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A quick scroll through social media is enough to flood our screens each day with remarkably serene images and videos: an impeccably dressed mother speaking to her child in little more than a whisper while the child is in the midst of a full-blown tantrum, a parenting coach offering a magic strategy to eliminate defiance, and posts insisting that a mother’s calm is the sole guarantee of her child’s happiness, while warning that raising one’s voice even once could permanently damage the child’s psychological wellbeing.
Meanwhile, the exhausted mother scrolls through her phone surrounded by scattered toys and the sound of incessant crying. A familiar feeling quietly settles in: the suffocating sense of failure and guilt.
Every morning, we exhausted mothers wake up to an unspoken digital trial that has squeezed motherhood into ready-made molds and impossible ideals. On these platforms, modern parenting has shifted from being a source of guidance into a measuring stick for success, a guillotine issuing harsh, predetermined judgments on anyone who loses her composure at the end of a long, exhausting day. But let’s pause here for a moment, set this imposed burden aside, and look at parenting through the lens of realism and common sense.
We are not raising children in closed rooms. We are constantly trying to shield them from overwhelming digital and ideological currents that demand continuous emotional vigilance and critical awareness from mothers.
From the heart of experience
As a mother of three, I confront this relentless stream of advice every day, just like countless other mothers. Yet lived experience has taught me one invaluable truth: motherhood cannot be reduced to a template, nor can everything we hear be adopted uncritically.
Life inside a home cannot be managed through 15-second videos. Children raised in the same household, even with the same parents, can differ profoundly. Each child has their own temperament and needs: some respond well to gentle guidance, others constantly test limits, while others need clear, firm boundaries in order to feel secure and organized. It is therefore unfair to appoint ourselves judges of a mother who raised her voice simply because online parenting experts promote the equation that “perfect parental calm equals happy children.” Every child is unique, and every mother knows the circumstances surrounding her own child better than anyone else.
An age of simplicity versus an age of “dangerous technology”
The pressure of this constant judgment extends beyond digital platforms. It also appears in the generational comparisons many of us hear from our mothers and grandmothers: “We raised five, six, even seven children. And today you struggle with one or two.”
Such comparisons are deeply unfair to mothers today. With all due respect to previous generations of mothers, allow us to say this: you lived in a far simpler and quieter world, while we are raising children amid the crushing pace and relentless noise of contemporary life.
In the past, childrearing was a shared responsibility supported by neighbors, extended family, and close-knit communities. Children could play safely outside for hours without causing anxiety. Today, mothers often face what might be called the age of dangerous technology, in which the entire world, with all its opportunities and its risks, enters a child’s mind through a small screen within the safety of the home itself. We are not raising children in closed rooms. We are constantly trying to shield them from overwhelming digital and ideological currents that demand continuous emotional vigilance and critical awareness from mothers—burdens that previous generations simply did not have to carry.
[We must] create flexible environments that encourage exploration rather than impose unrealistic expectations on both parent and child.
The trap of the digital race and the tangle of modern motherhood
The pressures of modern parenting are no longer confined to emotional life inside the home. They have expanded into an exhausting race of extracurricular activities. Today’s mother often finds herself transformed into a driver and logistics coordinator, running around all day between swimming lessons, sports, art classes, crafts, and music. Sometimes, without realizing it, she enters this race in an attempt to make up for what she herself lacked as a child, or to escape comparisons with relatives and other school parents, fearing that her children will somehow be seen as “less than” in a world saturated with advertising and consumer brands aimed at children.
This external race intersects with a web of social expectations that demands modern mothers excel in every sphere. They are expected to maintain their health, appearance, and fitness; keep an immaculate home; dress their children beautifully; prepare wholesome meals from scratch (which requires considerable time and effort in the kitchen); serve as teachers, emotional caregivers, wives, and equal partners. At the same time, they are expected to be well read, professionally accomplished, and financially independent. This endless cycle of expectations creates an overwhelming psychological burden and makes the feeling of perpetual inadequacy almost inevitable. After all, human energy has limits.
Modern parenting: A framework for understanding children, not restricting mothers
Critiquing these pressures does not mean dismissing modern parenting theories. Quite the opposite. When we read the pioneers of the field, we find that their goal has always been to help us understand children in early childhood, not to overburden mothers.
In The Absorbent Mind (1949), Maria Montessori writes: “The child is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lit. We should not do for the child what they can do for themselves.”
Her words invite us to create flexible environments that encourage exploration rather than impose unrealistic expectations on both parent and child.
Similarly, psychologist Laura Markham reminds us in Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids (2012) that when a young child collapses into tears, they are not trying to control their mother, they have simply lost control of their emotions. She encourages mothers to become their children’s external emotional regulators whenever possible, without suggesting that the world ends if a mother cannot remain perfectly calm every single time.
When Arab women writers attempted to adapt these ideas to local contexts, they likewise emphasized flexibility rather than rigid application. Parenting consultant Salwa al-Mulla writes in Smart Parenting (Dar al-Mada, 2016): “The first five years are the years in which a child’s reservoir of emotional security is built… Physical punishment teaches a child only to fear and withdraw.” The goal is to cultivate emotional security, and that security is built through love and flexibility, not by chasing appearances or impossible expectations.
A message of reason and compassion: You are a mother. You are enough.
Modern parenting is not an instruction manual to be followed word for word, nor is it a competition to prove perfection before other people or before our screens. Trying to comply with rigid rules while carrying so many overlapping responsibilities can turn motherhood into a relentless burden and strip it of its spontaneity and humanity.
Perhaps, then, mothers should approach parenting advice as tools for understanding rather than standards by which to judge themselves.
The moment a mother loses her temper does not erase the love and care she offers every day. Nor does the absence of perfection amount to failure. We can embrace the insights of modern parenting to better understand our children without allowing those insights to become another impossible set of expectations by which we measure our worth.
