“I can’t parent alone”

Reflections on Mothering in Community

Sep 25, 2024

Parenting without support is unsustainable, especially under the cultural pressure of "intensive mothering."
This societal expectation dictates that mothers should handle all child-rearing tasks alone, sacrificing their own needs and not asking for help.
Research supports the importance of support networks in reducing parental stress and improving mental health, emphasizing that mothers parent better when they have help.
We need to shift away from the unrealistic demands placed on mothers, and instead accept and advocate for the idea that parenting cannot and should not be done alone.

Recently, due to the death of a grandparent in our family, my husband had to travel out of state for several days. I remained home with our 4 children, who, like myself, were dealing with waves of surprise and grief at the recent turn of events. Without my partner in attendance, I took on the parenting and navigating of our common existence. Notably, our backup help, my mother, was also absent during this time, away on her own trip. Thus, my usual person to call on when my partner was not around was also missing. This was not an entirely new position that I found myself in. I had been in this predicament before. Before moving closer to my mother two years ago, my husband and I had single-handedly birthed and raised our 4 children for over a decade together, far from any family support. Consequently, being “on my own” was not new to me, nor is it unusual for thousands of mothers across our country, whether single-parenting, parenting away from family, or parenting in isolation from a strong social network. In my professional space of academia, it is particularly common to live far from family. According to a PEW research study in 2021 (Hurst, 2022), those with the highest education are the least likely to live close to extended family. Similarly, those with higher incomes are less likely to live near family, and Asian Americans are less likely than Black, White, or Hispanic individuals to live near family support. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the way responsibilities for children often fall along gendered lines, women are more likely to say they value having family nearby than men do (42% compared to 29%) (Hurst, 2022).

Image from Hurst, 2022

My experience of having a family member nearby to help with the many obligations inherent in raising children today still feels new and almost too good to be true to me. I am still adjusting to life with the ability to call on help when a child needs an unexpected pickup from school or the ability to have family dinners together. After years of having to figure it out and rely on a loose network of friends in times of need, it still seems quite novel to have instrumental support available at the touch of a phone call. But, for a period last week, I was without my usual support system in place, missing both my husband and my mother, and I felt this absence intensely. Due to the circumstances, my partner was not readily available for additional emotional support. Upon my husband’s return, I finally admitted to him and myself, perhaps clearly for the first time, that I can’t parent alone. To be able to finally articulate this clearly after so many years of parenting may come as a surprise to many, but there it is.

I feel I should be able to mother alone—that I should be able to handle work duties, pick-ups and drop-offs for 4 children, meal planning and prep, after-school activities, middle-of-the-night waking from our 6-year-old, pleads for attention from our younger two, etc., etc., but the truth is I cannot. My personal bandwidth is such that I become completely overwhelmed, resulting in impatience, anger, tears, and a palpable sense of failure. It has taken me years to realize that I cannot parent in a vacuum devoid of a support system. For someone who heavily identifies with her maternal role and its obligations, this comes as a bit of a shock. I cannot do it alone. I am not enough. But why did I think I could and should do it alone? What cultural “blue pill” have I swallowed that leads me to believe that mothering should be accomplished devoid of emotional, structural, or instrumental support? And even more than this, what implications for our well-being are there to accepting that we cannot do this parenting job alone?

As I reflect on my days as a mother of young children, the pressure I felt to live up to personal and cultural expectations was enormous. I needed to get this thing “right.” If I failed, the consequences would be severe, I believed, for my children’s adjustment, well-being, and, it felt, their very life paths. Although I felt confident in my knowledge of children and how to care for them (I had a PhD in developmental psychology, after all), this did not make me immune to the pressure to reflect to society (including family, friends, and acquaintances) that I had it all “figured out” every step of the way. I soon became initiated into a cult that many mothers today are all too familiar with—that of ‘intensive mothering’ (Hays, 1996). Intensive mothering is the set of cultural expectations currently dominating mothers in the US, the UK, and many other wealthy, developed nations (Budds, 2021). It entails the notion of the ever-committed mother willing to work tirelessly and selflessly for her child’s success. Motherhood has become equated with the image of the ever-sacrificing female figure who is present and attuned to their child’s every whim, always offering up their own needs for their child's good and doing so without complaint (or help). The current ideal of intensive motherhood, developed by Hays (1996), is described by Verniers and colleagues (2022) in this way,

“Intensive mothering" refers to a cultural model of appropriate mothering structured around three principles: First, children are considered sacred, innocent, and inherently loving and trusting, and as such, should be protected from the “corrupt” outside world. This is achieved through intensive methods, which represents the second pillar of IM. More precisely, appropriate childrearing is emotionally absorbing: children must receive continued and unconditional maternal love, evidenced by permanent loving attention. The method is inherently child-centered; that is, the only proper conduct is to follow the child's lead. Appropriate childrearing is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Thus, a mother's day-to-day job is to educate herself as to the latest knowledge regarding her child's development. However, given the uniqueness of each child, she must also learn to identify the unique needs of her child and to adapt her response to her own child's needs and desires. Intensive methods are expert-guided, first because mothers must educate themselves based on expert advice, and second, because they have to consult qualified professionals should particular problems arise. These recommended methods are financially expensive: besides the cost of having recourse to expert-guidance (including, but not limited to, pediatricians, child psychologists, and psychiatrists), the right toys, the richest activities, and the best learning experiences, intensive methods imply lost wages since mothers are expected to cut back their paid work hours to spend more time with their children. Third and finally, according to the IM cultural model of appropriate childrearing, mothers are primarily responsible for fulfilling this mandate. Motherhood is deemed to be an instinctive and deep-seated drive in women. Fathers, as a result of their perceived incompetence, can only provide additional help (pg. 2).

Even though I am educated on the elements necessary to support parents' and children’s well-being, I am not immune to the pressures of intensive motherhood. Unfortunately, the insidious nature of intensive mothering is one of the reasons I and so many others expect that we really should be able to mother entirely on our own. We often are told and ultimately believe we are the only ones in a position to offer the care and support our children truly need. It is us or nothing. Asking for help or admitting that something is not working as we had hoped is admitting we are not good enough mothers. That we are weak and incapable as parents. How many mothers have also been told accusingly, “Well, you decided to have children.” The person delivering the message means, “It is your responsibility to figure this out on your own. No one else, especially not me, should help you.” Thus, we as mothers frequently respond by putting our heads down, not asking for help, and somehow pulling up the strength to parent alone from some deep source that, over time, becomes increasingly depleted.

However, the real crux is that mothering is not best accomplished alone. From innumerable studies, we now have clear evidence that having a strong support network is one of the primary buffers against mental health problems in mothers and is one of the most effective means of reducing parenting stress (Belle, 1991; Silver et al., 2006). With diminished parenting stress and mental health burdens, mothers parent better. They are more sensitive, more interactive, more stimulating, and more able to take on the challenges of children when they have a strong support network that they can call on (Balaji et al, 2007). For mothers of young children, having others to call on to help with childcare and emotional support is particularly beneficial (Balaji et al., 2007). Supportive social networks offer all mothers 3 key elements: information on developmentally appropriate behavior and parenting, access to childcare and financial assistance, and emotional buffers against life stressors. (Belaji et al, 2007). It is evident that feeling connected and supported by important others in mothers’ lives is critically important, but there are challenges to creating and accessing this type of support.

One such barrier to accessing supportive others is the strong emphasis on the nuclear family in our society and the silos created by intensive mothering ideologies (Budds, 2021). This often leads to mothers’ feelings of inadequacy, guilt, shame, and embarrassment that prevent them from sharing their feelings (De Sousa Machado et al., 2020). Indeed, some researchers have found that mother groups formed to promote peer support for new parents instead create a “group think” situation where mothers present intensified images of the ideal mother, straying away from sharing authentically for fear of being judged by others (Dennis & Chung-Lee, 2006). Social media can further exacerbate these feelings of needing to “cover” one’s truth. Mothers also frequently desire more informal support, particularly the opportunity to talk with others who empathize with their situation. Mothers frequently prefer this support from other mothers, as they feel a common experience links their identities (Dennis & Chung-Lee, 2006). However, if mothers are unable to find or access these other supportive mothers, their feelings of isolation and depression are likely to increase.

In my own situation, access to meaningful sources of support has waxed and waned over the years. Sometimes, we were in a social milieu where support was easily asked for and given. At other times, there has been a severe paucity of people to ask for help, both emotionally and instrumentally. Nevertheless, the recent realization that intensive mothering is serving no one and that I cannot accomplish parenting alone offers its own kind of release. Perhaps the first step, as with so many other situations in life, is admitting there is a problem to begin with. Once we are willing and able to accept that we cannot parent in isolation and that we should not do it alone, perhaps we can free ourselves to step outside of our walls of shame, guilt, and feelings of overwhelm to let others know, including our partners, that we will no longer expect ourselves to go it alone. We should not expect our roles as mothers to address all the responsibilities of rearing children adequately, and society should not either.

“I can’t parent alone”

Reflections on Mothering in Community

Image from Hurst, 2022

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