Why Motherhood Can Feel Impossible

From what I've seen and heard

Photo by Zach Lucero on Unsplash

Being a mother is incredibly hard work. This is what I’ve learned from my wife and from the many mothers I’ve gotten to know in my lifetime. I recently wrote about part of what makes it so difficult in an article for Christianity Today this week on the sin of partiality (in which I also talked about other groups who struggle). In the article I talk about the way stay-at-home mothers often feel uncomfortable with the standard question, “What do you do?” during church greeting times. But I wanted to write about so much more. In talking with my wife, it strikes me that the struggles that young mothers face are systemic in the modern world and overwhelming.

Mothers often care for young children for long hours alone at home without any other adult human interaction. Many of them have had little training or preparation from their mothers on how to survive or flourish as a mother. If you try to work outside the home, the cost of childcare is so high that it can take up all of the income of many starting jobs. And then comes the shame. Children are a miracle, a gift, and a wonder. And to not appreciate that miracle and enjoy them while they are young feels irresponsible, immoral, ungrateful, and wrong. And yet it’s hard to appreciate them when they are screaming in your face. As you sit in the bathroom trying to get a moment’s peace and use the toilet, kids are crying for you at the door and you just feel bad (I was home with my young children off and on for a while, if you can’t tell). Plus there is the anxiety. Nothing prepared me, as a father, for the spike of anxiety when I heard my first born screaming in my ear for hours on end. It’s like a car alarm going off, forever. Anyway, my point is, motherhood, especially young motherhood is incredibly difficult. And I think young mothers should know this. Not to scare them away. Because as I’ve repeatedly argued in these “pages,” families are a gift from God and children are a natural part of marriage (although not all couples will be able to have children). But the question for me is, what are the particular challenges in our moment that mothers face and what can we do to ameliorate them?

Loneliness

It seems to me, again, speaking as a father and not as a mother, that loneliness is one of the most common challenges. Young mothers in particular who stay at home can become radically isolated. It’s cumbersome to load up a baby and visit with a friend. Everything is an ordeal. Everything in the house is in a state of entropy, especially if you have more than one child. And the way our cities are laid out, for most mothers it takes too much time to drive to visit someone else. Few mothers have the benefit of visiting a nextdoor neighbor who is also a mother. Plus, there are always appointments and shopping and other errands to run that get in the way of meaningful adult companionship that would relieve the monotony of watching children.

Which is not to say that watching and raising children is not a wonderful adventure filled with magic of its own. It is! First steps. Reading to kids. Playing make believe. Watching them discover the world. It’s wonderful. But adults also crave adult conversation and companionship, and rightfully so. It’s good and healthy for mothers to have time to be around other mothers.

I don’t have a society-wide solution for this, but I do think that insofar as it is in our power, we should help young mothers to get out or go visit them so that they have opportunities to engage with other adults and have breaks. Churches can facilitate this, and I know that some have ministries that help in this exact way. The ideal would be communal experiences where mothers regularly visited each other and helped each other with labor and breaks. But I know that’s not always practical.

Guidance

Some people have wonderful mothers who model for them how to raise children and give them guidance and encouragement. But not everyone has that. For some mothers, the experience of leaving the hospital is being thrust out into a new world with little or no support. And so they are left to the advice of “experts” online who love to give contrary recommendations filled with shame.

What I suspect some mothers (and fathers) need are good role models to guide them on the basics of mothering. Not in a pushy, shameful, aggressive way that overreaches and creates tension, but in a way that gives support for new mothers who don’t have that natural support. Again, this looks like other mothers helping mothers. Part of this guidance starts, I think, before motherhood, with mothers normalizing how hard it is to be a mom. Sometimes I think that mothers can be afraid to publicly express how hard it is to be a young mom because they don’t want to discourage motherhood or seem ungrateful (especially since some women are unable to become pregnant). Other times they may be afraid to express the difficulty out of shame. They don’t want to give the impression that they aren’t enjoying their children. But knowing the reality that parenting is hard is good. People knew this throughout human history. And while I think mothering has gotten harder in some ways in modern times (lonelier, I suspect), because we are so isolated from one another, I think we aren’t as clear about what the experience is like.

Here’s also what the experience of having young children is like: you get to learn their little personalities as they age, you get to teach them that God loves them, you get to watch them love creation, you get to show them good movies and read them good books. Speaking as a father, having children has been one of the most meaningful parts of my life. And I want young people to know that and know that most of the most meaningful parts of life are also hard work! Everything I really love is hard work: writing, children, marriage, taking up my cross daily.

If I had to tell young mothers one thing today it would be this: your work is holy work, raising up sons and daughters of God, and whether you have worn the same sweatpants for a week and the bookshelves are a mess and the dishes aren’t getting done, and whether your kids are crying and you can’t follow all the Perfect Rules for Parenting, just be faithful and love your children and accept that there is grace. You’re doing a good job. God is proud of you. Keep moving one day at a time and this period will flower into something new.

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This article was written with influence and help by my wife, Brittany.

P.S. If you’re curious, yes, I did already write this:

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