I’m amazed. It happens occasionally. On a scale of 0-10, this time I am amazed at a 10’s. It is about the government’s stress panel. As far as I understand, this stress panel must ensure initiatives that prevent and manage stress. The stress panel is set in the world because stress is constantly a growing problem in Denmark – and also in the rest of the world for that matter.
The stress panel has been running for some months, and they have now come up with their first proposal. They want to close ‘forældreintra’ and decide how many parenting arrangements there must be. class pr. year.
Honestly – I was about to fall off the chair when I read it. For several reasons.
Firstly, it is so old school to believe that we can avoid stress by controlling only factors in the outer world. No matter how good workplaces we have, with the best processes, the best management, the most gentle frames, etc., there are still people who experience stress. Why? Because stress is about a particular type of thinking – namely concerns – and it is an individual thing to learn to deal with concerns appropriately. All people experience pressure and challenges in life that create concerns. It is utopia to believe that we can remove it. And therefore, we need to learn to handle pressure and challenges in a way that we are not worried about worries and hence stress.
Secondly, it is a funny initiative when we look at statistics and which target groups experience the most stress. There is a huge overweight for people outside the labor market who are experiencing stress. It has nothing to do with parenting and school events. Among young women, there is the greatest increase in stress cases. It is women who have not yet had children, and who are not charged with Christmas clips in the children’s school.
Third, we live in a time when communication – and much of it – is a central part of life. I live with two teenagers myself and they communicate constantly via messenger, snapchat etc. It is utopia to shut down communication channels. They have come to stay. It is an integral part of our modern life – especially for the young, but also for our other half-dead. I can’t see that the solution is to shut down these channels. Instead, we must relate to how we communicate and how we relate to communication. And wonder if communication doesn’t just move to one of the many other channels if we shut down a channel like parenting.
Fourth, when we believe we can legislate ourselves out of everything, it all battles me. Should we seriously have rules on how many parenting arrangements may be in a class per year? For me, this is taking away people’s autonomy. I feel spoken to. I feel the responsibility is taken from me. I am put in a situation where I am the paralytic and just have to follow the frames that are being stung. People who are in a situation where they cannot act often experience stress. I’m just saying …
Let’s think differently about stress. Let’s move a new place. We have to, if we want to crack the stress curve !!
