Instead of being the calm, patient mum who could instinctively soothe her children’s woes while knocking up a two-course dinner for her husband, I felt broken by exhaustion and self-doubt. | Anna Mathur
On top of that, social media feeds us a diet of curated images that can make us feel as if everyone else is coping better, their houses somehow pristine, their toddlers happily crayoning in a corner. “Good enough”, which used to be the standard for our mothers and grandmothers, has been steamrollered by perfectionism and comparison, and it’s driving many of us to breaking point.As mothers, we’re often skilled at making it look like everything is fine.
As I recovered from postnatal depression, I actively decided that I was going to accept help and lower my standards. I went big on self-compassion. In other words, I cut myself some slack – from asking my husband to come back and be with me when the baby was screaming at 2am to stocking up on microwave meals for the days I felt spent.
If anything, it’s healthy to be the not-good-enough mum. Famous paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott was the first to articulate, in the 1950s, that children actually benefit from imperfect parenting. His research found that children need their mothers to fail them in tolerable ways in order to be able to function well as grown-ups.
I sometimes wonder how we’ve reached the stage where mothers talk about taking a shower and stopping for “a quick glass of water” as indulgences. Those things are essential – they’re about self-respect, not self-care. We wouldn’t deny them to anyone else, so why do we deny them to ourselves? When the penny drops among the “perfectionist” mums I see on my therapy couch, it’s an incredible, truly life-changing moment, especially if it’s someone who’s told herself for many years “this is just how life is”.