Shame in Motherhood - Q & A with Dr. Molly Millwood

In this interview, Dr. Molly Millwood, therapist and author of To Have and to Hold (a must-read for moms!) unpacks the topic of shame in motherhood. In this interview, she helps us to understand the ways that shame shows up (and why it shows up), and shares some helpful insights around combating shame and caring for our emotional well-being.

Q: From your point of view, what contributes to shame in motherhood? And is this different from what our mothers faced?

Isolation breeds shame, and in our culture the conditions of motherhood are inherently isolating, right out of the gate.  We are sent home from the hospital or birthing center – and all of the care and support that we had there – too soon.  We take leave from work, so we are no longer in daily contact with other adults.  Our partners likely take little or no time off work, so they’re not home with us.  We are confined to the couch or the bed all day while breastfeeding.  It’s tough to pack up and get out of the house with an infant.  As time goes by and a sleeping schedule becomes solidified, we may become tied to that schedule and feel reluctant to get together with others if it will disrupt nap time or bedtime. 

This is a major piece of the shame puzzle; motherhood was not meant to be done alone, and yet for most of us there is a tremendous amount of aloneness, especially in the early weeks and months. 

And this was all true prior to the pandemic, so the degree of isolation in the era of COVID is exponentially greater.

The other major piece of the shame puzzle is that we are shaped – often outside our conscious awareness – by persistent myths about motherhood that set us up to criticize ourselves relentlessly. 

For instance, if we buy into the myth of parenthood as the greatest source of joy, and then we find that actually what we feel in the presence of our children is a great deal of unpleasant emotion nothing like joy, we then wonder what we’re doing wrong, or what’s fundamentally wrong with us as human beings that we don’t derive more happiness from our children. 

We’d be so much better off if we knew to expect a full, messy array of emotion in relation to our children. And yes, absolutely, this is different from what our mothers and grandmothers experienced, on both counts:  the isolation is worse, and the myths are more seductive. 

Social disconnection is its own pandemic, one that was worsening well before the coronavirus arrived. 

Other authors have written and warned about this, and I talked about it a lot in my book.  And, unattainable standards of perfection in motherhood have intensified at the same time, largely as a consequence of women straddling the domestic and professional realms in the last 40 or 50 years.  When women choose to pursue a career in addition to mothering, they often feel they must prove – to themselves and others – that the former does not come at the cost of the latter.  


Q: In your experience, are there some common topics that tend to bring up shame for mothers?

First, I want to say that many new mothers are steeped in both shame and guilt, and I think it can be really helpful to distinguish between the two. 

Guilt is about doing – it comes from a negative judgment about what we’ve done or not done.  So if I snap at my child, I might feel guilty about that.  Shame, on the other hand, is about being – it comes from a negative judgment about who we are at our core. 

So if I snap at my child often enough, I might begin to think, “What kind of person am I to speak so sharply again and again to my innocent little boy?” That gives rise to a feeling of shame, and when we feel ashamed, we most certainly don’t want to broadcast the issue that stirred up our shame.  Shame makes us want to hide, and when we hide and isolate ourselves and keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves, that isolation and secrecy breeds more shame.  So it’s a vicious cycle.

Unfortunately, shame and guilt are so pervasive in motherhood that there are countless things that seem to trigger them. 

But since shame is about who we believe we are deep down – what kind of mothers we are – I would say that the two subjects that seem to elicit it most easily are the amount of time we spend (or don’t spend) with our children, and the feelings we have toward our children. 

In my work as a therapist I witness so many women grappling with shame about wanting time away from their children, or having other pursuits that take them away from their children – as if these things make them a lesser kind of mother.  And I hear about the shame that arises when we feel things we did not expect to feel, at least not so regularly, in the presence of our kids.  Like boredom and irritation, as mentioned above, or even rage.  Even if these feelings are fleeting, as they often are, they leave an aftermath of shame.  They are inconsistent with the romanticized picture of motherhood that we all internalized at an early age:  the ever-patient, always-doting mother who cannot get enough of her children.


Q: Do you think that the current circumstances, and how our lives have shifted even more away from in-person interactions and to digital spaces, have increased the feelings of shame among mothers?

My answer to this is mostly yes.  Since shame thrives in secrecy and isolation, there is no question that the massive decrease in in-person connection brought on by the pandemic is harmful.  When we aren’t out in the world regularly getting the mental health benefits of social connection, and glimpsing the struggles happening for others like in those moments you just described, we can become more susceptible to the illusion that everyone else is handling life better than we are.  

On the other hand, when the world was bustling, everyone was too busy to slow down and savor moments of genuine contact with others.  Although many of those moments are now happening through a device, they still “count.” 

The deprivation of face-to-face contact has actually motivated us to find new and inventive ways of connecting with people, and many of us are in better touch now with family and friends.  That’s a change I hope will stick when the pandemic ends.  

Also, I think we’re seeing a promising trend toward honesty in social media.  The pandemic has heightened and illuminated what was already an untenable situation, which is the pressure placed on women to “do it all.”  I hear voices ringing out in protest about this in digital spaces, and I see more and more people choosing transparency and honesty over the more curated, airbrushed approach to social media.  I think a lot of good is going to come from that. 

Q: You speak to the sad reality that often times, when a mother turns to social media as her primary outlet for social connection "...she enters a digital world that promises connection and sharing. More often than not, she emerges feeling lonely, anxious, and unsure of herself." How do we combat this reality, particularly when social media has likely become an even more prominent part of our lives?

I think this really boils down to self-awareness. 

Since social media is such a double-edged sword – sometimes revealing other people’s struggles but sometimes feeding right into the myth that everyone else has their act together – we need to monitor our own responses to the images and words that appear in our social media feeds rather than consuming those images and words mindlessly. 

If there are posts from someone that regularly leave us feeling bad about ourselves, we need to unfollow that person.  If 5 minutes on Instagram gives us a little boost, but 15 minutes leaves us feeling deflated and insecure, we need to stick to a 5-minute limit.  And so on.

Q: I love this quote from your book "Only when silence is broken and secrets are revealed can we begin to revise the shame story." What does it look like to "break the silence"? Could you share some strategies (practices, mantras, tools, etc.) that you'd recommend to the mom who is struggling on her own, and fearful of sharing her truth with others?

Earlier I described the vicious cycle of shame, and breaking that cycle requires the brave choice of transparency.  We have to give voice to whatever it is we’re scared to say out loud.  Why is that so important? Because when we take that risk of sharing, we are sure to learn that we are not alone.  Others will say, “Me too!”  We break through the illusion that other mothers are navigating motherhood with grace and perfection, and we learn that we’re all just fumbling along quite imperfectly. 

When these messy truths of parenthood are shared without hesitation, we can let go of any shame about the mess existing in the first place.  Shame finds no home in the broad daylight.  

As far as a mantra that could help the mom who is struggling to speak her truth, one of my favorite sayings is

“Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.” 

I can’t give proper credit to whomever first said that, but I think it’s brilliant.  We move through life seeing only the shiny exteriors of most people, whether it’s in person or on social media, and we don’t have access to their messy, complicated interiors.  I think one of the main reasons my book has been such a source of comfort to women is that I did not hide behind my polished professional exterior; I chose to be real about my own struggles and insecurities. 

No one is immune to the hardships of motherhood, not even a psychologist who has written a book on the subject.  Nobody has it all figured out.  The “full catastrophe” of motherhood is the norm, rather than the exception.

Q: As you know, this year has been immensely challenging on multiple levels. Can you share any advice for how we can tend to our emotional well-being in the midst of this very difficult season of our lives? 

Though I’m aware of how completely cliché it is, the “one day at a time” philosophy has proven helpful to so many people during these trying times.  It’s far more difficult to tolerate an unpleasant current reality if we are fast-forwarding to some distant point in the future and imagining it will still be this way.  We always do better when we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  In this case, we really don’t know how long the current pause on “normal” life will last. 

We can’t set our sights on a certain date and find some solace in knowing that date will bring relief.  But what we can do is focus on today, and be curious rather than judgmental about what today brings. 

We can ask ourselves, “What’s good about today? What’s hard about today?”  Cultivating gratitude about what’s good can make the hard stuff easier to bear.  And when we acknowledge what’s hard, we give it space to be, which allows it to run its course. Negative emotion tends to be resisted and pushed away, and in women especially, it is pathologized – it is construed as an indication of depression or emotional instability.  In actuality, mental health involves being able to recognize, and allow ourselves to experience, the full array of emotion our human existence brings. In a sense, we all have “permission” right now to be struggling in these unprecedented, really difficult times. 

My hope is that we are learning to be more gentle with ourselves, and that this greater gentleness will endure long after the pandemic is over.

 
Bryanna Lumsden