Mother’s Day Special: Sonali Bendre reflects on differences in parenting styles across generations

The vivacious Sonali Bendre married producer Goldie Behl in 2022. They became proud parents of son Ranveer in 2005. Sonali did take a sabbatical from showbiz after becoming a mother but now has a flourishing career both as an actor and a celebrity judge. She gave a thoughtful response when we reached out to her to ask her views on motherhood.

Sharing her perceptions, she said motherhood changed her life, “It has changed me internally. I would say that when you have family, friends, and your loved ones depending on you, you love them immensely, but it is completely different from when you have this little human who is completely dependent on you. That kind of makes you grow up internally. Patience, gratitude, a lot of all these grown-up kind of feelings kind of bloom into you when you become a mother, that’s what I would say.”

When asked about the changing dynamics in the industry on balancing career and motherhood, Sonali replied, “The changing dynamics in the industry on balancing career and motherhood have become better and better. There was a time when you couldn’t imagine becoming a mother when going back to work—in fact, marrying and going back to work—but here we are now, where things are so much different that you can actually plan your motherhood, go back to work, and do some amazing work after that. So, I love the way it is going. We have a long way to go still, but it’s a good beginning.”

Her relationship with her mother definitely impacted her relationship with her child. “My relationship with my mother has definitely influenced my relationship with my child. I mean, you don’t want to believe that; you’re going to bring up your child the way you were brought up; you want to do some things differently because one always feels that we know better. I mean, that’s not the point; the point is that the world I grew up in is very different from the world my child is going to be growing up in.

“So there are certain things that never change, and those are the things that you fall back on for what I got from my mother, and those are the moral values—the love, the dependency—you know all of those, the family values—all of those things are never going to change; they are the core values—don’t lie, be a good human being—these are the core human values that are going to be the same,” she added.

She also reflected, “So, I do need to navigate in a different way than my mother did and look at it and think about it in a different way. So, yes, there is an influence from my mother, but there is also some newness where I am a mother or a parent to my child.”

See Also: Sonali Bendre on breaking free from being trapped in a certain image