Moms Aren’t Special: Releasing the Supermom Myth to Fight Mom Guilt

I have a secret: I do not think moms are special. Shocking, right? Especially for a psychologist specializing in perinatal mental health and parenthood and is a mom herself. How could I, an enlightened, progressive, highly educated millennial working mom and therapist say such a thing?! 

Let me start with an anecdote. Recently in a working mom group on Facebook, a mom lamented that while she and her husband both work full-time outside the home, she finds herself doing the majority of housework and childcare. Many other moms chimed in echoing this same experience,  but one response caught my eye.  A mom commented that it helps her to “pretend that being a man is a disability” that therefore renders men incapable of taking care of adult responsibilities like women do. She shared that viewing things this way helps her to feel “more nurturing and less resentful” towards her husband. This made me feel a lot of things, but nurturing was not one of them. 

The Superwoman Standard

What kind of standard does this then set for moms? That we are somehow superhuman and able to do it all? We love Superman because he can leap tall buildings in a single bound, not because he can jump kind of high. Because he can save us and never needs saving himself. We are drawn to Supermoms for the same reason: they can do everything for us and need nothing in return. We love a woman who can do it all for us and remain, in today’s TikTok parlance, “very mindful, very demure.” On  the flip side, the narrative that moms are superheroes makes us feel like we are broken or wrong for not being able to be all things to all people. Superheroes are remarkable because they are able to accomplish things that ordinary humans cannot. 

So when I say I do not think moms are special, what I mean is that moms are not inherently more gifted as caregivers or house runners than dads. We are not born with skills, gifts, or advantages that make us more capable of cleaning bathrooms, kissing scrapes, remembering PTA meetings, scheduling appointments, cooking dinners, or generally seeing to household and caregiving duties than dads are. And viewing us as special or superhuman saddles us with expectations that we cannot possibly live up to. 

Mom Guilt

And so what comes up when we, inevitably, cannot be all things to all people? When we cannot remain endlessly patient, endlessly available to our children and partners, endlessly attractive and put together, endlessly…endless? Mom guilt. The idea that we should be able to do it all leaves us reeling with shame and guilt when we inevitably cannot. 

I have a lot to say about mom guilt, its origins, how problematic it is, and what we can do about it as a society. Stay tuned to my next blog post to learn 5 effective strategies to Banish Mom Guilt and Embrace Being Good Enough. 

Reach Out

If you’re interested in finding a space to talk more about mom guilt, connect with other moms, and work on strategies for connecting with yourself and your values as a parent and a person, I invite you to join our virtual group Mom Guilt is Bulls**t, which will run for six weeks on Thursday evenings starting in October. You can learn more here or by emailing Dr. Jillian Neill at jillian.neill@dremmabasch.com.