Parenting today, is a lot different than parenting in the older times. Rules of bringing up children have seen a sea change in the past few decades. As the society is going through constant evolution, these changes in parenting are only obvious. It is important that a parent understands the world a child is exposed to. The biggest challenges of modern parenting styles is raising kids, who are independent in thought and are empowered to take the right decisions for themselves. This full-time job comes with a new set of roles and responsibilities, which questions you at every juncture, making the challenges tougher and tougher as the children get older. Challenges of Modern Parenting Perfect Imbalance With rising costs and skyrocketing inflation, earning money is the unavoidable truth of raising a family. Thus, with both the parents working round the clock the child gets neglected. This is the most common problem faced by parents today. To make up for this neglect parents end up buying expensive gifts. Buying goodies is a temporary solution of the underlying problem of your own guilt. As both the child and parent gets used to this, the pattern continues for the rest of their lives. Sadly, the child never learns to earn anything, as most of the things he wanted were only a tantrum away. A parent's guilt and a child abusing the same, makes the perfect imbalance in modern parenting. Moral Code As the television and other modes of mass communication penetrated every household, it brought along a huge need for change in traditional parenting styles. Every parent tries to teach the child good values, so that they learn the distinction between morality and immorality at a very young age. However, when a child sees his favorite actor smoke, abuse and indulge in every activity that is termed as immoral with great enthusiasm, it does shake certain beliefs for both the child and the parent. Thus, the influx of media in day-to-day lives and the power of audio visual medium holds on a child's mind, makes the process of teaching them morals a big struggle for parents. Quality Vs. Time Time has always been a scarce resource. Especially with both the parents working, spending time with children gets very difficult. As both the parties are used to being away from each other, they rarely realize the importance of spending quality time with one another. Thus, in rare moments when they have time together, it's spent in silence or behind locked doors. Deteriorating quality of relationships due to lack of time, is the new age problem faced by modern parents. Sadly, with new age technologies such as cell phones, computers and Internet, chatting is the only form of conversations that one can have. Converting these virtual conversations into reality is another challenge faced by both, children and parents. Rat Race The modern world pressurizes children to be their best at whatever they are doing. If you aren't the best, you've lost out on life already. Take a moment here, and ask yourself what happened when you lost a school competition? Well, nothing really changed. In fact the failure taught you a new perspective of life. Slowing down and allowing your child to cope with extra curricular activities is the crucial part of normal development of a child. A pressure cooker situation worsens the situation at home between child and the parent. This may even make the child drift away from you and confide in people outside the house. Masked Feelings As many parents, live a stressful lifestyle, dictated by work pressure, spouse's death or divorce with the spouse, it gets difficult for them to handle their own emotional baggage. Under such circumstances, the child's emotional health gets neglected and is often ignored. As lack of communication widens the gap between parent and the child, it worsens relationships at home and makes a child build a secret world of friends and foes. Knowing your child's feelings is one of the toughest challenge of modern-day parenting. As this generation is exposed to huge amounts of information, helping them assimilate it can be lead to a unique struggle between the parent and the child. Besides these, teaching kids value of money, or relationships and being a single parent poses a few more challenges in modern parenting styles. Parenting is a wonderful joy, if is dealt with an open mind to learn a few things from your kids too!