<p>Parental burnout is an increasingly common phenomenon in Western countries, affecting not only parents with extra-ordinary familial situations (e.g., a child with handicap), but also ‘regular’ parents confronted with the ordinary challenges of parenthood. The question then rises as why is parents’ everyday life perceived as so peculiarly stressful? One hypothesis that is explored in this paper is that the widespread regime of intensive parenting in the West offers misleading images of what everyday life for parents should look like. By analyzing two exemplary cases, namely momfluencers and government parental advice in Flanders, the article presents two types of representation of daily parental life: one that glorifies the everyday (i.e., perfect blog post of instamums) and one that charges daily moments with educational power (i.e., parental advice’s emphasis on daily activities as learning opportunities). From the analysis above, four core traits of ‘intense’ representations of everyday life can be found: novelty, excitement, filling time, and usefulness. The article reflects on these characteristics and for each trait formulates a counter-narrative which preserves the ordinariness of everyday life, without either glorifying it or concealing it. The goal then is to sketch an alternative framework to conceptualize parental everyday life without masking its more ordinary and banal character, a framework that might also be more attuned with parents’ lived experiences.</p>