From the pressure to have the perfect birth to the stress of ensuring your baby hits all the milestones exactly on time, new parents face a lot of pressure to be “super” moms and dads and it's taking a toll on their mental health.

New research from the University of Kansas shows that a lot of parents are struggling to "do it all" as they transition into becoming parents and much of it has nothing to do with sudden shifts in hormones.

Mental health experts have long known that new moms can be at risk for serious mental health issues after birth, including postpartum depression. But University of Kansas doctoral student Carrie Wendel-Hummell says many new parents are also at risk of depression, anxiety and other mental health woes because of the unspoken pressure to be "perfect."

"Simply put, a 'super parent' is someone who is trying to do everything and to do it perfectly," Wendel-Hummell told CTV's Canada from Kansas City.

"So first and foremost, they aim to be a perfect parent, but they also want to be a great spouse, an excellent employee -- all the while with a clean house, fit body with a smile on their face."

Wendel-Hummell conducted in-depth interviews with 30 low-income and middle-class new mothers and 17 new fathers primarily from Kansas and Missouri and found that many of the parents spoke of feeling high stress.

Low-income parents cited struggles with low wages and job insecurity leading to difficulties in meeting their baby's basic needs. Middle-class parents tended to feel pressure to be perfect parents -- in part, Wendel-Hummell says, because of high expectations they had placed on themselves.

"Many had been accustomed to a lot of success in their prior life, and they also prepared extensively for becoming a parent," she explained.

These parents had timed their pregnancies for an ideal time, did a lot of research on baby-rearing before the birth, attended pre-natal classes, and had come to believe they were fully prepared.

"But really, parenting an infant can be really unpredictable and much of it really needs to be learned by practice rather than by studying up," Wendel-Hummell said.

"So then when parents had a difficult time with their child… the result was they really felt like failures. They felt like they lost control of the situation, they felt guilty and many ultimately felt like they were bad parents."

Many of these parents were reticent to ask for help because they had been made to believe that good parents should be able to handle difficulties on their own.

As for the differences in pressures that mothers and fathers felt, Wendel-Hummell's research found that mothers tended to hide their worries they were becoming bad parents and that their parenting decisions were being judged.

"But fathers also felt a lot of stress trying to combine work and family. They didn't internalize the feeling as much but they did speak a lot about felt frustrated by the mixed messages they felt they were getting from society," she said.

Wendel-Hummell says it's important to look at the social context that leads to parental stress, including the access to health care and current maternity and paternity leave structures and sick pay.

In the U.S. where the research was conducted, employers are not obligated to offer paid maternity or paternity leave, parents are entitled to 12 weeks of unpaid leave -- one of the shortest parental leave periods in the Western world.