On Being Called a Superhero (as a parent)

What People Usually Mean

I understand why people say it, and I understand that it is almost always meant kindly. When caregivers are called “superheroes,” the comment rarely comes from strangers. It usually comes from people who are nearby in daily life: partners, family members, friends, teachers, or other parents who see at least part of what caregiving requires. The intent is typically to acknowledge sustained effort under difficult conditions. From the outside, that effort often looks extraordinary.

What I want to examine is not whether the intention is good, but why this particular framing appears so consistently and what it does in practice. This is less about how the label feels and more about what it produces.

Why Intentions Aren’t a Useful Place to Look

I am not particularly interested in intentions as an explanatory framework. That is not because intentions are unimportant, but because they are not especially useful for understanding outcomes.

From a behavior-analytic perspective, intentions are private events. They are internal experiences shaped by the same environmental conditions as any other behavior. While they may accompany action, they do not reliably predict whether anything in the environment will change as a result.

Two people can sincerely intend to support a caregiver. One might adjust expectations, reduce demands, or offer concrete assistance. The other might express admiration or concern. The difference between these responses is not intent, but function. One alters the conditions the caregiver is responding to. The other does not.

So when someone says, “Caregivers are superheroes,” the relevant question is not whether the speaker means well. The relevant question is what function that statement serves.

What the Superhero Label Is Doing

Calling caregivers superheroes frames their behavior as exceptional rather than necessary. It suggests that the level of effort being sustained reflects unusual capacity or personal strength, rather than predictable responding under high demand.

From a behavioral standpoint, this framing misidentifies the source of the behavior.

Most caregivers are not operating at this level because they possess special traits. They are doing so because the environment has arranged conditions in which sustained effort is required simply to maintain baseline functioning. Economic pressure has increased workload without increasing security. Social expectations for parents have expanded dramatically, often without their consent. Scrutiny is constant, mistakes are highly visible, and the margin for error is small. At the same time, reliable supports that reduce demand are limited or absent.

Under these conditions, behavior adapts. People do more, tolerate more, and persist longer than is reasonable or sustainable, not because they are exceptional, but because stepping back carries real consequences.

That adaptation is not heroism, it's conditioning.

Labeling this adaptation as a superpower shifts attention away from the conditions producing the behavior and toward the individual enduring it. In doing so, it subtly but reliably changes what others feel responsible for doing next.

A Metaphor That Fits the Behavior

A more accurate metaphor might look like this: a person is drowning in the water, and there is no lifeguard. People on shore are pointing and calling out, “They’re drowning.”

The statement may be accurate; it may even communicate concern. But it does not change the situation.

From a behavioral perspective, identifying a problem without altering the environment or introducing new contingencies does not function as help. It is a description, not an intervention. Calling caregivers superheroes works in much the same way. It publicly acknowledges strain while leaving response requirements exactly where they are.

Why This Pattern Persists

This pattern persists not because people do not care, but because of how reinforcement is arranged.

Expressions of admiration are low effort, socially appropriate, and immediately reinforced. They allow people to acknowledge difficulty without needing to rearrange responsibilities, change expectations, or take on additional work themselves.

Concrete support, by contrast, has higher response effort. It requires time, coordination, flexibility, or the willingness to disrupt existing systems. As a result, environments reliably shape verbal acknowledgment far more often than action, even among people who care deeply.

Over time, the language becomes the response.

The Conditions Caregivers Are Responding To

Caregivers today are responding to environments that demand sustained high-level performance under conditions of uncertainty. Economic instability increases pressure to do more with fewer resources. Parenting expectations have expanded well beyond what is realistically manageable for most families. Caregivers are asked to be constantly available, emotionally regulated, informed, and responsive, while being closely evaluated by schools, systems, and social norms.

These conditions were not chosen by caregivers; they were arranged around them.

When people sustain high levels of effort under these conditions, the behavior appears extraordinary only because the conditions themselves are extreme.

Why Language Matters

Language functions as part of the environment. It shapes what responses are likely to follow.

When caregivers are framed as superheroes, the situation is implicitly defined as one that does not require intervention. Superheroes persist, manage, and are expected to handle what others cannot.

This framing reduces the likelihood that others will engage in helping (though it's not my favorite word either) behavior, even when help would be appropriate and effective.

Language that frames caregiving as labor under strain does something different by making assistance relevant. It signals that support is not optional, but necessary.

What Actually Helps

Support does not need to be dramatic to be effective. From a behavioral perspective, the most meaningful changes are often the simplest ones.

Reducing demands rather than praising endurance. Offering specific assistance rather than general admiration. Changing expectations rather than commenting on resilience. These actions alter contingencies. They change what is required and what is possible.

A Different Way of Understanding Caregiving

Caregivers are not superheroes. They are people responding in entirely predictable ways to environments that require sustained effort with limited support.

When we understand that, the appropriate response shifts. Instead of naming the struggle from the shore, we look for ways to change the conditions that make drowning likely in the first place.

Because recognizing that someone is drowning is not the same as helping them stay afloat.