Motherhood’s Perfect Mommy Myth

In their first year of motherhood, more than half of new parents believe they’ve fumbled, and many blame social media for the pressure to be perfect. You can’t be a perfect mother because there is no such thing. In this article, we’ll talk about motherhood’s perfect mommy myth.

Believing that becoming a parent is a simple adjustment is misguided, as parenting is anything. When it comes to the first year of parenthood, a recent survey found that 55% of parents throughout the world feel that they’ve failed—and that the majority of these parents are mothers (60%) compared to fathers (45%). As part of the global campaign This is Parenthood, WaterWipes commissioned a study that looks at the difficulties that new parents face today.

One of these pressures is being compared to the flawlessly filtered photos that parents see on social media every single day. Most American parents are unable to identify with images depicting parenthood on social media and in popular culture, according to a new survey.

Regardless of the circumstances, no one wants to be a bad mother. Alternatively, I believe that many women strive to be “perfect moms” out of fear of making a mistake. Achieving perfection is unattainable since it’s a goal that can never be reached.

What are the drawbacks of attempting to be the perfect mother or father?

The petri dish of life contains many variables, so even if you have a notion of how you want to be a mom, it will never turn out the way you want it to. Not to mention biological aspects like how sleep deprivation affects a child’s ability to learn, hunger, and the changing brain structure of your youngster. When it comes to motherhood, you can’t be a perfect mother because it’s a real relationship, and no human relationship can be.

While you can’t be a great mother because of your human situation, how can you endure being a good enough mother? This is the worry that I help people with. How do you know that being a good mother is all that your child really needs? The ideal possible scenario for a child to be raised in is to be loved and cared for by their parents as they do their best.

By the way, this kind of training is essential because the actual world isn’t going to present your child with perfect circumstances. All of their friends, professors, classes at school, and sports experiences are going to be faulty in some way. As a result of having parents who are secure in their experience of being “good enough mothers,” children grow up learning to accept and forgive themselves for their own shortcomings. A good example for your youngster is that being flawed is acceptable. Self-esteem difficulties arise when children strive to be flawless in all they do.

Why is it so important to moms?

As a result of perfectionism, people tend to think in terms of black and white. Things like good or evil—a perfect mom or a dreadful mom—are easier to understand when framed as binary concepts. To be able to think in shades of gray, one must first learn to accept one’s own ambivalence and develop the ability to think logically and abstractly. Oversimplifying everything into good and evil is a natural instinct.

Being a mother demands a great deal of self-sacrifice, a great deal of compassion, and a great deal of love to give to your child. If you want to be a good parent, you must be comfortable with your own emotions. Moms need to be kind to themselves in order to be kind to their children, I believe.

As a parent, being kind to yourself sets you up to be a more empathic one because it provides an environment of acceptance, support, and love, which is a far cry from a constant self-criticism environment. If you’ve been berating yourself all day, you’re going to bring a different perspective to your connection with your child.

Do children’s actions not always reflect the parents’ values and priorities?

Children and babies each have their own distinct personalities. Research has proven that humans are born with certain temperamental characteristics. While we don’t yet know how nurture and nature interact to produce excellent sleepers and bad sleepers, we do know that there are some good sleepers and some bad sleepers.

As a result of their temperaments, many of those babies are placed in the same environment but have varied sleep reactions. There are some aspects you can’t control about your child’s biology; it’s helpful for me to point this out to parents. There are occasions when you can intervene, and there are times when you can’t.

What other biological factors are beyond the control of a mother?

The weight of a newborn and the time of birth…

That has nothing to do with you. It’s the same as if a baby is born a month early and is likely to be a month behind schedule. The fact that your kid was born four weeks early may explain why he or she isn’t walking as rapidly as a friend’s child, and it has nothing to do with how well you prepared your child for walking. Or a child with a more delicate disposition.

There may be nothing you can do to make your child enjoy a noisy birthday party if your child has a wiring issue that prevents him or her from enjoying it. Many aspects of a child’s development are governed by the wiring in their brains, and these cannot be controlled or prevented.

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