Mom Guilt Shouldn’t Steal the Joy of Motherhood
by Alexander Tidd
The other night, after the toddler finally passed out and the dishes were done (or at least stacked in a hopeful pile), I read about one of those parenting videos online, the likes of which are all too common these days. A young therapist-in-training acted out a scene of a child asking his mom to play. The mom, distracted and glued to her phone, brushed him off. The therapist warned that this kind of emotional unavailability can lead to insecure attachment, anxiety, self-doubt, and long-term relationship issues.
I checked out the video and found it to be pretty standard TikTok or Instagram fare. But the comments? They were full of moms confessing that they felt like failures. “I have SUCH a hard time playing with her,” one mom wrote. “And I hate it.” Another admitted, “I try so hard to play with my son but it’s hard and I feel horrible.”
That is what made my chest tighten. Because I live with one of those moms. A really good one, who probably still wonders if she’s screwing things up.
My wife is a full-time working mom. She’s loving, attentive, and selfless in a way I’m still learning to understand. She also probably zones out while our three-year-old boy is stacking plastic bricks for the 47th time, just like I do on occasion. And then she feels like she’s terrible.
And I know she’s not the only one. I hear it from friends. I see it in online groups. So much parenting advice these days—especially the kind that gets shared on social media—tells moms that their job isn’t just to feed and care for their kids. They’re also supposed to be emotional gurus. Every reaction, every sigh, every missed opportunity for “attunement” becomes a potential life-altering wound.
Want your kid to set boundaries when they’re older? Better validate their feelings every single time they fall off the couch. Want them to stand up to peer pressure someday? Don’t you dare lose your cool when they dump applesauce on the cat.
Many are calling it “therapy culture”—not because therapy is bad (it helped me climb out of my own mental fog), but because we’ve taken some good concepts and twisted them into a checklist of perfection. A script parent feel they are expected to follow, without fail.
If you know your history, this pressure isn’t new, it’s just been rebranded. For decades, psychologists blamed mothers for everything from autism to schizophrenia. Those theories have been debunked, but the guilt machine kept running. Today, we don’t say “refrigerator mother” anymore. We talk about “attachment wounds” and “trauma responses” instead. The language is softer. The weight is the same.
All those micro-moments—the ones parenting influencers swear will define your child’s future—most of them won’t. The research says that small variations in parenting don’t have strong links to how your kid turns out. That doesn’t mean we should neglect or ignore our children. It just means that love doesn’t have to be perfect to matter.
I’m not a psychologist. But I do know this: what kids need most is to feel safe, loved, and accepted, even when the grown-ups around them are tired or crabby or not emotionally calibrated like a robot from a parenting podcast.
When I tuck in my son at night, he doesn’t say, “Thank you for helping me develop healthy boundaries through consistent emotional validation.” He says, “I love you, Daddy.” And when he says the same to his mom, I hope she really hears it.
Moms don’t need more rules. They need support. Real support. That might mean pushing for better childcare options or paid leave, yes. But it also means telling the moms in your life that it’s okay to be human. That they don’t have to solve all of society’s problems through the way they load the dishwasher or respond to a tantrum.
There’s no gold star for being a martyr. But there is a kind of peace that comes with letting go of the idea that you have to be flawless to be enough.
So to my wife: thank you. You’re showing up. You love our son fiercely. And even when you feel like you’re falling short, I see you doing your best—and your best is more than enough.
