Tired, judged and always catching up: Modern parenting’s only getting harder

The reel starts with a woman wearing sunglasses and merrily headbanging to the beats of rock music. The text below reads ‘Parents in the 1950s: My kids are fed. They have a roof over their head. I am doing great.’ Next, a weary-looking woman, identified as ‘today’s parent’, appears on the screen, hopping around in crazy circles. Multiple dialogue boxes pop up with the questions: ‘Did I connect enough today? Does my kid have anxiety? Did we get enough sunlight? Will my outburst cause trauma that will ruin my child’s life? Did we exceed our screen time limit?’Mumbai-based lawyer Nishi Sharma laughed out loud when she saw this reel and promptly shared it with her mommy friends accompanied by laugh emojis. But she hasn’t stopped thinking about it. “Isn’t it sad that we have so much on our minds all the time?” ponders the 40-year-old who admits she feels stressed “almost all the time”. Sharma’s 10-year-old son’s math exam and an important hearing are both scheduled for Monday to add to her woes.Last week, US surgeon-general Vivek Murthy, father of two, declared parental stress a serious public health concern and warned that it can take a toll on the physical and mental well-being of American parents. Counsellors and parenting experts in India say parents here are feeling the strain too.“Parenting is supposed to be natural and instinctual. But these days, we come across a lot of moms and dads who are overwhelmed and extremely stressed by parenting,” says parenting coach Piya Marker. mediumhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE4-T-EajjEExperts say modern-day parents expect too much from themselves and from their kids. Gone are the days when the naukri-chaakri was the main source of stress and “bachche to bas pal hi jaate the (children just grow up by the way)”. Today’s parents not only have to rock their career and raise their children, they also have to make sure their bub eats avocado, scores well, excels in a sport, and knows how to speak at least one foreign language. To top this, parents also have to monitor screen time, keep their kids safe online and work on their emotional growth without losing their temper as gentle parenting is the trend du jour. “The stress is not caused by the child or by parenting. The stress is caused by reality not meeting expectations,” says Harpreet Grover, an independent parenting researcher. Marker agrees: “Every child need not get A grade, play ten sports, five musical instruments and be picked for main roles in school plays. We are setting very high standards for ourselves, leading to disappointment and stress.” ShowQuotesRoshni Anup, mom of three kids (8 years, 5 years and 5 months), says Gen Alpha kids are different from their predecessors and demand more attention, making the job harder. “My best friend was the eldest of five siblings. I have literally seen her be a second mom to the youngest brother. But I can never imagine my eldest looking after her little brothers. She still needs the most pampering,” says Anup. “Besides, everyone has become so competitive. If I can’t take my eldest for classes because I am busy with the little ones, I get worried that she will get left behind.” Anup recently posted an appeal for suggestions on a Facebook parent group because she “never felt at peace and was always restless and anxious.” The Gandhidham mom is low on iron and knows that may be one of the reasons for how she is feeling, but she is so busy, she forgets to take her pill every other day. medium113551236Pressure of WhatsApp parentingGopika Kapoor, parent advocate and author of a book on spiritual parenting, says the tendency to micromanage is another reason for constant tension in parents’ lives. “My daughter is 19 and studies at a university in Haryana. We have a pan-India parent WhatsApp group and to my utter shock, it is always buzzing. One day parents are complaining about the lack of nutritious meals in the mess and the next they are worried about the condition of toilets. Once, they were fretting about how a pigeon was stuck in the shaft at the hostel,” says the Mumbai resident. “We have all had bad mess food and our parents never cared. We have to let our kids fend for themselves. What can a parent sitting thousands of kilometres away do anyway?”Kapoor tries her best to not get affected by trivial matters — she has even muted the parent group — but she admits she too tracks her kids’ location like a lot of parents these days. “My daughter is in a different state and my son, who is on the autism spectrum, goes to classes by himself so I have downloaded an app which tells me their location. I know my parents never knew where I was once I stepped out and this causes unnecessary tension sometimes, but I guess it has become a need in today’s times,” she says. ShowQuotesParenting expert Ishinna Sadana says too much information about parenting on social media and the desire to be gentle parents is also making the process of raising kids taxing for many. “The movement of gentle and conscious parenting is a crucial and much-needed one, but it shakes things up. Parents want to be calm but they are not able to be. Sometimes, they lose it and shout at their child and this adds to their stress,” she says, adding that she advises parents to stop being hard on themselves and just apologise to their child if they reacted in anger.Parents say the trend of sending kids to international curriculum schools and universities abroad also leads to immense financial strain which is another stressor. Supermom stressExperts say moms face more stress compared to dads because they lead double lives — they hope to climb the corporate ladder while keeping an Insta-worthy house, raising brilliant children and having Korean glass skin. “Traditionally, mothers in India looked after the house and kids while the fathers earned. While it is fabulous that most women are working now, it is not easy at all,” says Sadana.Single parents and those with special needs’ kids face even more difficulties, say counsellors. A study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that mothers of children with autism experience stress hormone levels similar to those of soldiers in combat. “The research is so right,” says Kapoor who has worked with parents and kids with special needs for a decade at Ummeed Child Development Center. ShowQuotesAhmedabad-based single mom Reema Shah (name changed) says she was always so worried that she was “not enough” as a single parent that she had panic attacks which triggered high blood pressure and irritable bowel syndrome. Tests, medication and therapy helped her feel better, but she still feels anxious sometimes. “It is not easy being a single mom in a city where people still look down upon divorced persons. I feel like they are watching me all the time and waiting to say that I have failed as a parent like I failed as a wife. I am in constant flight or fight mode. To top that, I worry about being able to give my daughter enough, be it emotionally or materialistically,” says Shah, adding that most kids at her five-year-old's school have farmhouses where their parents host grand birthday bashes that are like mini-weddings. “The pressure to fit in used to stress me so much that I had stopped socialising,” she adds.Sensitive kids, scared parentsPsychologists say the rise in mental health concerns among children is another stressor for parents. “The incidence of depression, suicidal thoughts and self-harm has become so rampant among children that parents are always treading cautiously. They are almost scared to actually parent their kids in an appropriately firm manner,” says Marker. medium113413453Kapoor says it is worrisome that parents don’t pay heed to their own stress. “When a child has anxiety, we take the child to a counsellor. But what about the parent’s anxiety about the child having anxiety,” she asks, adding that we need to normalise parents seeking therapy or joining a support group. She has set up an online support group for parents of kids with special needs but says just five or six out of the 200-odd members turn up for meets because “parents don’t take out time to deal with their own fears and worries.”Keep calm and parent onExperts say we need more support groups as well as better work policies that provide flexibility and accommodate the unique needs of parents. Grover says the burden on parents, especially moms, will reduce considerably if society starts treating parenting as an ‘important job’ rather than one of the things we have to do. “Social status comes from how well one has done in one’s career. But parenting is hard and sometimes one parent needs to sacrifice their career to stay at home and care for the child. If we as a society make the parent feel that what they are doing is useful rather than making them feel bad about quitting their job, it will lessen the pressure to do it all,” he says.Grover warns that if we don’t make parenting less stressful, the next generation will avoid marriage and parenthood, “If our kids see us always stressed and burnt out, they will not want to have kids when they grow up. We will go down the same path as nations like South Korea where the birth rate has fallen far below the replacement rate.”