Why Parenting Feels So Difficult Today - And What Has Gone Wrong

Many parents today find themselves struggling with a question they never expected to ask: Why has parenting become so difficult? Did our parents face the same challenges? The answer is largely no. And if this continues, the future may be even more difficult for our children when they become parents themselves.

Something fundamental has changed.

We live in a fast-moving world where everyone is constantly running, trying to keep up, trying to catch up. Life itself feels overwhelming. Managing one's own personal struggles and daily drama is difficult enough, and on top of that, parents are expected to accommodate a spouse, extended family, and an innocent child who is fully dependent on them for everything.

At the same time, the world offers easily available comfort and endless entertainment. These have slowly consumed personal space. In such an environment, it is effortless to turn a child towards a TV, smartphone, video game, or similar distraction. The blossoming young mind of a child, naturally eager to learn and grow is instantly drawn to moving objects, sound effects, animated characters, and simulated experiences that appear real and satisfy the mind's desires.

The child becomes fully engrossed. For the parent, these moments feel like relief.

However, when the child turns away from the screen and looks at the parent, the experience changes. The parent's presence does not offer the same stimulation. As a result, the child becomes bored, demanding, and restless. In the middle of this misunderstood tantrum, parents attempt to discipline the child. Predictably, it does not work, and frustration sets in.

Parents themselves are not untouched by this pattern. They too seek a break from their own lives and struggles, and the same tools of simulated experience are easily available to them. Their minds also begin to enjoy life through artificial engagement. When the child demands attention, the parent now faces the same difficulty the child does.

"We are becoming simulated robots trying to live like humans," says V K Vinod Sreekumar, CEO & Founder, PracticeSuite.

What follows is a stressful parent and a stressful child trying to connect, live together, and coexist. Fulfilling parental responsibility begins to feel hollow and daunting. Tensions rise within households. Parents quarrel and fight in front of their children. They present themselves one way to the outside world, while living very differently in private.

Children observe all of this closely. Over time, they lose respect.

When parents then try to guide, give feedback, discipline, or expect obedience, children do not take them seriously. If authority is forced upon them, they comply only because they have no choice. They begin to see childhood as a prison, a state of dependence they are desperate to escape.
Ask any child what they want, and the answer is simple: they want to grow up and become adults as soon as possible.

This is the quiet reality of modern parenting, a world where both parents and children are absorbed in simulated living, struggling to connect with one another in real life, and wondering why parenting no longer feels natural, effective, or fulfilling.

This release was published on openPR.