As we celebrate the American worker this weekend, here’s an excerpt of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s New York Times commentary, reminding us that parents need help as they labor at work and home. Read the full piece here.

When I became a parent, a friend told me I was signing up for a lifetime of joy and worry. The joys are indeed abundant, but as fulfilling as parenting has been, the truth is it has also been more stressful than any job I’ve had. I’ve had many moments of feeling lost and exhausted. So many parents I encounter as I travel across America tell me they have the same experience: They feel lucky to be raising kids, but they are struggling, often in silence and alone.

The stress and mental health challenges faced by parents — just like loneliness, workplace well-being and the impact of social media on youth mental health — aren’t always visible, but they can take a steep toll. It’s time to recognize they constitute a serious public health concern for our country. Parents who feel pushed to the brink deserve more than platitudes. They need tangible support. That’s why I am issuing a surgeon general’s advisory to call attention to the stress and mental health concerns facing parents and caregivers and to lay out what we can do to address them.

A recent study by the American Psychological Association revealed that 48 percent of parents say most days their stress is completely overwhelming, compared with 26 percent of other adults who reported the same. They are navigating traditional hardships of parenting — worrying about money and safety, struggling to get enough sleep — as well as new stressors, including omnipresent screens, a youth mental health crisis and widespread fear about the future.

Something has to change. It begins with fundamentally shifting how we value parenting, recognizing that the work of raising a child is crucial to the health and well-being of all society. This change must extend to policies, programs and individual actions designed to make this vital work easier.

In the past few years we have made progress, expanding access to early childhood education, maternal health programs and a mental health crisis hotline for kids and adults. We have much more to do, however, to make parenting sustainable. This means bolstering financial support for families, including child tax credits. It also means ensuring all parents can get paid time off to be with a new baby or a sick child, secure affordable child care when they need it and have access to reliable mental health care for themselves and their children. And it requires addressing pervasive sources of anguish and worry that parents are often left to manage on their own, including the harms of social media and the scourge of gun violence.

Having safe, affordable before- and after-school care programs, predictable work schedules that allow parents to plan child care and workplace leadership that understands the complex demands on parents can help immensely. Safe playgrounds, libraries and community centers can give children places to play and learn and also serve as valuable settings for parents to gather and build social connection.

My friend was right about the joy and the worry. Given the responsibility it entails, raising children is never going to be without worry. But reorienting our priorities in order to give parents and caregivers the support they need would do a lot to ensure the balance skews toward joy.