How to Manage Parenting Insecurities
You bring that baby home from the hospital. You have all the hopes and dreams of many years of fun and connection. But, wait, am I doing this right? Am I good at parenting? Am I messing up my child? Everyone else seems to be making a different choice.
Are parenting insecurities taking the fun out of parenting? You are not alone. An online survey reported that 82% of moms reported comparing themselves to other moms through online platforms and 69% reported feeling insecure about their parenting. (1)
Furthermore, Gen Z mothers are reported to experience anxiety at higher rates (over two-thirds rerouting anxiety symptoms) and feel pressure to be the “perfect parent” on a regular basis. (2)
So what can we do about it? Is it possible to overcome parenting insecurities? Today we will address a few strategies to assist you in parenting from a place of confidence rather than insecurity and comparison.
Here are 5 tips to assist you in parenting from a place of confidence.
Assess your own value for your family.
Everyone has different personal values and every family has a different set of combined values based on the values and needs of the members of the family. Take the time to address and name your family values. If you are co-parenting, in a partnership, or parenting with any other person, get them in on this conversation to address what is most important to you. Some things to consider are:
What do value most personally? (Creativity, adventure, problem-solving, acceptance, kindness, etc.)
What values do I most want my child to learn and see?
Is the parenting choice that I am making helping to promote or teach those values?
A few key things to remember here are, that your values list will look different than other friends and even your own family members. It makes sense that you are making different parenting choices because you are living and working out different values in your parenting choices.
Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your own upbringing.
This can be a really challenging one for a lot of people, but incredibly important. Even parents with the best of intentions, sometimes share messages or expectations with their children that are less than healthy, or from a place of their own hurt. As you begin your parenting journey, or continue your parenting journey, it is important to think about, and address any strengths or weaknesses in your own upbringing, and consider how you would like to continue developing those strengths in your own child, and potentially alter some of your practices, or habits based off of Lessons that you may wish you had not learned.
Addressing our own upbringing with honesty and authenticity is a great way to be empowered in the way that you make choices for your own children. Therapy can be a particularly helpful tool in exploring your own family history through the lens of attachment, styles, parental expectations, and other lenses that can offer a lot of insight into why we think and behave the way that we do.
Be selective in where and from who you get information and support.
This is an incredibly important one, especially for modern-day parents. We are overwhelmed with opinions, information, and the availability of resources to an extent far beyond any previous generation. Everyone has the ability to offer opinions and insights, so we need to be extremely cognizant, of who, and where we receive these opinions and insights from. It’s also important to remember that many people may be parenting from a place of their own insecurities and giving advice from a place of their own anxiety, distress, or places of emotional unhealth. It’s important to find healthy places and talk about parenting struggles, particularly places that do not force you to behave or think in the same way that others are behaving and thinking.
Your child is unique, and there is no perfect way to solve any specific problem. If someone is forcing a specific perspective onto you, it’s likely that that choice that they have made for their child is coming from a place of insecurity, and they may be looking to validate it by others, agreeing or making a similar choice. At the end of the day, you need people around you to seek advice and support from who are open to whatever parenting choice you believe is best for you, and promote the values that you desire for your family. Even if those values may differ from some of their own.
Understand that parenting is a matter of perspective and opinion.
Not every opinion is based on truth and reality. In fact, most statements are actually opinions and truly have no right or wrong to them. As a therapist, I sometimes will play a game with my clients where they are challenged to identify all of the opinions that are stated in a conversation. It’s incredible how many statements truly are just opinions and nothing more and not something that we have to accept as truth. (Of course, we will always advocate for evidence-based, professional information when it comes to the health and wellness of child-rearing. But many of the most common parenting struggles truly are opinion based, not grounded in specific science, or very wildly between children.)
Remember there is no perfect parent.
We know you’ve probably heard it before, but we think it’s important to say it again. There is no perfect parent. You will make mistakes. You will wish that you had a do-over on some key decisions. Hindsight bias will offer new insights, and at the end of the day, you truly are just doing the best that you can. The important thing is, though, the best that you can often is enough. Rather than focusing on imperfections, focusing on making repairs or changes when necessary can be an amazing lesson to teach a child. Offering an apology, making a mistake, choosing a different choice, learning new information and integrating it appropriately, are all incredibly valuable lessons that you are able to model for a child, even in the midst of some of your own parenting “mistakes“. You hope that a child will learn from their own mistakes throughout their upbringing, and you, too, can model this, even as you’re working to raise them.
And if you’re interested in getting some more support and insight into your parenting journey, our team would love to connect with you. We employ trained child and teen therapists, who offered great support to parents by both working with children, families, and parents themselves. Don’t do this journey alone. We offer online therapy options as well as in-person options in Arlington, Texas-based therapy group.
Learn more about positive parenting and mental health resources:
Keeping Calm When Your Child is Anything But
Talking with your Partner about Parenting
