How do I balance being Hindu parent & an American one?

Dear Kavita,

I’m a new mom, and that means I’m navigating so many decision points. Do I prioritize where I live based on my career, or where we have extended family? Do I try to homeschool my kid to avoid the pressures of racism and prejudice? How strict should our diet be? It feels like there’s probably a hundred things that were so obvious to my parents growing up in a place where Hinduism felt embedded in culture, but that I feel lost on. How does a Hindu parent in America decide?

— Overwhelmed

Dear Overwhelmed,

I'll give you the bad news first. There's no shortage of belief systems out there that will hand you a prescriptive answer to every one of these questions. Hinduism has never been one of them. It's always been a tradition sensitive to the idea that context changes everything, and that no single answer fits every life. Our Hindu sources of knowledge (like the Ramayana, Mahabharata, and so many others) constantly show us people in nearly identical situations making different choices, without insisting that one of them was "right" and the rest were failures. They show us so many layers - what is moral, what is easy, and what serves the greater good are often aligned, but when they aren’t, there’s a lot of guidance on what is “right”. So no, there isn't one set of values you inherit as a Hindu American parent that resolves career versus family, or public school versus homeschool, or how strict to keep the diet. This column isn't going to end in "in-laws, public school, and vegetarian."

The good news is that this same tradition is remarkably good at helping you figure out who you want to be — even standing in the middle of a culture that doesn't share your assumptions. The move isn't to look for the right answer. It's to move away from "right and wrong" entirely, and ask instead: what feels dharmic, for me, in this specific situation? Is it what I need? Is it what serves the greater good? Part of that is giving yourself the grace to know that your parents, your friends, your critics choosing differently doesn't make your choice less correct for you.

Take the career-versus-family question. If you lean toward your career, you have real company: Krishna's counsel to Arjuna on the battlefield is, at its core, an instruction to hold his duty — his svadharma as a warrior and a prince — above the pull of family attachment sitting in front of him. Arjuna doesn't get to opt out of what his higher responsibility is because family is standing in the way. That's a real Hindu argument for choosing the path that's yours to walk, to prioritize the meaningfulness of your work, even when family wants you to stay close.

But if you lean toward staying near family and roots, you have equally real company, and it isn't a lesser argument. When Rama is exiled, his brother Bharata is left the throne — everything a career-minded reading would tell him to want. He refuses it. He rules Ayodhya as a steward in Rama's name, placing Rama's sandals on the throne rather than sitting on it himself, holding the kingdom together until his brother returns. He rejects princely comforts, against the argument that they would enable him to do the work as a ruler, rejects the idea that his duty to the people comes above his connection to his family. We don't remember Bharata as someone who failed to seize his moment. We remember him as someone who held his family and his community together with as much dignity as any king. I really believe the Ramayan offers us the chance to see what it means to think deeply about who we want to be in a world that pulls on us in so many directions, rather than one that tells us what a right or wrong choice looks like.

That's really the whole method, and I'd rather hand it to you fully formed than pretend I have a verse for homeschooling. Ask yourself, honestly, what's driving the decision — fear, duty, love, ambition — and ask whether the path you're leaning toward lets you show up as the parent and person you actually want to be, not the one your parents were or the one Instagram tells you to be. Do that for the school decision. Do that for the diet decision. You'll probably find that the "hundred obvious things" your parents had weren't really answers handed down from Hindu texts — they were their own version of this same exercise, run inside a culture that made the questions less visible. Yours are just more visible. That's not a disadvantage. It's an invitation to actually do the work your faith has always asked of you.

Dr. Kavita Pallod Sekhsaria

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This content is for educational and reflective purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care or medical advice. If something you've read here resonates and you'd like support, I welcome you to reach out for a consultation. For additional resources, the Hindu American Foundation's Navigating Mental Health guide and southasiantherapists.org can help connect you with culturally informed care. If you are in crisis or experiencing a mental health emergency, please call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) for immediate support.