“Play it again, Mommy,” my two-year-old daughter Emma called, waving her beloved Paw Patrol transformers. She wanted me to come up with another emergency so Chase, Marshall, and Skye could come to the rescue. Again.
I should have been happy, sitting on a rug, playing with my beloved and longed-for child. But I wasn’t. In fact, I was bored to death, casting guilt-ridden glances at my phone, wondering how much more I had to endure before I could put her to bed.
Perhaps it’s partly a problem of expectations: namely, my generation’s completely unrealistic image of what motherhood is really like, much of which is deliberately constructed on social media to sell us products.
I was 31 and newly married when I became pregnant with my first daughter. My husband and I both wanted to start a family, so when I found out I was pregnant, I was not only excited, but also eager to excel as a mother.
Of course, this idea was completely ridiculous and now I laugh and shudder in equal measure at the idiotic ideas I had about parenting.
Mothers, like author Katherine Faulkner (pictured), feel like failures when bombarded with pastel-colored, perfect images of the idyll of motherhood on social media
I literally approached it the same way I did during college and my career: I read all the books, did endless research, listened to hypnobirthing podcasts, waxed lyrical about how I’d never pushed an iPad in front of my baby in a restaurant (haha!), and meticulously wrote out a very specific birth plan (which of course no one at the hospital even looked at).
On social media, the algorithm noted all these parenting book purchases, calculated that I was pregnant, and began feeding me a seductive array of mothering influencers – or “mumfluencers.” These women sold me a carefully curated, sanitized – and, crucially, buyable – version of motherhood that shaped my completely unrealistic idea of what my new life would look like.
I looked forward to the quiet hours I would spend with my mini-me, making crafts without the mess, baking cakes in a spotless kitchen and carefully watering flowers in pastel-colored pots.
Of course, I quickly learned that the reality of raising toddlers is a little different. For starters, Emma’s interests didn’t align with mine (anyone watch the garbage men?).
Walks in the woods started to go wrong after about three minutes (‘I’m cold! Carry me, Mummy! I want a snack! Not that snack!’), while art or cake baking only entertained her fleetingly but resulted in an entire afternoon of washing and cleaning, by which time I’d invariably given up and put her in front of CBeebies.
What made it worse was that every time I scrolled through social media on my phone (usually while I was hiding from her, seething with resentment in a kitchen full of cake mix), I would come across posts from other moms suggesting that they were truly cherishing “every moment” of motherhood: collecting fall leaves on their successful adventures in the woods, icing their perfect cakes, and generally existing in a permanent state of maternal bliss.
This content always made me feel sick, but it was also strangely addictive and I couldn’t stop looking at the perfect online world these mothers had created.
In her book Momfluenced, Sara Petersen writes about how mothers who consume this kind of material online are repeatedly told that they are failing: “That person seems more patient than me, that person has a cleaner kitchen, that person is better at mothering than me.”
Admitting that you find the daily grind of raising children boring is a taboo subject, so few parents talk about it
It is therefore not surprising that research shows that Instagram use by mothers of young children is associated with increased anxiety.
I did indeed find it difficult to talk about my feelings, because admitting that you don’t find motherhood fulfilling is still a taboo subject.
Some of my new mother friends couldn’t understand why I took my daughter to so many baby classes and soft play sessions. ‘Don’t you just want to stay home with her?’
I couldn’t bring myself to admit that my enthusiasm for the local music and the ‘baby sensory’ classes didn’t come from the fact that I thought she needed more stimulation, but simply because she did.
I was terribly jealous of my husband, who went to an air-conditioned office every morning where he could talk to other adults and always have hot coffee.
But I never admitted to anyone – my husband, my family, even coworkers – how boring it was. If anyone asked, I simply said it was all great, just a little tiring.
In my novel The Other Mothers I explored some of these conflicting feelings surrounding parenthood.
Katherine (pictured with her kids on vacation) finally realized that motherhood isn’t something you can “win” — nor should you desperately yearn for it
One character, Tash, struggles to reconcile her old identity as a news journalist with her new life as a mother of a toddler. And she’s addicted to comparing her own imperfect life to those of the glamorous mothers she meets at her son’s playgroup.
Mothers are reluctant to admit these complicated feelings because “we’re afraid of being judged,” says author Ashley Audrain, who has also written about the complicated emotions of motherhood in her best-selling books The Push and The Whispers. Like me, Audrain says she has “this irresistible urge to throw in a disclaimer every time we say something negative about motherhood.”
In retrospect, it may have been hell at the time, but it wasn’t until I had my second child just at the beginning of the Covid pandemic that I was cured of my futile striving for perfection as a parent.
Like millions of other women, I was suddenly at home with a newborn and a fussy toddler. Not only was I suddenly deprived of my formal childcare and my usually generous helping of family, but there were also no playgrounds, baby classes, soft play or other places to go. I found myself confronted with the 24/7 relentlessness of raising my children in a way that I had somehow previously avoided.
What it ultimately taught me is that parenting is not something you can “win” or “excel” at. It is not a project or a career. There is no prize, no raise, no career advancement, not even a pat on the back at the end of the day.
It’s not linear; babies who have been “trained” to sleep through the night will decide to back down; children who eat mashed broccoli at six months will suddenly spit it out at two years old and declare it “yuck.” Every day will resist your attempts at structure.
While it’s natural for parents to focus on tangible achievements, parenting coach Camilla McGill of My Parenting Solutions argues that the time you spend developing “your relationship and connection” with your child is “far more important than what reading group they’re in or what ballet certificate they have.” This means that when you hit those tough teenage years, “they’re looking to you for guidance, not their peers.”
In other words, as tough as it may be during your eighth game of Paw Patrol, McGill emphasizes that these small steps toward a deep and lasting bond with your child deserve a place on your mental checklist, alongside laundry, paperwork, and the thousand other things that feel more tangible and immediate — “even if you only have ten minutes.”
The Other Mothers, by Katherine Faulkner, is published by Raven Books and is available now.