Parenting Under Pressure

Perfection isn’t the goal of parenting, and chasing it quietly drains the bond you’re trying to protect. We open the door on why care feels heavier now—constant comparison, conflicting advice, safety anxieties, screens, school pressure—and what that weight does inside the parent-child relationship. From the therapy room to real homes, we connect the dots between self-judgment, exhaustion, and the moments you find yourself snappy, withdrawn, or over-controlling even when you know better.

Together, we unpack a counterintuitive truth: stress travels through relationships. Kids don’t see the pressure; they feel the distance. That’s where “good enough” parenting becomes a lifeline. You don’t have to be flawless to raise a resilient child—you need to be mostly present, willing to repair after ruptures, and able to tolerate big feelings without collapsing or clamping down. We talk through how small, realistic changes—less comparison scrolling, simpler routines, clearer boundaries—create the emotional bandwidth that makes calm possible again.

We also tackle a bold reframe: your child comes second because you must come first to care well. When the carer is cared for, the home softens, patience returns, and connection grows. Expect practical insights for recognizing invisible pressure, dropping myths fueled by social media, and choosing fit over performance when strategies stop working. If you’ve been asking yourself, “Why does this feel harder than it should?” this conversation brings clarity, relief, and a path forward rooted in presence, repair, and self-compassion.

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Chapters

• 0:00 A Therapist’s Perspective On Parents
• 2:29 Why Parenting Feels Harder Today
• 4:26 The Invisible Pressures And Comparisons
• 6:18 How Parental Stress Shapes Children
• 8:15 Good Enough Parenting And Repair
• 10:22 Put Your Needs First To Care Better

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello, this is Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist, and today I want to turn my attention to parents and parenting in a different kind of way. I think one of the things I constantly am reminded of is that when I work with children and young people, I have the privilege of seeing them for 50 minutes a week, sometimes more. And what I see is a young person who is trying to make sense of whatever's happening in their lives with someone who is completely focused on them. I don't need them to do anything, I don't need to in any way put them under any kind of pressure because I'm not the parent. I'm not the one who has to wake them up first thing in the morning or perhaps was up with them during the night. I'm not the one trying to get them to school, to do homework, to do whatever it is that they have to do. I'm not the parent, so I have that luxury. So I respect the fact that many of the topics that I talk about are provided for parents who don't have that luxury because they are busy plate spinning. They're dealing not only with the complexities of parents or parenting, but the complexity of all of the other factors, all of the other pressures that there are. We may be talking about a single parent, we could be talking about a parent who's in a difficult relationship, a parent who has two full-time jobs and only one of them is being paid for. So I understand the context in which parenting takes place, and it really isn't easy because I think there are so many invisible pressures that simply looking at the task of parenting through a lens of, well, you know, it's the job of the parent, and yes, parenting is difficult. I I was asking myself whether or not parenting now is any more difficult than it was, say, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago. And I think it probably is because we didn't have the same kind of pressures, distractions, expectations that come from so many directions. So why is parenting so hard today? It's really with the understanding of actually things are very much more difficult today in lots of ways. And as I said, although it's never been easy, many parents I work with tell me something very specific. This feels harder than they expected. Not because they don't love their children and not because they don't care enough, but because parenting today happens under an intensity of pressure that is often invisible, relentless, and deeply internalized. So I want to explore why parents feel so hard, parenting feels so hard now, and what that pressure does to parents emotionally and how it quietly shapes the relationship between parent and child. Now, the weight of modern parenting is today exists in a world of constant comparison. Social media shows us curated images of calm homes, regulated children, perfectly balanced meals, and parents who appear endlessly patient, emotionally available and fulfilled. Alongside this, parents are absorbing conflicting expert advice, constant warnings about getting it wrong, anxiety about mental health, safety, screens, education, and the future. But actually, and interestingly, there's a reduced community support and a reduced support in services, that results in a greater sense of isolation. So many parents are holding jobs, financial stress, caring responsibilities, and emotional labor while also trying to be emotionally attuned at all times. So parenting has shifted from something that happened within a village, a family system, or a community to something that feels intensely scrutinized and individualized, and that's exhausting. I think what pressure does to parents is it builds, and parents very often turn inwards. Instead of thinking this is really hard, or alongside thinking that, they might also think I'm failing. And then self-judgment creeps in quietly. And they might think other parents cope better than me, and I've heard this a lot. My child's behavior must mean I've done something wrong. If I were calmer, more patient, more consistent, this wouldn't be happening. So this internal pressure activates shame, anxiety, and self-criticism, and a sort of state of constant alertness. So this emotional cocktail is particularly draining. And yet, here's the paradox: the more pressure parents feel to be emotionally perfect, the harder it becomes to stay emotionally available. Now, children have an experience of this that is non-verbal, but they experience it nonetheless. They don't experience the parenting pressure directly, but they feel its emotional consequences. So when a parent is overwhelmed, self-critical, or constantly monitoring themselves, the relationship can subtly shift. Parents may become more reactive, snappy, withdrawn, or overly controlling, trying to manage behavior rather than see it and attempt to understand it, or they become emotionally depleted, struggling to stay present. Children, especially younger ones, interpret the world relationally. They don't think my parent is under pressure, they think something about me is difficult. This isn't because parents are doing something wrong, it's because stress travels through relationships. So the developing child, as I've talked about before, needs good enough, not perfect. And one of the most relieving ideas in parenting comes from Donald Willycott's concept of being the good enough parent. And children don't need parents who get it right all the time. They need parents who are mostly present, emotionally repair when things go wrong, but able to tolerate their child's feelings without collapsing or controlling. So when parents are allowed to be human, to be tired, frustrated, uncertain, children learn something crucial. And that is that relationships can survive difficulty. And that's an emotionally protective thing to learn. Very often I talk to parents, particularly mothers, who say my child comes first, and I do everything for the child. And I always notice there's a kind of urgent, anxious edge to that. And I want to say to them, actually, I'm not so sure. I think your child comes second, I think you come first, which turns the notion on its head. But if the carer isn't being cared for, then the quality of care becomes in some way affected. And if this again, it's not a criticism, it's a sort of it's almost like people have been conditioned to believe they must do everything and they must do everything right. And I have to say, that just really isn't realistic. What's realistic is to recognise that your own needs are very important, and your own needs can be voiced, and they can, one would hope, have some way of being met. Now I know not every situation is as simple as that, but if you're able to hold in mind the principle of I matter too, and I matter as much as my child, then in a sense your starting point is quite different. Now, again, I'm not the person who has to chase and do the homework and you know all of those sorts of things, and I think that nonetheless doesn't mean that I don't have an appreciation of those things, and sometimes just the voicing of this is what it's like, and trying wherever possible not to do comparisons because it really doesn't work. Sometimes parents say, Well, I know this person, and they do this, and they do that, and everything's fine. And I say, Well, that's the picture that you have, but you probably don't know what the story is underneath that, and the picture that you see and the story underneath it might not be the same. Actually, you're doing the very best you can, and you're doing the very best you can with all of those other factors in your life that you're having to manage and that you have no choice over. So I just want to remind you: if parenting is hard, you're absolutely right, and you're not getting it wrong. You are under pressure, and some of that pressure, if I'm honest, I believe to be an illusion. It's not real, it's perceived. And I'm not suggesting you're doing it to yourself because our wonderful social media environment is telling us how to get it right, how to be perfect. Well, if I haven't made the point clearly enough yet, that's an illusion, it's nonsense, there is no such thing. I hope this helps, and as I've said before, number of courses available to help parents to grasp not just these concepts, but many others. Thank you for the