Writing Your Own Rules of Motherhood

What does it mean to be the “perfect” mother? 

And is this a standard that we should even remotely be trying to live up to?

For some background, listen to episode 26 where I chat with Dr. Sophie Brock, a mentor of mine who specialises in this area and with whom I completed my Motherhood Studies Practitioner Certification. She has a fantastic podcast called "The Good Enough Mother" that you should definitely check out.

Firstly, let's acknowledge the pressure. Social media, movies, even our own upbringings bombard us with unrealistic expectations of what motherhood should look like. This constant comparison can be a recipe for guilt, shame, and exhaustion.

Professor Andrea O'Reilly outlines eight societal rules of perfect motherhood that contribute to this myth. These include the idea that mothers must be the sole caregivers, available 24/7, prioritise their children's needs above all else, and constantly strive for perfection. It's an impossible standard!

Here's the liberating truth: there is no such thing as a perfect mother. Dr. Sophie Brock shares that internalising these pressures can lead to significant stress, anxiety, and depression.

The good news is, we can rewrite the rules!

Here's how to get started:

1. Identify your triggers. Notice when you feel that familiar guilt or shame. Is it mealtimes? Screen time? Make a note of these situations.
2. Challenge your thoughts. These triggers are clues that you're holding yourself to an unrealistic standard.
3. Rewrite your rule. For each trigger, write down a new rule that reflects your values and priorities as a mother. For example, "I am a good enough mother when I get healthy food on the table most nights, not every night."
4. Embrace "good enough." Remember, your worth is not defined by your mothering. You are inherently good enough.

This journey of rewriting the rules is empowering. It allows you to create a motherhood experience that works for you and your family.

Remember, you are strong, capable, and enough exactly as you are.

Links:
Episode 26 with Dr Sophie Brock

The Good Enough Mother Podcast 

Amy Taylor-Kabbaz

Nikki McCahon

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Transcript

0:19

Hello again, I'm so grateful to you for joining me for another episode of Me Plus Motherhood, a podcast where we focus on you, the mother, where we talk about maternal health and well being. Stories of motherhood, matrescence and social constructs of motherhood, and returning to you, to who you really are, what you want, and how to get it. I'm delighted to be back with you for another episode in which we're going to talk about the perfect mother myth and good enough mothering. Now, For some context to this episode and for more theoretical background and the sociological principles behind it in more depth, go back and listen to episode 26 with Dr. Sophie Brock, where we talked about the perfect mother myth and the social construct of motherhood. Sophie is a mentor of mine. I'm currently a part of her mother supporter mentorship for 2024, where I work with other professionals who also support mothers in their work across all different industries. And I learn something new from Sophie on a weekly basis. The perfect mother myth is something I studied with her in 2021. And when that was my introduction to her work, she specializes in this field. And has incredible articles and her own podcast called the good enough mother, which I would highly recommend you tune into as well. In this episode, I'm going to talk a little bit more about How it can show up in your world that I am about the theory and also some questions to ask yourself around how you can give yourself permission for good enough instead of perfect and how striving for perfect can actually just make us sick. And we can get into this endless cycle of anxiety and shame and anger when we're trying to live up to ideals that are completely unrealistic because of the internalized expectations that we have, we have that not even aware of. when we enter into motherhood, we go through this whole series of changes. Which is part of the developmental process of matrescence. Matrescence is the transition to motherhood. It's like adolescence. We don't go from being a child to being an adult. We go through adolescence, through teenager, through puberty, in order to become an adult. And that involves a whole lot of changes. Both physical, emotional, mental, and emotional. Spiritual, how we have to show up in the world, the way we think about things, the things that influence us, there's this whole host of changes. And matrescence is the same. So when we become a mother, we not only go through physical and relational changes, we enter into the social role of a mother. I don't think many of us think about this or even are aware of it or know about it before it happens. So feel as though this information is, is, is so important. Some other people to go and whose work to follow is Amy Taylor Kabaz and Nikki McCann. Um, I'd love to have both of them on the show at a later date, but if you want to go and look up their work and do some more detailed reading on these topics, I'd encourage you to do that. So entering into the social role of a mother. comes with a bunch of expectations around what it means to be a good mother and how we experience becoming mothers is shaped and influenced by lots of different factors, including our relationships, our values, our upbringing, and also society and the context that we live in. So whether we know it or not, there's this whole rule book of motherhood that we measure ourselves up against., and the perfect mother myth, it includes internalized expectations from a number of different areas, including our upbringing, media, social media, even the movies. From those things, we internalize this image Of what it means to be a good mother because we're surrounded by it everywhere and much like our conditioning in every other area of our life, including what we believe is possible for us, , the way we mother, the way we parent, the way we show up in our relationships, all of the way that we think, feel, act, is influenced by our conditioning, our automatic subconscious behaviors, unless we are aware of it, and unless we are making conscious choices to shift it. So this episode is all about starting to become more aware, asking yourself, tuning in with yourself about the types of things that you are doing in your mothering. Where you are comparing yourselves to an ideal that you probably can't live up to and where you can give yourself permission to rewrite your own rules of motherhood in a way that feels good for you. Because when we don't fit with the perfect mother rules, we feel guilty, we feel not enough. We feel overwhelmed and exhausted by trying to keep it up to fit in with the rules of motherhood that have been set. I want to share with you the eight rules of motherhood of perfect motherhood, sorry, outlined by Professor Andrea O'Reilly, which were based on three decades of research. Number one, the first rule of perfect motherhood that our children can only be properly cared for by the biological mother. Number two, the second rule is that mothering must be provided 24 seven. The third rule, the mother must always put her children's needs before her own. Number four, mothers must turn to the experts for instruction. The fifth rule of perfect motherhood is that the mother must be fully satisfied, fulfilled, completed and composed in motherhood. Number six, the mother must lavish excessive amounts of time, energy and money in the rearing of their children. Number seven, the mother has full responsibility but no power from which to mother. And the eighth rule of perfect motherhood, that motherhood and child rearing are regarded as personal and private undertakings with no political import. I'd like to share a quote as well from Dr. Sophie Brock that says there is a vast amount of research emphasizing the detrimental effects on mothers when they are placed under the pressures of perfect motherhood. and when they internalize these shoulds. The more an individual mother internalizes these pressures, the more likely it is they will experience stress, anxiety, guilt, shame, and depression. So I wonder what you think about all of that. Some of you will be impacted more significantly by the perfect mother myth than others, depending on your conditioning, your personality, and your approach to life. Some of you will be heavily impacted trying to live up to the standards of perfect motherhood. What I want you to understand is that we are all impacted in some way. None of us can live up to the pressures of perfect motherhood. And, We can also be under the illusion that there is choice in that we can just choose to be better mothers and that is what makes perfect motherhood such a powerful and seemingly inescapable force in our lives. Understanding that there is this societal effect can be really liberating to recognize that it's not just you. There's a reason why you feel this way, that you can never be enough, never do enough. Maybe you don't feel this way, hopefully you don't, but most of the mothers I speak with do have an element of feeling not good enough. an understanding that there is this whole influence on you that you may not be aware of can make you go, Oh, thank goodness. Like now I understand why I feel stress, anxiety, guilt, shame, depression, those things that show up in motherhood when we, when we are comparing ourselves to an ideal that's unrealistic. In a conversation I had with my Illuminate coaching clients last week, we were talking about this topic and some of the ways in which this shows up in everyday life that we discussed included, I don't feel good enough when my kids don't eat vegetables. I don't feel good enough when my kids go to school, when they've got dirty legs because they're out playing before school and I didn't wash them down. I don't feel good enough when I yell at my children. When they have too much screen time, according to what is defined as the ideal. When I'm on my phone my work emails in front of them. When I'm not doing what I know I should for my self care, or for example, exercising or watching my weight. When I drop my kids at daycare, I don't feel good enough. When my baby is bottle fed and not breastfed, I don't feel good enough. This list could be miles long, and I would actually love if you have something like this to share. Please send me a DM on Instagram or send me an email, drop me a note, get in touch. Let me know when do you feel not good enough. It's a really powerful conversation. And what I work on with my clients is to start to rewrite the rules of motherhood. I shared with you the eight rules of perfect motherhood. What I encourage you to do is to write the rules for yourself of what good enough motherhood is for you. Starting with getting clear on when you don't feel good enough, and actually writing a rule out for yourself around, I am good enough. I am good enough, even when my children don't eat their vegetables, or we don't have vegetables seven nights a week, we only have them three nights a week. I am good enough. And mind you, none of your children's behavior is impacting on your self worth. You are good enough regardless of how you mother and how your children decide to make their choices. None of these things define your worth as a human being. You are enough just because. But I want you to feel good enough by defining for yourself what your rules of motherhood are. Because if you don't set the rules, then you're living by someone else's. And whose rules are you trying to live up to? I had a client say to me, but I'm trying to live up to my own rules. No one else's. It's my own standards. And that's great. That's great awareness what's important is actually making a decision on it. So for example, if you feel bad every time You're taking your children to school and maybe they've got food or toothpaste or mud on their uniform or on their legs or their hands or their arms. A client of mine actually said, I love that they play before school. I want that to be okay. And I'm actually okay with it if they go to school, but I'm worried about what everyone else thinks. And I said to her, well, you need to make a decision that it's okay for you and let it go. from now on, I'm going to be okay with this because I am okay with it. And it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks. So it's one thing to identify Where you are trying to live up to an unrealistic standard and the way you can pick up on it is to notice where you feel guilt. Notice something that stresses you. Maybe it's about the time you get dinner on the table in the evening or whenever you start to feel those not good enough feelings and the thought, and you notice the thoughts, make a note of it. This is a clue for where you need to rewrite your own rule. So noticing when I feel not good enough. writing out why it is I don't feel good enough, and then rewriting yourself a rule and making a decision that you're going to be okay and stick with it. Because at the end of the day, this is your motherhood experience and you can reimagine it in whatever way you like. No one is ever going to agree with all of the things you do, you get to choose. Of course, there's still going to be influences and impacts. There's going to be judgment. There's going to be society standards, but it's about you becoming okay with your, with your choices as best you can. So you can use a phrase as well. I'm a good enough mother when, again, this is not about you being good enough. You are good enough inherently. This is about your mothering. I'm a good enough mother when I do my best. I'm a good enough mother when I get food on the table for my children every night. I'm a good enough mother when my children get to school, no matter what they look like. I'm a good enough mother even when I yell, because I show my children that I have emotions. I'm a good enough mother when I drop my children to daycare because they're looked after and loved and to allow space for me to pursue what I enjoy. I hope this has been helpful for you. I'd love your feedback. It's such a big and important topic. There's so much more to share on this and lots of branches that shoot off from it, but it's a powerful topic that I hope to help shift and shape your thoughts around what's good enough for you. I hope it empowers you in your mothering practices and in your mindset. Please leave a review, like, share, send this to other friends, family, other mothers in your circles, if you feel like it might be supportive for them too. Thank you for listening.