Moms can do it all- work, cook dinner, clean the house, take the kids to soccer practice, and help with the Eiffel Tower in popsicle sticks.
Sound familiar? Well, just because you can do something doesn’t always mean that you have to, or even should.
Being enlightened, one mom weighs the cost of meeting society’s demands against spending quality time with her children, and mothers around the world can relate.
An Australian mom discusses in a post the pressures on moms in this fast-paced, competitive society, and her words have gone viral.
Constance Hall received 69,000 likes and 14,000 shares on her Facebook post hashing out all the reasons she just can’t be with her kids untethered from other roles.
Underneath the picture of Hall and one of her children it reads, “What happens when we put too much pressure on mothers?”
Becoming a mom is incredibly rewarding, but it comes with a burdensome list of expectations placed on you by others.
Mothers are expected to keep a home out of a Pottery Barn magazine, while looking like a Victoria Secret model, and all a week after having a baby that they care for full-time.
Recent research has shown that being a “Super Mom” can have negative consequences. Today reports that it creates:
“..pressure so great it can create stress that contributes to mental disorders in moms and dads. The new study focuses on factors before and immediately after birth, like the pressure to breast-feed, but experts say similar pressure can extend well past the diaper years.”
It has long been known that stress can wear on a person physically and psychologically, and the stresses of being a modern parent are no different.
“Stress is always a risk factor for depression and anxiety, and it’s especially stressful if people don’t have the supports that they need,” Carrie Wendel-Hummell, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Kansas, told Today.
Hall knew that there was something different about mothers of today compared to those of the past, but couldn’t quite put her finger on why until after a candid talk with her dad.
The post read, “Once after having 1 child I asked my dad how on earth my nanna did it with 11?”
“My dad responded that she wasn’t giving half the pressures I was,” Hall continued.
After thinking about her nanna with all those children, Hall figured it out:
“She didn’t have to go to the bank, the supermarket everyday, she wasn’t expected to look a million bucks straight after birth and she never put pressure on her kids to have reached all of their mile stones by the age of 3 weeks, have the house clean and own a thermomix.. She just hung out with her kids and enjoyed them.”
In the age of social media, WebMD, and blogs galore, women have a mental list of what is and is not acceptable of them as a mother.
Despite mothering being an age-old profession, they now triple check the internet to make sure they are “doing it right”, as Mommy Underground has previously reported.
Hall facetiously addresses the wild list of demands from a thousand different angles; as if government mandates aren’t enough on the parent already.
She adds how mothers now have to:
“go to the gym, answer that email, pay that bill, cook that organic kale, blend it, get it into a patty so no one knows it’s kale, get to the doctors…. The washing! Petrol in the car…. colour your.. greys! Make the kids lunches cos if you order them again you will be JUDGED!”
All these tasks feel really important in the moment. If mothers were to miss one of these daily requirements of modern life, we would think we are failing as a mom.
Healthy eating, addressing our kids’ ailments, and fitness are all aspects that improve quality of life, but they shouldn’t be the focus of it.
At the end of the viral post, Hall closes with:
“Today I woke up with a desire to take a deep breath and let it all go, I don’t really care about the new blinds I had ordered or making the house decent so that my mates don’t think I’ve lost the plot. But I really care about my time with my kids and how they feel about themselves. And I’m not going to let outside pressures and “Super mum” ideals take that away from me.”
As with all viral posts, viewers poured in with both support and chastisement, but mostly support.
User Beki Clare Turner responded to the post, “Beaut, mate! Because nobody’s ever going to say ‘I wish I’d spent more time cleaning and looking at my phone instead of playing with my kids.’”
All moms have pressure on them, because they are caring for little, vulnerable human beings.
However, the pressures should not extend beyond providing your children with food, water, shelter, and unconditional love.
The rest can just be a distraction from all those precious little laughs and healing snuggles.
Please let us know in the comments section what you think about modern demands on the mother, and how it affects your role as a mother.