partner's workload. It's not that one parent is doing less because the other is doing more, it is additive. Parents in general are just doing more.

That is really the core shift. The amount parents are expected to do — the amount the environment and systems around us demand — is maybe 10x what it used to be. Extracurriculars, enrichment programs, academic and social and mental health supports. None of it is bad on its own, but the volume is enormous. And for everything genuinely useful, there is probably twice as much noise parents are sifting through that isn't actually necessary.

You are hit with so many shoulds a day, so much advice and comparison and worry, and more than half of it is noise. But we are either sifting through it or holding onto it because we believe we have to, and that is where it becomes unmanageable. A lot of my work is helping parents pause and asking if this is noise, or do I actually need to hold this?

Kate: That really lands for me. My kids are in the elementary phase right now, and there is just so much they could be a part of, so many activities, so many options, so much pressure to make sure they are not missing out on something. That has been my biggest challenge lately, figuring out what is actually worth our time versus what I'm doing because everyone else seems to be doing it.

Dr. Sarah Bren: Exactly, and that is the noise. That comparison-driven pressure is doing a lot of the sifting for you, if you let it, instead of you deciding based on what actually matters to your family.

Q: What should parents actually be doing about screens?

Dr. Sarah Bren: I don't want to give people more tabs, so let's talk about what actually closes tabs here. First, it’s about knowing your child. Some kids can transition off a screen easily, while others can't, and for them, sometimes the most effective thing is just removing that expected screen-time window entirely. It may be hard for a bit, but it saves everyone energy long-term.

Second thing is understanding that screens are not restful, even though they look like it. A child’s body might be still, but their brain is highly stimulated. So going from screen time straight into homework is not a transition from "rest" to "work" — it is stimulating to stimulating. I think of it like a battery. If I need something demanding from my kid, I need to charge their battery first with connection or movement, not another high-drain activity.

And this applies to us too. When we are burnt out, we crave scrolling, but it drains the battery further rather than recharging it.

Kate: The other part I am trying so hard to be cognizant of is my own device time in front of my kids. As a new business owner, I am on my phone and computer constantly and I am really trying to step back. If I am going to set expectations for my kids around devices, I need to not have my phone at the dinner table and actually be present. I see it everywhere with ambitious career women, always with a phone in hand, myself included.

Dr. Sarah Bren: Yes, the phone starts as a tool but can become an extension of us. This connects to the roles conversation too of are you fully in "work mode," fully in "mom mode," or blurring both at once? Intentionally entering and exiting roles, like a threshold you consciously step through, helps you actually be present in each one, instead of giving everyone a diluted version of you. I know from personal experience… it is very real and very hard.

Q: How can people find you if they want to learn more, or bring you into their organization?

Dr. Sarah Bren: You can always visit my website, drsarahbren.com, for information on my clinical practice and the consulting work I do. And my podcast, Securely Attached, covers child development, parental mental health, and attachment science, including a solid amount of episodes specifically on working parenthood.

Kate: Amazing. Thank you so much for this conversation, I really appreciate you joining.

Bringing this back to work

If this conversation resonated, the next step is bringing it to the people who can actually change your day-to-day: your employer. That might look like sharing this episode with your manager or HR team, asking whether your company offers any parental coaching or wellness support, or simply naming what flexibility would actually mean for you — the specific thing that would make your week easier. Dr. Bren's work with companies starts with understanding what a workplace's parents actually need. You do not have to have it all figured out to start that conversation, you just have to start it.