For many adults, becoming a parent is all-consuming. Familial obligations monopolize your attention and even the strongest, most long-term friendships can feel strained.

Ironically, those deep friendships we have in adulthood, the ones that take a backseat to family, are crucial contributing factors to raising resilient kids, journalist Jennifer Breheny Wallace said in a recent Ted Talk.

"A child's resilience is rooted in the resilience of the adults in their lives," she said. "Adult resilience is rooted on the depth and support in our relationships."

Wallace authored "Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic – and What We Can Do About It" and the forthcoming "Mattering in the Modern World: A Solution to the Crises of our Time."

A child witnessing you support a friend, or vice versa, shows them that part of resilience is creating a network where it's OK to ask for help.

We need friends 'who know us intimately'

Wallace's advice touches on a haunting reality about adult friendships: Americans have less of them than they'd like.

Less that one-third of adults ages 30 to 49 say they have five or more close friends, according to a 2023 survey by Pew Research Center. And in a 2023 University of Michigan poll, 34% of adults ages 50 to 80 say they feel isolated.

And it's not just the quantity of positive social connections that's lacking, it's the quality: 40% of American adults said they are not as close with their friends as they would like, according to a recent PLUS ONE study.

When journalist Olga Khazan was deciding to have a child, one of her biggest concerns was how antisocial she was.

As an introvert, she often turned inward and stayed home rather than putting in the work to maintain relationships in the real world, an experience she outlines in her book "Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change."

"Being a parent just requires being 'on' all the time," Khazan told CNBC Make It. "You kind of have to learn to be okay with being really active and socially engaged, even in a nonverbal way, a lot more than you're used to."

To prepare her for parenthood she wanted to increase her extroversion. She found that the most successful strategy for doing so was signing up for improv and sailing classes.

"I think the most effective thing is to sign up for an activity that occurs regularly with the same group of people," she said. "It is hard to back out of because other people are relying on you."

Though sailing was expensive and started much earlier in the morning than she preferred, the social interactions that came with showing up did improve her quality of life.

"You're working on something, or thinking about something, and someone else in the boat will have had that exact experience and can really shed light on it," she says.

Forcing herself to do things even when she didn't feel like it made her less cranky and more agreeable while parenting. And being more comfortable talking to others about the challenges of child-rearing made the experience a bit less lonely.

"I am just not really a joiner naturally," she says. "I never joined a group before this, but I think I learned that things like this, especially really hard things like motherhood, are so much easier when you have other people around going through something similar."

Despite the proven benefits positive social relationships have on our well-being, American culture still doesn't rank friendships as highly as romantic partnerships.

The only way to change this, Wallace said, is to actively prioritize friendships.

"We need one or two or three people in our lives who know us intimately. who can see when we are struggling and who will reach over and put that oxygen mask on for us," she said. "This is a very different level of support than we normalize in our busy culture today."

Do you want a new career that's higher-paying, more flexible or fulfilling? Take CNBC's new online course How to Change Careers and Be Happier at Work. Expert instructors will teach you strategies to network successfully, revamp your resume and confidently transition into your dream career. Pre-register today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $67 (+taxes and fees) through May 13, 2025.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It's newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.