The Silent Scream of Motherhood: Can we all just stop pretending?

Alright, I am going to start this off by dropping a metaphorical bomb. Are you ready?

I don’t always love being a mother.

Cue the gasps of alarm from the crowd. I can hear the stunned murmurs and judgment. I am already fighting the urge to quantify my statement with reassurances about my eternal, unending, unmeasurable love for my children.

So let me start out by reminding you (and myself) that loving our children and the act of mothering are two distinct things. We are told over and over, before our children are even thought of, that having children is going to be the most magical, love-inducing experience in our entire lives. And it is… except when it isn’t.

You can love your children and hate the uncertainty that plagues us as parents. You can love your children and just want to be left alone sometimes. You can love your children and not find your purpose in motherhood. You can love your children and sometimes daydream about sending your preschooler to boarding school. Sometimes we miss them with every ounce of our beings, while at others, we just want to be holed up in a hotel room alone.

Yet, we can’t talk about that. If we talk about the hard, lonely parts of motherhood, then it can feel like we are saying that we don’t love being a parent, that we don’t love our children. Instead, we are forced again and again to suffer in silence, and that silence is what is killing us. The silence is what is perpetuating the myth that we are the only one who feels this way sometimes. That everyone else has this figured out, so there must be something wrong with me. When the message we keep hearing is to “enjoy every second,” yet there are seconds, minutes, hours, and days when we are not enjoying this, the message that gets internalized is” something is wrong with me”. That sometimes needing a break, needing help, needing outside purpose, that sometime just having needs and wants, somehow makes us not a good mother.

A good mother has needs. A good mother wants and needs a break. A good mother can want to be alone sometimes. A good mother loves her kids and loves herself. A good mother needs help. A good mother can dislike the act of parenting. A good mother can dislike watching cartoons and hearing stories about Minecraft. A good mother can daydream about boarding schools. A good mother has limits. A good mother is imperfect. A good mother struggles.

You are not the only one who doesn’t love every second of this. You are not the only one who feels alone in this. You are not the only one who does not have this figured out. There is so much about parenting and motherhood that is going to be hard no matter what. But the silence… that we can do something about. So talk about it. Talk about it to your friends, talk about it to your mother, talk about it to the mother sitting next to you at the playground. Chances are they are struggling too.

—Kathe Glancy, MSW

“In the end… I am the only one who can give my children a happy mother who loves life.”

Janene Wolsey Baadsgaard