With a 3-year-old and a 1-year-old on each hip and suffering from postpartum anxiety, Kristin Gallant of the viral brand Big Little Feelings remembers looking around her neighborhood and scrolling through social media for clues. She said this whole “parenting” thing gave her clues about what exactly she should be doing.
“Everyone looked a lot different than me,” she said. This was before she became a parenting influencer. “They all seemed to be doing perfect. They all seemed to be cutting little cute shapes for snacks, and their hair was breaking out. It wasn’t like a diaper breakout, but that was an issue I was dealing with. They were wearing makeup. I was like, how do these people do this? What’s wrong with me?”
Kanika Chadda Gupta, a New Jersey mother, remembers similar feelings.
“A lot of people told me what to do. We had a nanny, a few nannies, a mother-in-law, a lot of aunts,” she said, adding that some of the advice she got was helpful. “But I felt really stuck, with so many opinions to sift through.”
Eventually, Gallant and Chadagupta discovered that many other parents were facing the same problem. I was overwhelmed by the culture of comparison and the constant flow of opinions and information, both in person and on social media.
“You look at social media and all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Oh my god, maybe I should make my own granola bars for my kids,'” said Anushka Salinas, CEO of baby monitor brand Nanit. “No, no, I don’t have time for that.”
Feeling overwhelmed with parenting is nothing new, but algorithms have made it inevitable, making it more pressing than ever, parents and experts say. Social media, especially influencer accounts and the ever-increasing number of new products, are exacerbating the feeling that parenting is becoming increasingly intense, extravagant, and harder to succeed.
“Bad Mamacon”
Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code and founder and CEO of Moms First, said previous generations encountered parenting feedback at social gatherings like school picnics and backyard barbecues. Parents now have many images of what they “should” do for their children. Because of this, Saujani says, “I always feel like I’m a bad mother.”
“We intentionally made that impossible,” Saujani said. “And it’s always been like this.”
School days and work days don’t match. Some working parents plan to return to work as little as two weeks after giving birth. All of these systems work together to make parents, especially mothers, feel like they’re failing, Saujani says.
She calls it “bad motherhood,” and explores it in her new documentary, No Country For Mothers. It dates back more than 200 years and has been labeled by many different labels, including helicopter moms, working moms, free-range moms, and breastfeeding and bottle-feeding moms.
“Every time we make some progress, we bring another divisive culture war,” Saujani said.
But there is hope, she said. When parents see others feeling just as lost and devastated as they are, it can be both comforting and upsetting. “I always say there is nothing more powerful than an angry mother.”
Our system is designed to make parents, especially mothers, uncomfortable.
Parents everywhere feel their bodies are getting thinner. A recent survey of 5,500 parents by New America found that 72% of parents want to spend more quality time with their children. A 2026 survey of nearly 1,500 parents by Nannit found that more than half of working parents said they rarely or never felt like they were spending enough time with their children, and two-thirds of stay-at-home parents said they felt guilty when they needed a break or wanted time alone.
Ironically, today’s parents actually spend more time with their children than previous generations, Salinas says. However, there is an idea that good parenting requires constant presence and optimization, which is completely unrealistic.
Siggy Cohen, author of You Are The Parent, says many parents feel that everything they do has a huge impact on their child’s future. That’s not true, she said.
“Think about it: When you’re overdoing it, what is it for? Who are you trying to please? What are you aiming for?” she said. “How to match something that doesn’t actually exist?”
Parenting isn’t about giving your kids the most museum memberships, library books, toys and games, Cohen said. And she asks her parents: “If we are always preoccupied with what is best for our children, are we leaving ourselves behind?”
All parents feel parental guilt, but mothers tend to be more affected by feeling overwhelmed or embarrassed. A recent LogicMark survey found that men are more likely to describe caregiving as rewarding, while women are more likely to describe it as difficult and worrying. In a recent survey of more than 1,000 women conducted by Kantar for Teleflora, 91% of respondents said they experienced “mom guilt” and 71% said they felt pressured to live up to expectations of being the “perfect” mother.
In both the Nanit and Teleflora surveys, most parents said the pressure to do more for their children came from within themselves. But Saujani said there is no denying the impact social media is having on parents’ purchasing and parenting habits, and the sense that parents are always behind the curve. Between influencer promotions, new advertising algorithms, and neighborhood conversations, there’s always pressure to do, buy, and give more to our kids, whether it’s a breakthrough potty training method, all-important swim lessons, or that must-have $1,200 Snoo basket.
Do online communities help or hurt your mental strain?
A New America survey found that parents also want more time for themselves.
“What they’re saying is, ‘We want something different than what’s currently being offered,'” said Alison Silkowski, senior policy adviser at New America’s New Practice Lab, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Chadagupta realized that some parents may unintentionally make things difficult for themselves. They don’t want to miss soccer practice, even if it means an hour alone. She aspires to see parents adopt a more community-driven approach to raising children.
Megan Hughes, a South Carolina mother, said she sometimes misses her son’s basketball games and feels guilty about it. But talking to other mothers helps, she said.
“Seeing other moms going through things like that made me feel a little more normal and knowing you weren’t the only one missing out on something,” she said.
Gallant and Chadagupta said their situation improved when they realized that the ideal of “perfect parents” was a myth. That’s why Gallant founded the parenting platform Big Little Feelings, and why Chadha Gupta hosts the podcast That’s Total Mom Sense.
Gallant said social media can be good for parents as long as it’s intentional and parents try to “not see things that make them feel bad” and try to accept parents like themselves.
“I’m more of a messy mom. I’m more of a type B mom. I’m always late,” she said. “But I try to look at all of this in a positive light, but I really accept that there’s no one right way to do it.”
Chadha-Gupta always tells people to follow their instincts, their sixth sense, which she calls “mother sense.” After all, she said, she knows herself and her children better than any influencer, podcaster or self-proclaimed “parenting expert.” Most days she cooks Indian food for her children and listens to hymns in the morning.
“No parenting book tells you to do that, right?” she said. “You have to find out what works for your personality type, your partner, your kids, and really tune out the noise.”
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.
Jennifer Boresen is a graphic journalist at USA TODAY, specializing in explanatory graphics and illustrations in a variety of fields, including politics, science, weather, and entertainment.
