“I Want to Be a Good Mom”

“I don’t know if I like being a mother sometimes.”

My client Hazel, a new mother in her late thirties, was struggling to accept the fact that her foray into parenthood wasn’t going as smoothly as she expected.

She was hesitant to share her true feelings about motherhood, yet she also clearly wanted to do it— her instinct was fighting against her self-protection.

“I love my kid so much, like beyond. But the role of mother? The expectations of being a mother? I really resent it at times.” Hazel’s declaration hung in the space between us. Society had convinced her that this time in her life should be nothing but rewarding.

She repositioned herself on the couch and moved her thick bangs out of her eyes so she could finally look back into mine.

“I just wish my overabundance of love for my daughter would translate into love of the role of motherhood, you know? I want to be a good mother, one that shows enthusiasm at every new utterance, every milestone, every step she takes. I want to be that mom who involves her kid in every activity, totes her around town to her art classes and sporting events, and is her biggest cheerleader. I want to be the kind of good mother I anticipated I’d be. But I’m not there. I don’t feel the way I think most mothers feel, like a spontaneous and all-consuming sense of… YES,” she said. “I don’t know if saying that makes me brave or horrible.”

Instagram-Perfect Motherhood

As a psychologist, I’m acutely aware that there’s an important space between Instagram-perfect motherhood and clinical postpartum mood and anxiety disorders. This is the space where most mothers live, and it’s here that culture change most needs to happen, to wash away reductive stereotypes that obscure the full spectrum of perfectly normal feelings about raising children and stepping into a role saddled with so much cultural baggage. But when it comes to motherhood, cultural messages about how women “should” act, “should” look, and, most importantly, “should” feel are incessant and usually totally inaccurate.

To be a “good mom,” women are expected to be overjoyed about pregnancy, relish nesting, and read all the parenting books. “Good mothers” are expected to have a perfectly flat stomach after delivery, to breastfeed, to dote on their babies incessantly. (Never mind the fact that these mandates create damaging pressure; for example, women who stop breastfeeding because they aren’t “successful” are more likely to develop postpartum depression.)

To be a “good mom,” women are expected to minimize every other aspect of their identity as a partner, a sister, a daughter, a coworker, an employee with ambitions, a best friend, a community member. “Good mothers” are expected to consistently demote their own basic needs for personal space, caring for themselves and looking out for their own interests. But it’s not enough to simply lay these things on the altar of parenthood; “good mothers” must be happy about it. Do not complain.

Do not speak openly and honestly about the difficulties. Do not share stories of fear, regret, second-guessing, overwhelm, resentment, or anything other than blithe acceptance for the opportunity to procreate and raise a human being.

To a new mom who hasn’t heard anyone else in her life share the less polished aspects of motherhood, these feelings of discontent and distress can feel shameful, scary, and preoccupying. In a culture that tells us that procreation is the pinnacle of femininity, where the media has historically portrayed new mothers as doting and connected, grateful and unbothered, we are primed to expect that we will instantly love and naturally adapt to every single aspect of the role. When we don’t see or hear about the more nuanced, sometimes hard, realities of postpartum life, we are quick to think, It must only be me. When we feel ambivalent or uneasy about motherhood, we often isolate ourselves, asking, Is something wrong with me?

When The Problem Isn’t Diagnosable

Part of what fuels the silence around feelings like Hazel’s is a lack of distinction between perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs), which are actively screened for by health care professionals and have clear pathways for treatment, and maternal distress, the more vague, yet more common sense of overwhelm, stress, or disillusionment that so often goes unspoken. Most new moms feel overwhelmed, isolated, unprepared, exhausted, and uprooted by the overpowering shift in identity that comes with the transition to motherhood. These moms don’t have diagnosable postpartum depression but nonetheless experience distressing feelings.

Because becoming a mother is socially cast as an unequivocally happy event, new moms are likely to avoid admitting that they are having problems or concerns within their new role or simply aren’t adjusting to it as easily as they expected. Many experience guilt for even having negative thoughts about motherhood. Ultimately, most women don’t confess these difficulties, relying on their own will to “tough it out” instead of turning to a community that can assure them they’re not alone in their struggles. External factors can also further aggravate negative feelings during motherhood. Low-income moms are more likely to experience maternal distress, as the gap between Instagram-perfect motherhood and the lived reality of the experience is exacerbated by inadequate resources and environmental stressors.

Rather than squeeze my patients into an unrealistic stereotype of “good” motherhood, I work to normalize the concept of the “good enough” mother by expressing to them we don’t have to be perfect to be “good enough.” The term “good enough mother” was popularized by psychoanalyst and pediatrician Donald Winnicott in his 1971 book Playing and Reality. The ethos of the idea is fairly self-explanatory: Perfection needn’t be the goal for moms. In practice, the good enough mother is one who adapts to the ever-changing needs of her child as the child gets older and is able to process and learn from failure and frustration, both their own and that of their parents. Interestingly, Winnicott’s conceptualization of parenting wasn’t focused on the mother’s own mental health; the work asserted that good enough parenting is actually better for a child’s development. Contemporary research backs this up as well. Research conducted among mothers of low-socioeconomic status found that caregivers only need to “get it right” 50 percent of the time to positively impact a child and foster a secure attachment bond, which is a key factor that shapes long-term outcomes in childhood and adulthood.

Normalizing Mothers’ Struggles

Hoping to normalize what Hazel found the courage to say out loud, I invited her to soften the self-flagellation by considering that there are likely other people in her circles who are struggling too.

“What if… a bunch of moms actually feel the way you feel?” I asked during our next session “Women might keep these feelings quiet for a number of reasons, believing others won’t get it, but I can assure you that not liking the role of motherhood 24/7—not feeling like a ‘good mom’—is more common than people think. What if the goal isn’t to be this idealized vision of the ‘good mother’? Because here’s the thing: We don’t necessarily have to love motherhood all the time in order to be good enough mothers.”

“I believe you, I really do,” Hazel responded. “I know I can’t be the only one who feels lost or resentful sometimes. But I just don’t know anyone who admits to feeling the way I do.”

Feeling seen, heard, and understood in the safety of my office had allowed Hazel the space to air her self-criticism, to consider that even if her specific postpartum experience wasn’t exactly the same as that of the other moms in her life, there were likely other people in her friend group struggling too. But telling her this, and even reminding her week by week, didn’t penetrate beyond her intellectual understanding that other mothers had been, and still are, in her shoes.

Then, before one of our sessions, I gathered some resources about maternal ambivalence and shared them with Hazel. These included several interviews with celebrities who’ve opened up about feelings of maternal ambivalence and uncertainty, including Hilarie Burton Morgan (“Am I scary? Do my children distrust me? Are they gonna look back on these years and think I was a jerk?”), Chrissy Tiegen (“When I had my girl, Luna, I would kind of vent and complain. I felt so sad that she wasn’t connecting with me, because I’m her mother and I spend so much time with her.”), and a 2018 Serena Williams Instagram post.

I read her Williams’ post out loud: “Last week was not easy for me. Mostly, I felt like I was not a good mom. I read several articles that said postpartum emotions can last up to 3 years if not dealt with. I like communication best. Talking things through with my mom, my sisters, my friends let me know that it’s totally normal to feel like I’m not doing enough for my baby. We have all been there. I work a lot, I train, and I’m trying to be the best athlete I can be. However, that means although I have been with her every day of her life, I’m not around as much as I would like to be. Most of you moms deal with the same thing. Whether stay-at-home or working, finding that balance with kids is a true art. You are the true heroes. I’m here to say: if you are having a rough day or week-it’s ok—I am, too!!! There’s always tomorrow!”

When I looked up from reading the post, Hazel had tears in her eyes.

“Wow—I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that,” she said. “If Serena Williams doesn’t feel like she can live up to the standard of the ‘good mother,’ there’s no hope for the rest of us.” Hazel laughed. “This really is bullshit.”

I also shared two powerful examples of collective storytelling among “regular” women. The first was a call to action by MSNBC news anchor Stephanie Ruhle, who shared her own story of new motherhood in 2019. “I was too embarrassed to tell a single soul that I wasn’t the over-the-moon, picture-perfect new mother I was supposed to be,” she said. She called out the “no man’s land” between clinically depressed and ecstatic mothers. “There are a whole lot of us who are living somewhere in the middle, longing for the safe space and words to express these complicated feelings,” she wrote. The second was the New York Times’ “Primal Scream” series, a powerful exploration of the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic brought so many aspects of maternal distress to light. Buckling under the added pressure of spending so much time at home with their kids, moms across the country finally spoke out. In fact, they straight up screamed—the very thing moms aren’t supposed to do.

“I’m so sick of my goddamn kids,” one mom called in to share.

“This pandemic made me realize that maybe I’m not cut out to be a mother,” another confessed

“It just feels like failing, every day, at everything I do,” one said. “I just want to change, want to be by myself for one minute.”

“Somebody else rear my children, please,” another confessed. “I miss going out. I miss being drunk. I miss dancing.”

Their stories took on the challenging aspects of motherhood, the gut-wrenching, the anxiety-inducing, the rage-creating. The result was a marked shift from the stories about what motherhood “should” look like.

“It’s so crazy that we’re presented with a one-dimensional version of motherhood when it truly is anything but that. No wonder I’ve been feeling isolated,” Hazel said. “Now I’m relishing the relief that my version of motherhood is valid. Not just valid—it’s normal.”

Talking about her feelings wasn’t just a wave of a magic wand to feeling great, but it gave Hazel permission to lean into her emotions, and that helped her open herself to hearing the stories of other women who felt similarly to her. Engaging with personal stories of similar struggles generously shared by others chipped away at the stigma and shame Hazel had internalized.

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I know from my own experience and that of my patients, as well as a well-established body of research, that when we don’t allow ourselves to feel whatever it is we are truly feeling, we suffer more. Moreover, I’ve learned—through reading piles of books, sitting in seminars en route to completing my doctoral degree in clinical psychology, and through day-to-day life—that feeling our feelings in their entirety and speaking those feelings out loud makes space for essential insights, new pockets of peace, and, ultimately, the eradication of silence, stigma, and shame. Women are yearning not only for the space to unpack their experiences, but also for a cultural shift. The more we speak up about our hardships, our struggles, and our pain, the sooner we usher in the change we need… and deserve.

Reprinted with permission from NORMALIZE IT by Jessica Zucker, published by PESI Publishing. © 2025 Jessica Zucker