One morning in August, four local moms looped through the Dubuque Arboretum and Botanical Gardens with strollers in hand. They discussed their worries, including where to send their kids to school and the difficulties of connecting with other parents in the area.
Some local events and resources are hard to access if the space doesn’t adequately accommodate a carload of kids who use strollers, they commiserated — just maneuvering young kids into a building can be a Herculean task.
Not being met where you’re at is one of the biggest challenges for parents right now, said Riley Andrews, who organizes regular mom walks at the arboretum through nonprofit Raising Dubuque Co., a support group for local mothers and business owners. Andrews, a perinatal mental health therapist and the owner of local practice Restoring Wellness, said there is often what she sees as a lack of compassion for how parents are really doing in day-to-day life.
Katrina Canevello, who founded Raising Dubuque Co. in June alongside Andrews and Goose & Giggles Play Cafe owner Mackenzie Benter, shared similar thoughts.
“People say that, ‘Oh yeah, you know, you just bounce back,’ but the bounce-back culture is, for lack of a better word … it’s a load of crap,” said Canevello, who is also a chiropractor and owner of Home Team Chiropractic. “You’re not meant to bounce back. You’re meant to just roll forward and figure out your new life, so that was the struggle that I had and what things looked like for us.”
Canevello and her husband, Mike, had a “rougher start” to parenthood, she said. Canevello is the mother of a 11/2-year-old daughter, Thea, and she’s expecting another child in October. Before having Thea, Canevello’s first child, Michael, was stillborn.
Canevello credited the local community with helping her through that experience.
“Here in Dubuque, there’s so many wonderful support systems and different counselors and churches that were able to provide some grief counseling and just show us some love,” she said.
The creation of Raising Dubuque Co. with Andrews and Benter came from what the group saw as a need for resources, Canevello said — particularly for new parents or ones who just moved to the area.
“Somehow society shifted from ‘it takes a village’ to ‘leave me alone, I have to do this on my own,’ and that’s incredibly isolating,” Canevello said. “Talking to Riley (Andrews) … she said, you know, you can’t just expect moms to do it all, and it’s incredibly isolating to just sit home and not have resources.”
When it comes to raising children, though, Canevello said people can be quick to judge parents’ decisions instead of “taking a step back” and respecting what might be best for different families.
“I think every decision you make is so polarizing,” she said. “Everyone just kind of jumps on things … it could be with technology and social media, we can hide behind it a little better, but we tend to lose the ability to have a conversation of like, ‘OK, let’s sit down, let’s hear the other side. Maybe there is some truth behind it.’”
On top of all the stressors parents often deal with, the increased presence of technology presents a plethora of new challenges.
When it comes to technology, Canevello said, the only screen time Thea gets is occasionally interacting with relatives on FaceTime. Canevello said she believes it is important to limit screen time, especially when kids haven’t fully developed neural pathways, she said.
“But again, that’s where things with parenting are polarizing,” Canevello said. “I can sit here and preach that ’til the cows come home, but I one hundred percent see the other side of, you know, parents who are overwhelmed who are like, ‘Oh my goodness, I just need five minutes.’”
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ToggleLimiting technology’s reach
Jason and Mary Emily Duba, who are parents to daughters Abby, 8, and Joanna, 3, are raising their children in a “low-technology household,” they said.
“One of the challenges that we are starting to face, but it’s really kind of new with having an 8-year-old, is the pressures around technology,” said Mary Emily, who is an associate professor of theology at the University of Dubuque. The Dubas were “late adapters” of smartphones and don’t have a dedicated TV in their house, prioritizing limited screen time, they said.
“It is a little bit of a give and take, setting boundaries around it,” said Jason, who is an assistant planner in the city of Dubuque’s Planning and Zoning Department. “I think they would like to watch more TV than we let them.”
The family has made a practice of going to the public library on weekends to connect with other families and check out DVDs to watch via a laptop, Mary Emily said. They also love hiking and spending time outdoors.
“I think the kind of path that we’ve been on so far and the way we use technology, personally, I think it’ll make it less addictive than maybe for kids who have been using tablets since they were 3 years old, and their parents are on their phones all the time, and they just see it as a normal, natural thing,” Jason said.
Despite efforts to keep it largely out of their children’s lives, the parents said technology is increasingly present for their oldest daughter, Abby, who uses an iPad regularly at school.
“There’s a lot of technology in her school day,” Mary Emily said.
Though Abby isn’t at the age where she’s using a smartphone or social media, technology has already informed social connections among her classmates.
“Already, Abby will say, ‘I feel sort of left out because I don’t play video games, and so I don’t know what they’re talking about when my friends at school talk about that,’” Mary Emily said. “So she’s going to have to navigate that too, in a certain way.”
Once the “smartphone phase” hits Abby’s life, the parents are aware that a lot will change, they said. Having a community of families to call on for advice helps in these situations.
“We have parents who are raising kids just enough ahead of us that we can ask, ‘What did you do? How do we do this?’ Because our upbringings don’t really teach us how to navigate this,” Mary Emily said.
As Dubuque transplants — the Dubas are originally from Spokane, Wash. — it’s important to the two to build local connections and raise their children in an “intergenerational community” of people in their neighborhood and church, Mary Emily said. She and Jason actively work to instill in their kids a civic-minded “sense of neighborliness,” she said.
‘You can get all the advice in the world’
Penny Demert-Neal, an assistant professor of nursing at Clarke University, has noticed generational changes in parenting styles.
Like Canevello, Demert-Neal said the “it takes a village” kind of parenting approach has shifted. Her two sons, now grown and married, didn’t have the same access to technology as children today — and neither did Demert-Neal when she raised them.
“You can just Google anything these days: ‘My kid’s got a bump on his head, what is it?’” she said. “I used to be the local block nurse. Anybody who had something, they’d bring it to my house. … If you’re the nurse in the area, you were the person that everybody went to. Now, people just look it up online — you can see the pictures, you can get all the advice in the world.”
Demert-Neal has observed the intertwined challenges that come with parenting and technology. In her observations, the magnitude of technology today has contributed to a decline in critical parenting skills.
“Unfortunately, today there’s a lot of people who don’t have those parenting skills, and I think a lot of it has to do with our technology age,” she said.
At Clarke, Demert-Neal teaches a community health class and accompanies nursing students on home visits, providing outreach to families — particularly new and expectant mothers. That involves supplying parents in need with essentials such as formula, diapers, car seats and more, funded through a grant from nonprofit Dubuque County Early Childhood, she said.
“I know what it’s like to have kids, and we didn’t — my kids didn’t grow up with the phones and all that kind of stuff, but it’s very easy to turn the TV on and say, ‘Why don’t you watch TV? Mama needs to just sit for a while,’” said Demert-Neal. “And if it keeps your child engaged for hours to play these games, how easy is that, you know? But how bad is it for kids? So much easier to do that than to engage with your kids and take them to a park.”
Amanda Laity, parent services coordinator for Child Care Resource & Referral of Iowa, also experiences the stress and worries that come with parenting — though she said she’s grateful to have some “insider knowledge” through working in child care.
“You want them to be good kids,” Laity said. “I have a fourth-grader and first-grader, so now, the thing that I worry about is, are they getting bullied? Am I monitoring their screen time enough? Do they have anxiety because they went through COVID? … We’re raising a whole new generation of kids.”
Keeley Gallaher, a single mother to four sons ranging in age from 7 months to 11 years old, said she struggled to find resources and community in Dubuque.
“I do think there (are) good resources, but there’s also a lot of hoops to jump,” she said.
Gallaher has found most people in the community judgmental, she said. Experiencing homelessness and living in a shelter for a period of time, Gallaher said she wouldn’t have been able to get back on her feet without the support of area resources.
Gallaher found Clarity Clinic and local nonprofit Moms Connect, which she said was “a godsend.” The organization helps mothers navigate systems and access resources locally, offering opportunities for connection with fellow parents through events like dinner meetings.
“I don’t think until (people) live it, I don’t think they will understand it,” Gallaher said. “No two-(parent) household that has never been on their own is ever going to understand the struggles for a single parent. I see a lot on Facebook of people saying to ‘get off your ass and work and you’ll get somewhere,’ but they don’t understand that one income is definitely not enough to support family on your own when two incomes barely is.”
Finding a balance
Korey Monahan, a single mother to a 6-year-old daughter, Ellycea, also found important support through Moms Connect.
Attending biweekly meetings and discussing shared challenges alongside other parents made Monahan feel less isolated, she said. Talking about technology also made Monahan realize that every parent struggles with it to some extent, she said.
“I used to be a little bit more challenged by it, and I think since I started going to Moms Connect, it kind of made me realize (that) a lot of people feel that way,” Monahan said. “It’s easier said than done not to care what people’s opinions are, but I kind of feel like now, everyone’s going to have an opinion, so I’ll just try to follow my heart (and) what I think is best for me and my daughter.”
Monahan works for Children & Families of Iowa in its Parent Partners program and is training to mentor parents in child welfare cases. She’s also studying human services online full-time. Monahan and Ellycea love to paint, swim, play board games and spend time at parks together, she said.
“All my parenting is pretty much like a 180 from how I was parented,” she said. “I grew up in a home with a lot of yelling, and it was just kind of chaotic, so I just prefer my daughter to — I want her to feel seen. She goes to weekly therapy just to kind of help with emotional intelligence.”
Ellycea also has an iPad, which she regularly uses to play games, including Roblox. Navigating boundaries around technology has been difficult, Monahan said.
“It’s just kind of hard, too, as a mom, because if I need to do the dishes or something, I feel like I get this guilt if she’s just sitting there bored and I’m like, ‘OK, go ahead and watch YouTube or something like that,’” she said. “It’s definitely a challenge because it’s everywhere.”
Increased technology isn’t entirely detrimental, though, some community members said. Parents can find support more easily now and connect on the same level as their kids as they get older, said Yvette Saeugling, a licensed independent social worker and owner of Crossroads Counseling Center. Saeugling has worked as a child and family therapist for three decades.
“I know that we’re not going to take away the cellphones, we’re not going to take away the internet and media, you know,” she said. “As a parent, I think you have to respect what our kids have in their generation, what they’re learning to deal with, and help them learn how to navigate all of that and maintain some sort of life balance.”
Technology has shaped generational parenting changes, said Saeugling. It’s helped her spend more quality time with her children, who are in their 20s and 30s, she said; one of Saeugling’s daughters lives in California, so connecting necessitates cellphone savvy.
“My parents come from a generation of, ‘You work hard, you pull yourself up by the bootstraps.’ They’re good, kind, caring people, but there wasn’t exactly this need to (address) ‘What are feelings about? Why do we need feelings?’” she said. “That’s what I love about the technology is, I noticed as my kids go through different transitions (and) they’re trying to figure out the world, we can talk.”
From Saeugling’s view, she’s also noticed increased anxiety among children in the past 10 years, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, she said. In the past, Saeugling predominantly counseled high school students, but now, more elementary-age kids need support for anxiety.
“Something began to shift in our culture, our world, that was bringing in kind of a different population than what had been coming in through the door, and I do think a lot of it has to do with the media and the cellphones,” she said. “I think that really started things.”
Many parents emphasized the challenge of juggling everyday demands of raising children, technology included.
“Mostly (the thing) I enjoy about parenting is just seeing my daughter happy, honestly,” Monahan said. “The most difficult, I think, is trying to find a balance.”
