Parenting Pressures: No Need To Be Perfect

With a bun in the oven, soon-to-be-parents are prone to daydreaming of raising the perfect kid: obedient, polite, neat, smart; traits that will leave all other parents in awe of their kick-ass parenting skills. But when the baby comes and grows, and things don't end up like they envisioned, it comes as a complete shock to parents, especially to mothers. They are left feeling incompetent and this usually leads to depression.

The irony is, focusing too much on your child's well-being often works against the child and even contributes to their neuroses, according to Hara Estroff Marano, author of "A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting." In fact, The Epoch Times reports, not only does this obsessive care affect the child, it causes the parents themselves to lose sleep and neglect exercise and a healthy diet, which of course contribute to their stress and anxiety.

But fortunately, according to Huffington Post, it's never too late to do a complete 180 and become the parent your child and yourself could be happy with. Parents are advised to not be too hard on themselves and, honestly, to not take their jobs too seriously because they are all doing their best.

A photo posted by ｍｏｒｉ (@morimimi) on Mar 22, 2016 at 6:19am PDT

Parents-slash-bloggers Christine Koh and Asha Dornfest say that there's absolutely no need for parenting nowadays to be so stressful and high-maintenance. They recommend putting value in a belief system when it comes to raising kids and not let factors such as your own harsh criticisms, social media pressures, and unsolicited advice from relatives and friends to be any kind of issue.

When moms and dads learn to tune all these out and focus on the things that matter, they may most likely discover the super parent they always wanted to be was just inside of them all along.