The Invisible Weight of Motherhood: What I Unlearned From My Mom While Raising My Own Children

All That She Carried:

Of all the roles I play in the world, being a mother is my most enriching and challenging. I’m grateful that I get to be a mom to my two children and that I get to learn from them qualities like kindness, enthusiasm and the enduring spirit of fighting for the causes that they believe in.

I was invited to a podcast recently where I was asked some great thoughtful questions about my parenting style and the influence and the limits of my own mother’s style of parenting on me.

Here are the questions and my answers.
I am publishing them as two part, just so I can give the reader a breather so they come after their own reflections to the second part of this conversation.

Question I:

In today’s modern world, mothers have access to more resources than we ever did – technology, and support, social media etc etc. How do you think the invisible weight and burden of motherhood has changed in the 21st century? What are we up against now?

There is so much to unpack in that question because it sits at the intersection of how we were raised and how we are raising our own children.

I often think back to the day I landed in Chicago almost 24 years ago. I had just arrived after a 20-hour journey and was waiting for my brand-new husband to pick me up from the airport. Back then, we didn’t have smartphones or instant messaging. I remember wondering whether my mother even knew I had arrived safely. How would I tell her that I was alive, well, and halfway across the world?

Today, technology has made it incredibly easy to stay connected. We can track our children’s locations in real time and reach them with a single text or phone call. Yet, despite all this connectivity, the anxiety we feel as parents hasn’t disappeared. Love still carries the same worries it always has.

Our parents often had no idea where we were for hours at a time. Today, we know exactly where our children are, and somehow we still worry just as much—perhaps even more.

As a working mother with access to more resources and technology than my own mother had, I often ask myself whether parenting has become easier. In some ways, yes. But in many ways, it has become emotionally heavier.

We live in an age of infinite information, and with it comes infinite guilt.

Am I doing enough? Is my child falling behind? If I miss a parent-teacher conference because of work, am I failing as a mother? Every answer seems to be only a Google search away, yet none of those answers quiet the voice that keeps asking whether we’re enough.

Social media only amplifies that feeling. Every scroll presents another image of perfect motherhood, perfect families, and perfectly curated childhoods. It’s impossible not to compare ourselves.

When my mother was raising us, she faced a different kind of pressure. She was a career woman at a time when many women stayed home, so much of the judgment came from society. Today, that societal pressure still exists, but I think the heavier burden is the one we’ve internalized. We judge ourselves constantly, and social media has become another voice reinforcing those impossible standards.

The mental load feels heavier because perfection is always on display.

And yet, despite everything that has changed, the purpose of parenting remains exactly the same. We are still trying to raise responsible, kind, productive human beings who will contribute meaningfully to the world.

What has changed is the environment in which our children are growing up.

The pressures they face are unlike anything we experienced. Social media has created an endless cycle of comparison. I genuinely feel for this generation because they are growing up on a global stage.

We were simply allowed to be children. No one was recording our mistakes, documenting every milestone, or measuring our lives against thousands of strangers online. Our friendships, successes, and failures stayed within our own neighborhoods and communities.

Today’s children aren’t just comparing themselves to classmates or neighbors. They’re comparing themselves to the entire world.

Parenting has also become more complicated in other ways. Many of us are raising children far away from extended family. We don’t have the same village of grandparents, relatives, neighbors, or affordable domestic help that many of us grew up with. Technology has given us conveniences like dishwashers and washing machines, but it has also raised expectations. Parents today are expected to do more, know more, and be more than ever before.

The mission of parenting hasn’t changed.

The world in which we’re trying to accomplish it has.

Question II:

What do you value the most about your relationship with your mother?

For me, I feel like my mom would say things over and over again. Like, “Oh my gosh, if you would only lose five pounds, you would be on top of the world.” Or she’d repeat other things she wished I would change about myself.

In a way, it used to drive me crazy.

But that was her language of love. It wasn’t until I became a mom myself and started doing the same thing to my own children that I realized just how much I had become like my mom.

There are statistics somewhere that say twenty-seven is the magic age when you finally begin to feel gratitude for your parents and everything they’ve done in your life. I remember thinking, “Okay, I totally understand now. I get it.”

What has always struck me is something called the “secure base effect”. I think it’s a psychology term. The idea is that people perform better—in sports, in school, or in almost anything—when they know a parent is there. You want to live up to those golden standards because you want to make them proud.

I feel like having my mom beside me has always given me that extra confidence to go chase my wildest dreams. Because I know that her critiques, whatever they were, always came from a place of wanting me to do better.

That’s what I’ve learned. And in some way, I always want to convince my own children that my nagging is for the greater good. It’s just my way of trying to help them become better versions of themselves.

As parents, we can see so much potential in our children. It’s okay to push them a little—not for our benefit, but for theirs.

Question III:

What will you shed from your mom’s legacy because it no longer serves us and you don’t want to pass it forward.

When my mom says things like, “Have you eaten?” or “Have you landed?” those are completely unnecessary data points for her. But she wants to go through that checklist because it makes her feel like she’s done a good job as a mother. And it’s also her way of making me feel loved.

At 46, I’m actually very happy to still be able to say, “I have a loving mother.”

But what I’ve had to unlearn is how I respond to those interactions. For my own sanity, I’ve also learned to step back a little in my own kids’ lives.

I remember when my kids were in elementary school. I was the Indian-American ambassador for our local elementary school, helping new families who were joining the district. One day, the principal called me in and said, “Can we have a conversation?”

The problem was very simple. A lot of the Indian-American children under the age of ten were sitting at lunch with their lunch boxes open, but they weren’t eating.

The minute they described the problem, I knew exactly what it was.

These kids had never really fed themselves. In many Indian homes, feeding your child by hand is such a natural expression of love that we continue doing it much longer than we realize. That’s how I was also raised.

At that moment, my own children were in second and sixth grade, and I remember thinking, “Okay, it’s time to step back.”

Thankfully, I probably didn’t make that mistake to the same extent, but it reinforced something I already believed. Unless it’s a life-or-death situation, the stakes are usually pretty low. Let them struggle a little. Let them figure things out. Let them start adulting earlier than we sometimes allow.

I think that’s one of the biggest differences between cultures.

As South Asian parents, we naturally feel the need to take care of our children and protect them. Sometimes we even criticize Western parenting for expecting independence so early. I remember my coworker telling me once, “Oh, my baby is twenty days old and sleeps in their own room,” and all of us from South Asian backgrounds would be completely shocked hearing that.

We come from cultures where children are raised almost entirely in the arms of family until they’re much older. But somewhere between those two extremes, there’s probably a balance.

And there isn’t one right answer. Every family, every child, and every culture draws that line a little differently. And I think that’s okay.

QUESTION IV:

If your mom is here, what would you say to her now?

Whenever I complain to my mother, I say, “Look at my life. Look at the kids, the chores, the endless responsibilities, this and that.”

And she doesn’t even give me a chance to finish. She immediately says, “Now you understand how difficult my life was.”

And I’m like, “Okay, so this is definitely not going to be a therapy session.”

There is nothing I can tell my mother that she doesn’t already know. That’s how she puts it.

But jokes apart, I would tell her—and I do tell her—just go chase your dreams.

She is incredibly emotionally intelligent. She has so many gifts. But there is also a humility that comes from the background and culture she was raised in. For her generation, being humble was considered one of the greatest virtues.

Culturally, we were not always taught to be loud about our achievements, our talents, or what we could contribute to the world.

One of my best friends once told me, “You have a cancer drug inside you that you’ve invented, and you would still be sitting quietly in the corner. You need to open yourself up to the wind and showcase your brilliance.”

That is what I would tell my mother.

Amma, it’s not too late for you to chase your dreams.

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I will add the concluding part soon. Thank you. 

Please watch the podcast here: 
All That She Carried: Stories of Motherhood by the team at Her Munzill

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The Indian American Life