Twinkling lights, festive songs, the gentle start of the rush at the shops… and the low-level hum of anxiety emanating from parents pressured to engineer the magic of the holidays for their kids.
Feel familiar? ‘Tis the season indeed.
What was once marketed as a season of rest and family bonding has somehow, at some point, been repackaged into a high-stakes performance review, particularly for parents and caregivers. Now, they’re expected to optimise everything, including leisure.
Performing Family, Publicly
Today’s “metrics” of leisure include:
- Did we do enough activities?
- Did the kids experience enough joy?
- Did we post the right photos, at the right time and with the right captions?
- Did we prove that our family unit is thriving?
In a culture that measures value through output, “holiday fun” becomes another KPI. You’re not just relaxing together at this point, you’re hitting benchmarks: festive outings, themed crafts, tightly-packed itineraries for vacations abroad, matching pyjamas, seasonal baking, the list goes on!
Shaped heavily by social media’s capitalistic algorithms, “good parenting” or even “sharenting” now requires turning the holiday period into a production schedule where quality time is something heavily curated and forced upon our children rather than being something that emerges naturally from being together.
In these moments, especially during the holiday season, we need to remember that children don’t experience life as a highlight reel. Often, the smallest, messiest, and most spontaneous moments become the memories that last.
Children as Extensions of Parental Identity
Family gatherings add another layer of pressure for parents and caregivers.
They often feel their children’s behavior is not just an individual expression, but a public performance with social stakes. Meltdowns and awkwardness all become interpretive signals about family dynamics.
The pressure on children to be their “best selves” mirrors the pressure adults feel. It’s not just “be polite” and “share”, but also “be interesting for the relatives so it reflects well on us as parents.”
It’s a lot to ask of small humans.
What Gets Lost
In the anxiety to manage outcomes, we miss the thing that makes holidays meaningful: presence over performance.
Connection rarely looks picturesque. Among them may be:
- long conversations after the kids fall asleep
- messy kitchens from shared cooking
- bored children lying on the floor, inventing games
- disagreements, reconciliations, and honest moments
- the weird, silly, unfiltered chaos of family
- but also, quiet, nothing, mundane moments where you just let yourselves be.
These moments don’t fit neatly into curated feeds or into parental success narratives. But then again, why are we limiting our versions of joy and rest to others’ perceptions of what those should be?
Good Enough as an Act of Resistance
To be a “good enough” parent during the holidays is not to minimise joy. The idea here is to reject the idea that joy must be optimised, documented and validated publicly to count.
As we’ve been saying all long in the Good Enough series, the most radical act is to do less. This means less scheduling, less comparison, less expectation, less performance.
Let the holidays be a season of being, not a project of becoming. Let the children show up as whoever they are that day, whether that be tired, cranky, silly, loud, or quiet. And let parents show up imperfect, underprepared, and sometimes overwhelmed.
The goal is to have a holiday that really feels like yours. Not social media’s. Not family members’.
Good enough is permission and honesty and, quite frankly, sanity. In a culture obsessed with performance, it might just be one of the most loving gifts we can offer to ourselves and to the wonderful children we’re raising.
Challenge #3
Block off one or two full hours of NOTHINGNESS during the holidays. No activities for your children. No errands to run or chores to tick off for yourself. Just be with each other and be present.
Happy holidays, everyone.
Rinni Amran
Hi! I’m a cultural writer-researcher with over 10 years’ experience in academia. From the warmth of Brunei to the mindfulness of the Nordics, I tell stories that help us reconnect beyond screens and beyond the scroll.
