Quiet Cracking

A rock hits your windshield. Ignore the tiny chip and it slowly spreads into a long, splintering crack. Wait too long, and you're not repairing the glass anymore; you're replacing the whole thing. Leadership expert Tim Elmore uses this metaphor to describe "quiet cracking"—employees silently struggling through their jobs, exhausted and disengaged but staying put because of hiring freezes, layoffs and economic uncertainty. They're surviving, not thriving, and burnout is close behind.

Most conversations around quiet cracking focus on productivity and performance at work. But for some parents, the real “quiet cracking” doesn’t show up in a staff meeting — it shows up when you’re juggling homework, childcare, lunches, laundry, and the emotional load of keeping everyone afloat.

As a parent, you might recognize the feeling. You hold it together all day, powering through pickup, dinner, baths, and bedtime. Then, once the kids are in bed and its finally quiet, you find yourself thinking, Is this what this decade of parenting is going to feel like for me? To everyone else, you look like you've got it handled, but you're masking distress, feeling depleted, and breaking down privately—in the car, in the bathroom, once everyone else is asleep.

Mental health counselor Sarah Stuteville, LMHC, a therapist and parent of young kids, couldn't help but laugh when she started watching the videos related to quiet cracking. "The three things I wrote down were: critical disconnect from meaning, pervasive despair, and the inevitable outcome of late-stage capitalism," she says. "It's a spiritual problem, not an economic problem."