new existence. I mean, they've just momentously birthed, passing into matrescence and their new sense of self (more on that in the next chapter). Well done, Mama! Being concerned about getting their body back should be one of the lowest things on their agenda.
Expectations that within weeks after birth you appear as if you haven't been pregnant at all abound. If we look at the social commentary around celebrities after they've had children, you can see the continual seeding of this narrative into the psyche of mothers worldwide.
I remember when we were living in South Korea — my husband and I moved there when our kids were two and one years old — we got a group of mums together to exercise. This was a super precious time for me as I didn't know anybody and it allowed me to forge beautiful friendships. On reflection, there was definitely an undercurrent of exercising together to allow ourselves to look a certain way (and can I just say that all of us were healthy and looking after ourselves and our kids well). Many conversations were had on how to best feed ourselves without losing milk supply or energy levels to allow us to get that old body back again.
Hell, I juice-fasted, I ate a low-carb diet, I did everything to make myself look like I did before I had kids. And I never questioned it. I just thought that was what I was supposed to do. It was an expectation of my motherhood that I was a successful mother if I looked a certain way. And that was defined by my pre-baby self.
Zero recognition was given to how the process of becoming a mother changed my physical being. Zero acknowledgement for growing babies, the widening of the ribcage, the softening of pelvis shape, the years of breastfeeding.
Nope … it was all about fitting back into the dresses of years past and being happy with my sense of self, which was based on this external perception of what that was. It's time we all started calling bullshit on this. I didn't know any better … and one of my core desires is to help mums recognise they are more than just the way they look!
(3) Mothers should ‘parent’ a certain way
I don't want to be controversial in this land, but there are so many ways we can parent. In my experience, there most definitely isn't a right or wrong way that fits everybody, their family unit and their children. I went into this whole mothering gig with an expectation that I would parent in a very specific way, while still being unsure how to mother. I'm not sure where I grabbed the info from and what subconscious pathways it had been built through, but there were ways that I perceived to be the ‘right way’ to parent.
The ‘right way’ when I became a new mum looked completely different from how I parent now. It's an evolving thing. But interestingly, the perceived expectation of how a parent should do it is high. Research by Kate Harwood, Neil McLean and Kevin Durkin identified that those mothers who went in with an optimistic (or positive) outlook were much more likely to have matched or exceeded expectations. However, when the ‘experiences were negative relative to expectations, there was greater depression symptomatology and poorer relationship adjustment’. What this means is that if you go into parenting thinking it will be great, and it is, then you have a great time. However, if you go into parenting and it isn't as good as you thought it would be, it just makes you more likely to have depression and anxiety. The perception of what parenting should be and look like can impact the mental health of our mums.
Remember back in chapter 1, where I talked about newborn times predicating burnout? This is exactly what I meant. If we can create realistic expectations of parenting, and how changing what you do is normal, then we are much less likely to end up in burnout land.
I can categorically say that I went into motherhood with pretty high expectations of glorious calm days, lots of connected play, ease with breastfeeding and sleep … you know, all the pretty pictures. Yet there are some questions that I wish I'd asked and discussed with my husband before we began the journey that could have made it a whole lot simpler.
I wish we had discussed:
How will we share child rearing duties? How does each of us see the make-up of day and night?
What support can we expect to have to help us achieve our parenting and family ideals?
What religion/ethics/mindset will we aim to develop in our child/ren?
To smack or not to smack?
Who would ideally look after the child/ren if both parents are working?
What would an ideal childhood look like to me now, as an adult? How can we create this for our child/ren?
What does a happy and healthy parent look like?
What does a happy and healthy child look like?
Are there any cultural significances we each bring to the table? How can we incorporate those?
How can we each connect socially to our friends and mindfully with ourselves? How can we keep our relationship alive?
Mindfulness being brought pre-emptively into the parenting journey before we embark on it is an amazing way to kick off the shackles of ‘should’.
Those first six to eight weeks (or months) can be so life altering, and having a plan together (or with your support people if you are doing this gig solo) is so very important. If we can head into parenting with an open heart and mind, and decrease the ‘shoulds’, imagine where that can lead us.
(4) Mothers should be selfless all the time
Okay, this probably doesn't need a great deal of discussion, but the martyr or selfless mother concept is a biggie in the expectation stakes. Research conducted by Lazarus and Rossouw in 2015 discovered that it was vital to educate women about societal expectations and self-expectations prior to having a child, as ‘these expectations can influence levels of self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and stress’. Much like in point 3, how we think it will end up and how it actually does can drive our mental health outcomes.
Where point 4 differs is that we are focusing not on the parenting journey, but on how your selflessness as a mother is indicative of the intensity of your love for those little babes. The self-scrutiny of failure around not being selfless is massive. There is a gap in our current health system with a lot of blame levelled at mothers, who are ultimately trying their best, if their child isn't doing things the ‘normal’ way. Society expects that if we are doing everything as we should, our baby will just follow along the curve.
This isn't always true. I mean, it's most definitely not true!
In my opinion, the martyr mother phenomenon doesn't serve anyone in the mother–child relationship. According to research by Mikolajczak and Roskam in 2020, we need a shift in focus from us as parents being responsible solely for good childhood development outcomes. I mean, the Convention of the Rights of the Child determines how our kids ‘should be developing’, and it even says that when we look after ourselves, ensuring our own wellbeing, it decreases parental burnout and improves development outcomes for the kiddos.
Martyrdom leads to parental exhaustion and burnout. The pandemic of 2020/22 (and hopefully no longer) exacerbated the pressure on parents to do everything for their kids so they wouldn't be damaged by the lockdown, home learning, altered social structures and the complete upheaval of life as we generally knew it. Yet, when we are busily trying to work and parent and school, putting the kids first all the time in this selfless parenting paradigm can be really damaging.
The burnout you are feeling in the life you are struggling to live is where you can begin to make shifts for your health and your ‘self’. And hopefully empower those little people in your life while you're at it too!
(5) Mothers shouldn't have their own aspirations or desires for life as this makes them selfish
Okay, the