Parenting By Proxy

Modern indian families in the age of role reversals and reel advice

- M Vinayak

It's 9 PM in a typical middle-class home in Delhi. The child is fussy. The mother is scrolling through Instagram for toddler calming techniques, watching a 30-second reel from a parenting influencer with a calm, Montessoristyle nursery and soft piano music playing in the background. In the other room, the father is warming milk, humming Lakdi ki Kaathi off-key, while simultaneously checking on his fantasy cricket scores. No one thinks this is odd anymore.

Welcome to parenting in 2025, where age-old lullabies are downloaded from Spotify, and grandparental wisdom competes with algorithmically generated content. Where feeding schedules are synced with smart watches, and parenting is increasingly done not through instinct or inter-generational knowledge—but by proxy.

Today, a generation of parents finds itself caught between the reassurance of tradition and the slick confidence of internet therapy. A new mother with postpartum anxiety might feel more seen by a psychologist’s Instagram carousel on “mom guilt” than by her own mother-in-law’s well-meaning but dismissive advice to “just be strong.” For many, the influencer in their palm feels more accessible than the elder in their home.

Yet, this isn’t just about replacing nani’s nuskhas with neuroscience. It’s about the emergence of a completely new parenting culture—shaped not by community, but by contents.

Parenting influencers in India now form a micro-industry of their own. There are moms who vlog every milestone; dads who do “morning routine” reels, and even toddlers who have more followers than most startup founders. Some of this content is insightful: offering mental health tools, nonviolent communication strategies, and neurodivergent-inclusive parenting hacks.