Parenting already asks a lot of us. So why does it feel like our generation is carrying so much more pressure, doubt, and noise?

In this Follow-Up episode, I’m revisiting one of our most listened-to conversations, a real, late-night talk with my husband Gaurav that hit a nerve for so many parents. We talk honestly about how comparison culture, constant advice, and fear of getting it wrong have made parenting feel heavier than it needs to be.

We Talk About

• Why our generation feels intense pressure to parent “the right way”

• How social media and constant access to other people’s lives fuels comparison

• Why more information does not always lead to more confidence

• How external voices can drown out parental intuition

• The problem with chasing a narrow definition of success for our kids

• Why perfection is not only impossible, but unnecessary

• How reconnecting with yourself can quiet parenting anxiety

• What it really means to be “doing your best” as a parent

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00;00;00;02 – 00;00;24;04

Dr. Mona

Welcome back to the follow up. Doctor Mona here, pediatrician. And your online mom friend who loves helping you out and telling you how it is. This is the series on the PedsDocTalk podcast where we revisit a favorite episode in less time than it takes to overthink a parenting decision. Today’s clip comes from one of our most listened to episodes ever, and honestly, I’m not surprised.

 

00;00;24;07 – 00;00;49;21

Dr. Mona

You all really love when my husband Gaurav joins me and this conversation hits something real for a lot of you. Gaurav is an er doctor by day night too because he’s a shift worker and when he’s not working, he’s a wonderful dad and my partner in all things. What I love most is when his night owl self loves to bring up deep, meaningful conversations at 11 p.m. when I’m about to go to sleep, like, read a room, sweetie.

 

00;00;49;24 – 00;01;10;05

Dr. Mona

So I’m releasing this as it’s an example of some of the deep, insightful combos we share on a regular basis. For your listening ears. We are bringing this one back because parenting already asked a lot of us, and this episode was a reminder that we often make it harder by chasing perfection, comparing ourselves, and listening to too many outside voices.

 

00;01;10;07 – 00;01;33;28

Dr. Mona

This is a short revisit, but if it resonates, I want you to go download the full episode and listen when you have a little more time. Tag at the PedsDocTalk podcast and at PedsDocTalk and tell us what part stuck out to you. Especially this one made you exhale a little bit. Okay, let’s get into this awesome follow up.

 

00;01;34;00 – 00;01;40;26

Dr. Mona

What would you say is like that top reason, or one of the reasons why you feel our generation is making it harder than it needs to be?

 

00;01;41;02 – 00;02;01;16

Gaurav

Well, I think our our generation has so many things going for it in a positive sense. Right? We’re so connected now more than we ever have, more than any other generation has ever been connected in the past. And that’s been great for so many new innovations and things of that nature. But with all those great positives, there have come some drawbacks.

 

00;02;01;16 – 00;02;29;23

Gaurav

And I see it in everyday life and in parenting, like you and I. And it just seems that we are so hyper focused on getting it right. And when I say getting it right, I put the word right in quotation marks, because there’s just so much emphasis on not wanting to make a mistake or I don’t want to screw up my kid or I don’t want to do to my children what my parents did to me.

 

00;02;29;25 – 00;03;06;13

Gaurav

And now when you take that, and you add in the fact that we’re now in a super hyper connected world where social media is in everybody’s life every single day, and we have glimpses into other people’s lives and how their parenting we’re creating this environment, this very toxic environment where one we’re not even sure what we’re doing is necessarily 100% correct, but we’re comparing that to someone else’s journey and parenting and sometimes giving ourselves the shorter end of the deal on on that comparison.

 

00;03;06;15 – 00;03;30;14

Gaurav

And, you know, if we were to take this back to when you and I were growing up as kids, right? The only things were the things that were happening down the street from us, right? Or what was happening. Two houses down or three houses down. That was our world. It was just our neighborhood, our block. Right? We didn’t know or see or have exposure to anyone else’s lives or anything like that.

 

00;03;30;16 – 00;04;00;06

Gaurav

Now you take what’s going on in our generation at the moment where just by flipping on the phone, you have access to millions and millions of people’s lives on a daily basis. And in our culture, we have created this sentiment that, you know, you must be doing something a certain way. You must parent this way. You must sleep, train your child, you know, don’t sleep, train your child like all these mixed messages coming from all different angles.

 

00;04;00;08 – 00;04;23;16

Gaurav

And what I think it’s doing is, is that it’s creating a real imbalance in, in the parent in terms of what is it that they’re supposed to do. There are so many mixed messages. There’s no one size fits all manual for this, and there’s just so much I don’t want to say confusion, but I want to say there’s so much information out there that it may be just too much information.

 

00;04;23;18 – 00;04;38;11

Dr. Mona

Do you feel as if we lose that intuition because we’re kind of comparing ourselves too much, or not focusing on our own needs? Or what would be your perspective as to why you feel? And this could be a discussion we have that our generation has lost that intuition.

 

00;04;38;13 – 00;05;14;12

Gaurav

I don’t want to say we necessarily lost the intuition. I think the intuition is something that lives inside of all of us, and we all have it. I think that what has happened is, is that our culture has become so toxic, where it’s that we’ve been conditioned to suppress that intuition and focus our attention on external factors and external voices and external measures of quote unquote, success or modeling, where we’ve subconsciously we’ve suppressed our own intuition and we’ve done this to ourselves.

 

00;05;14;15 – 00;05;34;19

Gaurav

But to a larger degree, society has done this to us or has helped or played a part in doing this to us. We, like I mentioned in the beginning, have never been more connected with each other, but I think being so connected with each other has caused us to become disconnected with ourselves. And that to me is the key.

 

00;05;34;19 – 00;06;02;05

Gaurav

It’s that we need to go back and reconnect with who we are authentically, what our intuition and instincts are, and be true to them and be confident in them. And so much of our culture forces us to abandon our intuition or gut feeling right on a constant basis. We are bombarded with messages that we’re not enough. We need this item to get the best results for your children.

 

00;06;02;05 – 00;06;26;07

Gaurav

Your child needs to go to this type of school. You need to be in these kinds of extracurricular activities. They need to be eating these whole foods and things of that nature. And what we’ve lost in all that is our own authenticity and our own intuition, and how we feel like we should be raising our children. That aligns with who we are as people individually, right?

 

00;06;26;12 – 00;06;35;01

Gaurav

As opposed to what everyone else around us is saying and doing. And it’s very difficult because like I said, we’re being bombarded.

 

00;06;35;01 – 00;06;51;15

Dr. Mona

And you mentioned, you know, this view of success, right? Like that our generation has this skewed view of success or has created this. And that can be hard when we’re trying to tap into and connect with ourselves, like you said. What do you see that as? Like in terms of our generation looking at success as well?

 

00;06;51;15 – 00;07;17;16

Gaurav

It depends on what you define the word success to mean. And I think that’s the first question everybody needs to ask themselves is like, what is the definition of success? Who came up with the definition of success? If I were to look up the word success in a dictionary, what would be written underneath it? And I think that definition is totally different for every single human being on this planet.

 

00;07;17;16 – 00;07;26;00

Dr. Mona

I looked it up the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. So of course that’s going to be subjective to each person. That’s the dictionary definition. And you’re right on.

 

00;07;26;02 – 00;07;56;04

Gaurav

Yeah you’re right. So that’s going to be as individual as each individual human being on this planet is. But what our culture has created and what our environment has created is this false narrative that success has to look like a certain image, right? You need to get into what the image is. We are constantly shown these images of what quote unquote success looks like, right?

 

00;07;56;07 – 00;08;33;26

Gaurav

And so I think every parent would agree that we want the best for our children, and we want to give them the best opportunities to be the best versions of themselves. But what I see, unfortunately, happening far too often is that we are misusing this definition of success and then projecting that onto our children and forcing them to conform to this mold, let’s say, so that if everything aligns and we do everything right, then little lady Sue over here will be a successful person in life.

 

00;08;33;28 – 00;08;50;14

Dr. Mona

Yeah. And I think, you mentioned about how in some way every parent will cause some sort of trauma. I would love to dive into that in another episode, because I think how I word is, and some way our children will not like everything we did as parents, even if we’re the perfect parent, whether they’re going to label as trauma or not.

 

00;08;50;14 – 00;09;04;24

Dr. Mona

Like me. And you spoken about like our children when they get up, you know, a different generation, right? It could be like, you know, I didn’t really love that my parent was on a cell phone, right? Like that to be something that our kids don’t like as they get older, right? That, hey, we have cell phones and our parents generation did not.

 

00;09;04;24 – 00;09;20;12

Dr. Mona

So there’s always going to be something with each generation that the kids will grow up and say, you know, I didn’t like the way it and I’m going to evolve. But it’s like you said, that part of the evolution that’s so important as we adapt and grow. Now, what would be your final you know, we started this talking about the parenting is hard enough.

 

00;09;20;12 – 00;09;28;08

Dr. Mona

Why are we making it harder in your like kind of one liner? What would be a way that a parent can simplify all this? Like you said, using that word?

 

00;09;28;10 – 00;09;56;17

Gaurav

I think it all comes back to looking at yourself in the mirror and taking a really deep, deep look in the mirror and starting to unravel all those layers of conditioning that you’ve been exposed to over the years. And once you start to unravel those layers, you start to notice patterns in how you show up and how you respond and how you work and how you view things.

 

00;09;56;20 – 00;10;38;07

Gaurav

And that’s the opportunity. There’s the opportunity you have. Or you can change some of those narratives. And if you’re able to do that and trust me, it’s someone talking from experience. It’s extremely difficult to do because these things have been ingrained in us for decades. So it’s not something that’s easy work or it’s going to change overnight. But if you could just start the process of self evaluate and seeing how you operate and why you think the way you think and why you do the things the way you do them, then you can start the process of re parenting yourself and that will trickle down into your own children, and then you’ll show up authentically

 

00;10;38;07 – 00;11;01;13

Gaurav

for your children. Then that intuition, that gut feeling, will finally be able to surface again. And it will guide you throughout this journey. And you will feel safe in those decisions. You won’t feel the anxiety anymore. You won’t feel the oh my God, she’s not rolling over. She’s not talking by 18 months or you know, he’s not as coordinated on the soccer field as the other kids.

 

00;11;01;16 – 00;11;24;24

Gaurav

All that chattering in the mind that happens that all times will start to slowly become quieter and quieter and quieter, because you will know that there is no such thing as a perfect parent. Again, look it up in the dictionary and tell me what it says. Under the word perfect parent doesn’t exist. It will allow you to then enjoy the journey however it unfolds.

 

00;11;24;27 – 00;11;57;05

Gaurav

And yeah, that will allow you to go to bed every night. Put your head on that pillow, know that you’re doing the best that you possibly can, and doing the best that you can. And that’s all we’re really should be striving for, is to do the best that we can. And if we can get to a place where we can live by that mantra and be okay with it, then I think you will see such a cultural shift in the amount of anxiety and depression and just stress around parenting just completely dissolve.

 

00;11;57;07 – 00;12;12;00

Gaurav

It’s not easy, especially in this day and age, given how, like I said, how bombarded we are with ways in which we need to be a better parent or a better this or a better that, but we just need to be okay with just being okay.

 

00;12;12;00 – 00;12;16;18

Dr. Mona

Yeah.

 

00;12;16;21 – 00;12;37;29

Dr. Mona

And that’s your follow up. Just a small dose of the real relatable and eye opening conversations we love to have here. If you smiled, nodded, or had an moment, go ahead and download, follow and share this episode with a friend. Let’s grow this village together for more everyday parenting wins and real talk. Hang out with us on Instagram at the PedsDocTalk podcast.

 

00;12;38;06 – 00;12;53;18

Dr. Mona

Want more? Dive into the full episode and more at PedsDocTalk.com. Because parenting is better with support. And remember, consistency is key. Humor is medicine and follow ups are everything. I’m Doctor Mona. See you next time for your next dose.