‘That child…’: When Samantha Ruth Prabhu said she always wanted to be a mom; expert weighs in

DISCLAIMER: This article is based on information from the public domain and/or the experts we spoke to.

At the time, Samantha also spoke candidly about what motherhood meant to her personally. “When I have a child, that child is going to be my universe,” she said. Reflecting on her own upbringing, she added, “I had the greatest respect for working mothers. My childhood was not very rosy. For all adults who haven’t had a very rosy childhood, the first thing they will tell you is that they want to give their child everything that they did not have. That’s something that has stuck with me.” She further shared, “So I think the first few years after I have a child, I would not be anywhere. That child will be everything for me.”

To understand more about the identity shift of parenthood and how to cope with it, we spoke with an expert.

How childhood experiences shape views on parenthood

Counselling psychologist Athul Raj tells indianexpress.com, “Our relationship with parenthood often begins long before we consciously think about having children. It begins with our experience of being parented. Childhood teaches us what care looks like, how emotions are handled and whether love feels safe, conditional or consistent.”

Those experiences don’t dictate our future, Raj notes, but they do shape the emotional assumptions we carry into adulthood. “Some people want to recreate what they had, while others are driven by the desire to build something different. The real psychological work lies in recognising that a child is not an opportunity to repair your own past. Parenthood becomes healthier when it is driven by a genuine desire to nurture another individual rather than by an attempt to compensate for what was once missing.”

Preparing for the identity shift of parenthood

Parenthood is an expansion of identity, not an erasure of it. Raj mentions that many people enter this phase believing that becoming a good parent requires complete self-sacrifice because culturally, we have romanticised the idea of losing ourselves for our children.

But psychologically, he says that a person who has abandoned every part of themselves eventually risks emotional exhaustion. “Preparing for parenthood is also preparing to protect your individuality, your relationships and your inner world. A child benefits from growing up around adults who remain connected to themselves. Your ambitions, friendships and partnership are not competing with your role as a parent; they are part of what sustains it,” says Raj.

Coping when life plans take an unexpected turn

One of adulthood’s deepest disappointments is discovering that life is not a sequence we can perfectly control. Many people quietly carry grief for an imagined future that did not arrive when they expected it to.

“In India, this grief is often intensified by external pressure because personal timelines become collective conversations. The challenge is to stop equating delay with failure. A life unfolding differently is not a life unfolding wrongly. Emotional resilience comes from accepting that uncertainty is not an interruption to life; it is part of life itself. Sometimes maturity lies in allowing our definitions of fulfilment to evolve rather than forcing reality to obey a deadline,” concludes Raj.

Samantha Ruth Prabhi has been trending on Google for the past one week.

DISCLAIMER: This article is based on information from the public domain and/or the experts we spoke to.