1/11/2024 0 Comments Super mom mythWhen a child is born, your personality shifts, and the woman you’ve spent decades growing into looks a little different. Woman has other roles and relations too apart from (and before) being a mother. But it is a one BIG thing.Ī woman, just like any other human being has her own ideas, thoughts, and needs. For the moms who seem to be doing it all, it isn’t just a miracle, that mom is probably at the end of her rope and just putting on a good show or has an army of help behind the scenes that enables her to do the impossible. Calling moms superheroes can make them feel like they are failing when they struggle to do it all. Glorifying the unrealistic lives that mothers lead and the unattainable expectations that we put on them can be meant as a compliment, but it is actually a toxic and damaging social construct that reinforces the almost cruel standards that mothers are held to. “no one’s gonna die of exhaustion and lack of sleep while tending your own baby…” I remember when I just had my first child and whine about the lack of sleep that I had to endure to one of my relatives and he said, And when some women struggle with the new role of motherhood, they have to face the criticisms, shame, and hatred for not being good enough. If she resists it, the criticism she has to face is horrifying. Our culture demands a woman to become mommy as soon as she gets married and sacrifice herself for her child. I worry about the script everyone is creating - and I’m curious about the scars our children will bear as a result of this action. But the role of a mother, which is already difficult, seems to be made even more difficult with standards that are sometimes made by us ourselves.Īs someone who has anxiety and been spending my time spreading mental health awareness (in the best way that I can, that is), I am profoundly concerned about the underlying crisis that is forming inside staging, overthinking, using each other for polished image opportunities, false narrative of hardships, or glorification of a role (motherhood) that is downright stressful. Myths that must be dispelled, especially with the role of social media where people want to see and be seen. Back then I thought it was achievable to be everything to my family.īut now, with three children and all their dynamics, I’m a firm believer that being a supermom is a myth. And I wanted to be hot as hell and stylishly dressed while doing it. I wanted to do “all the things” - the arts and crafts, the homemade organic cakes, and fill our days with brain-boosting, sensory activities. And more often than not, this glorification can hurt ourselves as moms. By being witness to our flaws and attempts to rectify them, we can teach our children about self-compassion and that it’s okay to not be perfect.Right off the bat, I can firmly say that there’s no such thing as Supermom. By embracing our imperfect humanity, we can model to our children how to appropriately deal with mistakes and missteps. And what a relief it is to throw-away perfection. In the same vein, you will never have perfect children or a perfect significant other. You will never be a perfect mother because the perfect mother is a fabrication. To be human is by nature to be flawed but it also means to have compassion for ourselves and the desire to do better, knowing full-well mistakes will be made. The sooner we embrace our humanity – the messy, imperfect, mistake-riddled thing that it is – the sooner we can break free of unrealistic (aka fictitious) expectations about motherhood that strip us of our ability to be joyous in the here-and-now. the messy kitchen or multiple outfit changes due to excessive spit-up stains), our minds assume we are alone in our struggles, or that other people have managed to do everything right while we have done nearly everything wrong. Because there’s no counter-balance to these curated images (e.g. Our psyches may project our own fears and anxieties when creating our version of the perfect mother. The perfect mother is never defined – rather our imaginations are allowed to make assumptions about this mother based on images curated by a computer algorithm. One of the more psychologically damning outcomes of these curated images is the belief that the “perfect mother” exists. This glorification of mothering is nothing short of fiction, often damaging to new and experienced mothers alike.
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