Mom points out how parents these days are burdened with high expectations from society

It's not just the kids who are burdened with society's expectations of them, parents fall victim to it too. When kids are expected to perform well at school, and in extracurricular activities and are taught to be respectful and a good person, parents have the massive responsibility to become the ideal and flawless guardians to their kids. Jennifer B, a mom on Instagram who goes by @8thdayformomonly shared an interesting video shedding light on this topic.

Jennifer's caption on the post read: "Do you remember your parents doing activities with you as often as you do activities with your kids? I feel like a lot of this is the expectation placed upon us by ourselves, society, and everyone else’s highlight reels on social media. I don’t recall my parents doing the same thing." "So I just spent a weekend with my kids who are six, four and two years old and the amount of time I spent setting up activities, cleaning up activities and participating in activities, is so much," Jennifer admits at the beginning of her video. She feels that the standards that the parents of her time are holding upto themselves are too high. 

She doesn't remember her own mother's entire life revolving around entertaining her and she is not getting involved to play with her kids to prove that she is the best mom in the world either. Jennifer questions why parents are burdening themselves to entertain their kids so "their kids don't die from excessive screen time." The advancement in tech didn't even make the whole parenting process easier when households like Jennifer's with two working parents are struggling to balance everything. "We can give them space to entertain themselves," she concludes. Several parents on Instagram showed up to share their parenting experiences in the comment section and compared it to how different their parents were from them.

@mrsashlynnball quipped, "I don’t have the mental capacity or patience to 'play' with my children so I don’t do it all that often. I do many other things with them instead to make memories and then I often let them play on their own with things that don’t take setup and clean up. My 6-year-old daughter pretends to cook with her play food, beads, and kinetic sand with several cooking shows (ie Girl Meet Farm, Pioneer Women, Kid's Baking Championship) on the TV. My 3 year old son plays with his sister’s doll house, puzzles and race cars and needs more hands-on attention than my 6-year-old."

@anne.tawney shared, "The way I entertain my kids is that they help me cook and clean. If they don't want to, they go play by themselves. The only time we did activities was when we went to an event or something that gave us an activity kit or something. Gingerbread house out of cardboard from the library? Awesome. Gratitude turkey from church? Yep! Other than that, they can wash dishes with me and help me change laundry and run around screaming while I vacuum. That's how I stay sane." Hopefully, both the parents and kids can relieve themselves from the bars and expectations set by society.

@juli.ka74 added, "I sometimes think, there is so much said and expected around the children just to make parents spend huge amounts of money on toys, games, snacks, entertainment, tickets, activities, psychologists, private teachers and lessons etc. It’s a huge industry making huge profits. You are always forced to spend. You can stop spending on yourself, but to stop spending on your child is much more difficult."