Common Myths of Motherhood
“It should come naturally.”
There are a lot of influences that make us believe that the moment we become a mother, it should feel “natural”. Though this may be some people’s experience, it is not true for everyone. It can be helpful to remember that your relationship with your child is a new relationship, and we can’t expect we know this little person the moment they enter the world. It we are a first-time mom, it is a new job and in turn means we have a lot of learning to do. Moms don’t often give themselves enough room to learn and make mistakes. It is important to trust that you have an instinct as a mom, and we can hold both trust in ourselves to “figure it out” and also embrace it is a learning process.
“I should be able to do it by myself.”
Perhaps this myth is an off-shoot of “it should come naturally”- if we expect we know what to do, then we don’t need help. Being a mother and parent is the job we value the most, so this too increases our desire to be “top performers” when it comes to our job as mom. There is importance placed on individualism and perfectionism in many parenting schools-of-thought, which also contributes to this myth. Moms can also struggle with allowing others to help because we have a vision of how things should happen or be done; we can even thwart others’ attempts to help. It takes acknowledging our own needs are still important, and there is no way to meet them consistently if we don’t ask for help in parenting.
“I’m a bad mom.”
I’d dare say that EVERY mom has this thought at least once, if not multiple times in the course of raising kids. We seem to have a knack for blaming ourselves if our child is distressed or having a hard time, or we perceive some sort of “failure” on our part. I am a strong believer that EVERY mom is doing the best she can, even when she or others perceive some sort of inadequacy on her part. The belief “I’m a bad mom” is also rooted in unrealistically high expectations we place on moms. When we allow we are human and imperfect, and our kids are their own little people, we can instead focus on how we show up for our kids. There is always a chance for making a repair when an emotional injury occurs in our relationship with our child.
“I should enjoy all parts of motherhood.”
Dread doing art with your kids? Hate giving baths? Find yourself debating whether the outing to the indoor playground was worth it given the meltdown that happened afterwards? If you answered “yes” to any of these, I’d argue you are pretty normal. We might have an idealized notion we would enjoy all those things as well as every aspect of motherhood, but this is rarely true for most moms. We tend to equate how much we enjoy motherhood to how much we love our kids-let’s agree these are two separate things. What would happen if we focused more of our energy on what we enjoy doing with our kids, and allowed we might delegate doing artwork to our partner or an aunt? Let’s remind ourselves others can meet our kids’ needs too.
