Working families, stress, and what AI can actually take off the plate
Working parents are not short on love or effort. They are short on time and headspace. We looked at what the research says about where that stress comes from, and at the early evidence on when AI lowers stress at work, and when it makes things worse.
The scale of it
Parents in the United States are carrying far more stress than other adults, and work is right in the middle of it.
Five stressors that show up again and again
1. Work and family run into each other
The line between the two has mostly disappeared. In Pew's 2026 survey, 70% of working parents said they deal with parenting while working, and 59% said they deal with work while with their children. Mothers carry more of it: 81% handle parenting tasks at work, compared with 62% of fathers, and 65% of mothers feel very upset when work makes them miss their kids' activities.
2. The mental load
Much of family work is invisible: noticing what is needed, figuring out options, deciding, and then keeping track until it is done. The sociologist Allison Daminger calls this cognitive labor, and in her study of 35 couples, women did more of it overall, especially the anticipating and the keeping-track. It is the part of the day that never really stops, even at your desk.
3. Money, and the cost of care
In Care.com's 2026 survey of 3,000 parents, the average parent spent about 20% of household income on child care. 89% reported burnout, 90% had lost sleep over care-related stress, and 59% had considered leaving their job. Care.com runs an online survey and sells care services, so treat the exact figures with some caution, but the pattern matches other research.
4. Caring in both directions
Many families are looking after children and aging parents at the same time. AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving found that nearly a third of family caregivers juggle child care and adult care, rising to 47% of caregivers under 50. Nearly half had a major financial impact, averaging about $7,200 a year out of pocket.
5. No time left for yourself, or for friends
When every hour is spoken for, the first things to go are rest and relationships. In Pew's survey, 67% of working mothers and 53% of working fathers said they do not have enough time to relax. Nearly one in four family caregivers in the AARP study said they feel socially isolated, a number that is growing.
What the evidence says about AI in stressful work
There is not yet good research on AI assistants for working parents specifically. There is growing evidence from high-pressure jobs, and two studies stand out.
The pattern in both is the same. AI helped most when it took away the draining, repetitive part of the job, like the paperwork or searching for the right words, and left the human part to people.
There is a simple reason this works. Psychologists call it cognitive offloading: when you put something you need to remember into the world, like a note or a reminder, you free up mental capacity for everything else. That is exactly what the mental load uses up. (Risko and Gilbert, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2016)
Where it goes wrong
AI does not reduce stress by default. In a 2024 Upwork survey of full-time employees using AI, 77% said it had actually added to their workload. 39% said they spent more time reviewing or correcting what the AI produced, and nearly half said they had no idea how to reach the productivity gains their employers expected. An assistant that hands you more to check is just another job.
The test we hold Budulai to: does it take something off your plate, or hand you something else to manage?
What this means for how we build Budulai
What we don't know yet
None of the studies above looked at a personal assistant used by families at home. We think the same idea applies, but we have not proven it. We would like to measure it properly, with people's consent and without reading anyone's conversations, and we are still working out how. If you study family stress or workplace wellbeing and want to help, we would love to hear from you.
Sources
- U.S. Surgeon General, Parents Under Pressure advisory (August 2024)
- Pew Research Center, For working parents, the boundary between work and family is often blurred (June 2026)
- Care.com, 2026 Cost of Care Report (survey of 3,000 U.S. parents)
- AARP and National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the US 2025 (July 2025)
- Daminger, The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor, American Sociological Review (2019)
- Olson et al., Ambient AI Scribes to Reduce Administrative Burden and Professional Burnout, JAMA Network Open (October 2025)
- Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond, Generative AI at Work, Quarterly Journal of Economics (2025)
- Risko and Gilbert, Cognitive Offloading, Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2016)
- Upwork Research Institute, AI and employee workloads (July 2024)