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Speaker 3Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and maybe take a breath. Because today's episode is one of those conversations that might land a little close to home. In today's episode, we're going to talk about how to grow your kids. In today's episode, I want to talk about two versions of mum that I think live inside so many of us. The mum who is trying really hard to do the right thing, and the mum who still somehow feels like she's not enough. So, good mum, not enough mum, why it still never feels enough. We're going to talk about why that feeling is so common. Why it's not a personal failure. And why being a good mum, yeah, a good mum can still feel exhausting, frustrating, and heavy. This isn't my typical episode. So, this episode isn't about fixing anything. It's not about fixing you. It's not about telling you to try harder. It's about understanding what's really going on underneath that guilt. The anger and the consternation. The resentment, self-doubt. And hopefully, my hope is, my aim is, by the end of this episode, by the end of this time that you have given yourself, you'll feel a little less alone, and maybe be a little kinder to yourself. So, when it comes to parenting, and I'm not sure if this resonates specifically to you, but for me, there are two voices in my head that come out when I'm parenting. One of them is, I'm not sure if this resonates specifically to you, but for me, there are two voices in my head that come out when I'm parenting. One of them is angry. It's the Mary Ann who's sharp, who's tired, and who's had enough. It's the part that looks at expectations placed on us as mothers and thinks, this is impossible, this is unfair, and I'm done pretending it's not. This is the mum that notices how much we're asked to absorb. Yeah? All of that emotional, all of that mental, all of that stuff that we're asking to absorb. This is what we do emotionally, mentally, and silently. And how rarely anyone asks, really asks, who really wants to know what it ends up costing us. And then there's the other voice that I sort of feel. Again, I don't know if you resonate with this. It's the quieter voice. It's the voice that apologizes a lot. It's the voice that's constantly wondering, am I doing enough? Am I being present enough? Am I being patient enough? Am I being gentle enough? Am I showing up enough? Am I being enough? It's the part, the side, I guess, that feels guilty for wanting some space, for maybe feeling a bit bored, for feeling angry at all. And I guess it's the aspect of motherhood, it's the side of motherhood that has us lying awake, replaying the day, replaying scenarios that we've had with our children, replaying things. That we could have done and should have done and, you know, would have preferred to have done, wondering what we could, should have done differently. And most days, I believe, both versions of these women live in us at the same time. They certainly do with me. Now, you know, and I can sort of oscillate. I can oscillate between being absolutely furious at the system that makes motherhood feel this heavy and still blame myself for not carrying it better. I can know at sort of a cognitive intellectual level that the bar for motherhood has been set impossibly high and yet still feel that I'm failing for not reaching it. And I think a lot of us are living in that tension, loving our children deeply more than anything, and yet quietly feeling that we're not enough. Being good mums and still feeling like we're falling short. So today, not here to fix that feeling. You know, I can't fix that. I think that's something that just comes with motherhood. We're not here as mothers to optimise ourselves or aim higher. I think, I guess, what this episode is about is about helping us sit with that discomfort and to talk honestly about what it costs us to care this much and why maybe the problem actually isn't us at all. So if you've ever felt like a good mum who still somehow, how not enough then this episode is absolutely for you. And I hope is a compassionate and kind place for you to be right now. And hopefully this has found you when you have needed it. And if maybe at the end of the episode, you feel that this might resonate with other mothers that you know, then please do share it. So let's talk about these two voices. I sort of think of them as like good mum, mad mum and good mum, not enough mum. It's that kind of constant conflict. So good mum, mad mum. It's the one who sees the bigger picture. She's angry at the impossible standards. She's fed up with being told to just be more patient, more grateful, more resilient. She knows this isn't just a personal problem. It's not about me. It's not about you. It's a structural one. It's a societal because society expects you to work like you don't have children and yet to parent like you don't work. And I think when I, I read that that really, I don't know. It really struck a chord with me. You know, it feels like certainly in terms of when I'm in good mum, mad mum, I can't win. I just, you know, there's nothing that I can do that wins. And yet on the other side, when I go into good mum, not enough mum, that's a more, I guess it's more softer. This is the mum that internalizes everything when I'm in this sort of mum state. And it's the mum that assumes the problem is me. It's not anyone else. It's me. If I'm overwhelmed, I think that I'm failing. If I'm angry, then I think that I'm a bad mum. If I want space, then I then feel self selfish. It's that two sides of that. And the important thing here is these two mums aren't opposites. They're not in conflict because one of them is wrong. They exist because the pressure is real. So you can be angry about the system and still blame yourself. You can, I understand the theory and still feel the guilt that doesn't make you inconsistent. It just makes you human. And I think one of the reasons this tension exists is because of the idea of the good mum has become almost impossible to live up to. The good mum is calm. She's emotionally regulated at all times. She's endlessly patient. She's present, but also productive baking cakes, you know, cooking from scratch, excelling at her career, curating incredible experiences for her children. You get the picture. Yeah. On and on and on. She's fulfilled, but not resentful. She loves motherhood, but not in a way that makes anyone else uncomfortable. And there's very little room in that version of motherhood, good motherhood for anger or boredom or grief or exhaustion. So when those feelings show up, which they inevitably do for, all of us, then good enough, not enough mum takes over and not enough mum says, what's wrong with me? Why can't I do this better? While good mum, mad mum is standing there say, you know, instead saying, well, maybe this isn't meant to be done like this. Maybe the bar is too high. But the issue is instead of questioning the bar, we question ourselves because self-blame feels safer than rage. And it feels certainly more socially acceptable than, saying, "This is too much." the societal bar of putting our head above the parapet and saying, I'm not doing X or Y because they are impossible standards feels and often does result in a whole host of vitriol. And sadly, we get comments such as, how dare you be so ungrateful to be complaining? You're lucky to be a mother in the first place. So that fear of judgment in a sense is huge and not unreasonable because in this day and age of social media, airbrushed and curated parenting, it is very real when we put our heads above the parapet and we say, and I don't know if you've ever done this, but I certainly have said, I'm not enjoying being a mother at the moment. I don't actually like my children at the moment, at times during my parenting journey. And that doesn't sit comfortably with some people. It really has that real sense of ingratitude and is a difficult one to say, but the reality is, we're not going to love our children all of the time. We're not going to find parenting easy. We're not going to find it fulfilling or enriching. Some of us, not at all. Some of us through periods of time. And in fact, I read an article recently, and these are incredibly brave women who in the article then were anonymized for fear of the vitriol that would come, are women who regret ever becoming a parent. It's something that if they could turn back time, they would choose not to do it. And I think that's a really good point. And yet that isn't something that they can have. That isn't something that they can talk about publicly because of all of that internal narrative of, I'm being ungrateful. But also one particular mother said that she sort of attempted in a public group online to sort of say that she wasn't really enjoying it. And the responses that she got back, and sadly, predominantly from women, made her feel that she was not able to be honest about it in the first, you know, any, any more. So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that often this, this fear that we have about being really honest about how we're experiencing parenting and motherhood at any particular time, isn't something that just sits in our head. It is something that we're aware of in terms of what we do. But when we say, for example, that we're tired, we're often not really talking about sleep per se. We're talking about the constant mental and emotional load, the constant mental and emotional labor, the anticipating, the remembering, the planning, the emotional buffering, the work of staying calm so everyone else can fall apart around us, whilst we stay sable and calm and regulated. This kind of exhaustion doesn't, you know, that doesn't show up on a to-do list. We can't put on there that this is what we need to do. You can't tick it off. And because it's invisible, it's rarely acknowledged. Good mum, mad mum feels angry about that. Angry that we're praised for coping instead of supported to rest. And good mum, not enough mum feels guilty. Guilty for being tired when nothing is technically wrong. Guilty for wanting space from the people she loves most. And so the exhaustion continues, unnamed, unvalidated, and deeply personal.
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Speaker 3And guilt is so woven into motherhood that we barely question it. I genuinely believe it's almost, I remember my mother having this conversation with me as I'd got older, and I'd had children of my own, and we'd had these conversations around, do you feel now that you've done your job, and I'm married, I've got children, and I'm an independent adult raising the next generation. And she said, it isn't something that you ever lose. It's almost literally branded on us the moment that we become a mother. We're guilty if we work, we're guilty if we don't, we're guilty if we leave, we're guilty if we stay, we're guilty if we rest, we're guilty if we don't enjoy every moment. From the mad mom perspective, guilt works very well as a control mechanism. It keeps us self-monitoring. Quiet, trying harder instead of asking for support, because it's all about internalizing. But from the perspective of the not enough mom, guilt feels like proof that we care, that we're trying, that we love our kids deeply. But guilt doesn't actually tell us what to do next. It just keeps us stuck. And this is the reframe I want to offer, is that guilt doesn't mean you're failing. Very often, it means you're struggling, stretched beyond what's reasonable. So when you feel that guilt next time, ask yourself that question. Could it be that I'm feeling this guilt because I'm being stretched beyond what is reasonable? And there are parts of motherhood that we're allowed to talk about and parts we're expected to hide. And anger is most definitely one of the ones that we're supposed to hide. And I want to be really clear here. Maternal anger isn't the same as abuse. It's not anger directed at our child. It isn't a lack of love. Often, that anger is actually grief. Grief for the freedom that we've lost. Grief for the identity that we no longer have and a different identity. Grief for the ease with which our life used to be, maybe, and is no longer. And grief for the time that we've lost that was for ourselves. And in those situations, good mom, mad mom wants to be told to be grateful instead of being honest. Whereas when we're in good mom, not enough mom, she worries that if she admits to any of this, it means she's ungrateful or broken. But you can love your children deeply and still miss who you were. Those things are not mutually exclusive. So here's what I want to leave this episode with. You don't have to choose between anger and compassion. You don't have to decide whether you're a good mom or a failing one. Both voices, the mad one and the tender one are trying to protect you. And maybe the question isn't, am I a good mom? Maybe it's, why does this feel so heavy? And why am I being asked to carry it like this? So if today's episode has resonated with you, I hope you take one thing for you, not advice, not a strategy, just permission. Permission to be complex, permission to be human, and permission to stop carrying all this alone. And if it has resonated with you, if it has given you some assurance and recognition that we all have that good mom, mad mom, good mom, not enough mom living within ourselves in almost every single moment, share this episode with someone that you feel may also benefit. So until next time.
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