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Forget Instagram’s image of motherhood. The happiest homes often have toys on the floor, and that’s a good thing.

Influencers promoting beta mom ideology have risen in popularity over the past six months, encouraging moms to let loose and lower expectations for the sake of “mental health.” Mothers who are tired of schedules full of activities and constantly reprimanding their children are jumping on board. 

The beta mom movement is a step in the right direction. The solution to mothers losing themselves in the lives of their children is integration, not elusion. Helicopter and tiger moms excessively oversee their children, pushing them to excellence by being overbearing. These trends ultimately create pressure for parents to build their children’s resumes, leaving children disconnected from their homes and dependent on their parents. On the other hand, the popular parenting style of the ’80s — unenforced curfews and minimal adult intervention — often failed to nurture morality and proper emotional processes.

Helicopter parents and tiger moms attempt to be perfect. They try to keep on top of their own public image by constantly monitoring their children’s lives, which fosters prejudice and agitation. 

Beta moms propose a balance between encouraging family engagement and allowing boredom, promoting productivity and leaving space for children to develop self-governance. The new trend is a huge improvement from recent popular styles of mothering. 

Issues arise when children live disconnected from their parents. This happens when parents do not participate in their childrens’ lives or when they micromanage their children, and kids are bounced around from one extracurricular activity to another, and never truly dwell at home. 

The solution is for mothers and children to integrate their lives, and beta moms come close to that. By not intentionally filling every empty moment of their children’s lives, beta moms create space for relationships to flourish inside and outside the home. By not cramming their schedules with their children’s activities, taking care of themselves, and being OK with a few dishes in the sink, they allow themselves to be present with their kids. 

Children require emotional connection to become stable adults, let alone to thrive. By giving children room to develop relationships and by allowing themselves the space to thrive alongside their children, moms are doing the best thing for them. Mothers should still encourage their children in excellence and disciplined effort, but not at the cost of everything else that makes us human. 

It’s good that beta moms reject perfection, because it’s impossible to achieve. Parents’ backgrounds, and their children’s strengths, weaknesses, and dispositions affect family dynamics and should change the parenting strategy. Copying a cut-and-dried method from another mom’s Instagram page to achieve the same outcome will nearly never work, even if every outcome you saw was authentic. 

The danger of the beta mom movement is in going too far. 

A Wall Street Journal article published in May said one mom expressed that the media promoting this trend makes her “feel less alone when she goes to the grocery store in her pajamas, hair in a bonnet.”

There’s a fine line between giving children space and neglecting them. When selfishness and laziness motivate mothers to involve themselves less in the lives of their children, they’re likely to leave their children too much to themselves. 

And while mothers should abandon their attempt to have an Instagram-perfect family, it’s also important for them to maintain their dignity and grace. Showing up to the grocery store in your pajamas crosses this line. The dishes can wait in the sink a while for the sake of quality time, but wash them.

Mothers should be look for answers to rising anxiety levels, starting by examining their parenting practices. Beta moms promote a less intense while still responsive approach to parenting as a solution to the high stress levels and anxiety many parents are facing. They rightly recognize that these mental health challenges don’t just affect parents but they also have a trickle-down effect on children. 

Children develop their emotional processing systems by observing their parents’ behavior. If parents are high-strung and easily irritable, children will feel emotionally volatile as well. 

Beta moms bring us one step closer to a proper parenting mindset, but until we have a movement of mothers advocating for a balanced approach out of the deepest love for their children, we’ll miss the mark. 

The beta mom movement reminds us that we should foster the relationships in our lives. It’s good to prioritize the person above mile-long to-do lists, especially for parents who have the responsibility of nurturing young hearts and minds. 

Parents need to give themselves in an outflow of love, not out of a fear of losing themselves. Parents, as you give, you’ll find the truest version of yourself, the only one Christ has intended you to be. Children will mimic this example and flourish.

Lucy Billings is a sophomore studying economics.