Thirty-one parents and grandparents in four sections of the rural commune of Léogâne answered a translated parenting stress inventory and a family support scale, and the results give this study its case. Four in five scored at moderate or high stress, and the strongest predictor was not household income, which barely varied because everyone was poor, but the number of children. The authors read that finding through a cultural ecological model and through the history of the lakou, the cluster of houses and the extended kin group in which several women once shared the care and supervision of children while others farmed or traded. Land fragmentation and deepening poverty have pushed that arrangement toward single women carrying the work alone, and mothers who cannot reciprocate the help they receive risk being judged selfish. Support proved thinnest for mothers of the youngest children, which the authors treat as a target for public health programmes.