Dr. Becky, How to Balance Modern Motherhood
The clinical psychologist and viral TikTok creator took to the stage at the Mom 2.0 Summit in Austin, Texas, to offer advice on modern parenting.
Teenagers these days are stressed enough trying to make sure their online content doesn’t come across as “offensive,” let alone monitoring what their parents post.
But 16-year-old Jaya Ramineni is seriously considering monitoring her mother’s social media pages. And she also receives a salary in return.
Jaya’s mother, Shubhra Ramineni, is an influencer and cookbook author who posts about cooking and parenting online. “I’m kind of embarrassed,” said Jaya, who asked her mother to block all her friends from seeing what was on her feed. But she said her mom enjoys some of the brand’s “fun PR packages” that send candy and other treats to families.
“We’re used to seeing teenagers becoming influencers, but to see my mother doing it, it’s kind of unusual for me,” Jaya said.
When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted Laminini’s book tour plans in 2020, she posted on Instagram. Initially, her content didn’t get much attention, but then her daughter saw some of her posts. What started as a typical teenage humiliation turned into a mother-daughter partnership when Laminini realized that her daughter could be her greatest asset for content creation.
“She has a lot of insight,” Ramineni said, adding that it was Jaya who encouraged her to join TikTok and stop putting GIFs and stickers on all her videos. “She has an eye for it… She knows what the platform is going to do.”
Jaya now helps her mother with video editing and attends speaking engagements with her mother, like she recently did at the Mothers Summit in Austin. Her mother pays her for her work in cash, perks, and Ugg boots. In exchange for Jaya’s attendance at the summit, Raminini made Jaya attend a Bruno Mars concert.
“There are definitely benefits,” Jaya said.
She works ‘behind the scenes’ while her mother makes videos
Jaya is not interested in marketing or content creation as a career. She wants to become a lawyer someday.
“I don’t do any personal content creation. I just do it for other people,” Jaya told USA TODAY. “I have a private Instagram account and I just post photos with my friends.”
But she said helping her mother run the business was a great learning opportunity. She honed her video editing skills and applied them to internships and leadership roles in her school’s extracurricular activities.
“Social media is growing and consuming many people’s lives. It seems like it’s part of every career now,” Jaya said. “Editing skills, understanding how algorithms work, understanding how people connect on social media so often, it’s good to have those skills.”
Jaya helps edit her mother’s videos, but draws the line at being featured in most content. She said she felt more comfortable being “behind the scenes.” She used to appear on her mother’s page, but that change happened when Jaya was still in middle school, around the same time that her mother’s account started going viral.
“Get them as much content as possible while they’re young, before they reach middle school,” Ramineni advised another mother and content creator at the summit.
Madeline Mitchell’s role covering women and the care economy for USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Contact Madeline at: memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ With X.
