“Eating a gummy it’s just kind of like, you know what? She’s 3, I don’t have to take it personally that she’s not eating my food. She’s just picky right now,” she said of her daughter, adding, “I don’t have to sweat the small stuff."
Last year Ms. Bernstein co-founded Women’s Cannabis Club in New York City, which holds events for women interested in cannabis, art, culture and science. A recent workshop, headlined by a urologist, explored how CBD can enhance one’s sex life. So far the club has more than 500 followers on Instagram and an active membership of about 50 women, many of them mothers, Ms. Bernstein said. She and her co-founders are planning to create a similar club in Boston this year.
Ellie Zitsman, the mother of a 3-year-old, joined the New York club last year.
She takes CBD oil a few times a week to help her sleep better, and as an antidote to “having to be on all the time as a parent.”
“I have a pretty high-stress job,” said Ms. Zitsman, 33, who is the head of research and development at Van Leeuwen Ice Cream in Brooklyn — a company that debuted a CBD ice cream flavor before New York City cracked down on CBD edibles. “I have a hard time with my mind kind of settling at the end of the day.”
Families in the United States face anxiety-provoking challenges, especially when juggling home life and work, researchers say. There is no federally mandated paid parental leave, no universal child care, no universal health care — the list goes on.
That makes parenting hard in “a new, novel and increasingly frightening way,” said Caitlyn Collins, an assistant professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis and author of the book “Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving. “Exhaustion, chronic stress, little exercise and free time — these have public health consequences.”
Parents today also tend to spend more time working, said Dr. Elizabeth M. Fitelson, a perinatal psychiatrist and director of the Women's Program at the Columbia University Medical Center's department of psychiatry.
