Ditch the "Good Mother" Myth: Parent Teens Without the Guilt

Are women naturally good at being mothers, or is that just a myth that isn't borne out by science? And what's the impact of our beliefs about motherhood on those of us in the trenches? Doing the best we can. You're listening to Parenting Teenagers Untangle, the audio hug for parents going through the tween and teen years. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters, and today's guest is Alex Bollin. She wrote history at Oxford, then developed her skills, becoming a director at the research agency Ipsos Mori and an NCT postnatal practitioner. She's written a book called Motherdom: Breaking Free from Bad Signs and Good Mother Myths, which has been praised for exposing the intense pressure mothers are experiencing. She's also a mum of two children. So welcome to the podcast, Alex. Thank you, Rachel. It's great to be here. You repeatedly use the phrase good mother myths to describe the beliefs that keep mothers trapped in guilt and blame. So what sort of myths are you talking

What are “good mother” myths? How they create shame and impossible standards

about?

Good mother myths, I think, are the sort of key way in which we are made to feel bad about our mothering. Shame is something you've talked a lot about, Rachel, on your podcast, and it can be such a debilitating emotion and feeling. These good mother myths are about how mothers should behave, how they should feel as well, crucially. And they come in all shapes and sizes. They can be very historically specific, and I write about some of those in my book. So for instance, um, you know, around the turn of last century, the idea was we had to have sort of strict routines. And a very eminent doctor um called Eric Pritchard wrote a book and said uh babies die because they're cuddled and loved too much. It's very hard to think of anyone sort of writing something like that now. And then we have the sort of broad good mother myths that sort of span the ages. And I think a key one is the idea of the self-sacrificing mother for whom nothing is enough for her children. And we see that play out now, you know, on on Instagram, in terms of things like lunch boxes, like the extent that people get to kind of do a sort of lunch box every day for their children, whereas, you know, most people are blind me and just, you know, chucky and whatever.

There is background noise caused by that, isn't there? Because even if we reject it and we say, I'm not going to do that, it then makes you feel somehow that you're falling short.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the thing about these good mother myths. Whatever you do, it's not enough. And whatever you do, it's wrong. Because people will kind of give these prescriptions in a very definitive way. You must do this or you must do that. Um, you you mustn't let your children on social media or you must make sure they have an hour a day so they're not kind of left out. And these prescriptions are given in a very sort of directive and definitive way, because parenting advice that's like that sells, it's better for the algorithm, but it's not better for us. And so I think these kind of good mother myths have been kind of almost turbocharged in the sort of social media age, actually.

Is maternal caregiving “natural”? History, science, and why that idea is misleading

One of the things that comes up a lot is that women are naturally nurturing and maternal. Is that proven by science and history?

No, absolutely not. And actually, what if we look at historical perspective, and you know, as you mentioned, I studied history, and I have found that really valuable for myself personally, but also in writing the book to take that historical perspective. Because if we look at what's natural, you know, scare quotes, that has changed over the ages how we interpret natural. And actually, what natural means is this is what we think is kind of morally right. These are our expectations. The other thing about natural, calling things natural and calling sort of caregiving, maternal caregiving natural, is it devalues it. It's kind of, we're just animals, right? We're just following our instincts. You know, this isn't intelligent, creative, difficult work.

Yes. One of the things that really frustrates me is this idea that housework is this natural attribute of a female. And I found running a house extremely challenging. Is that again, is that something that females tend to be much better at proven by science? Or no.

Housework and multitasking: cultural expectations vs evidence

It's another myth. It's another myth. And it's the way to get women doing housework, doing the nurturing, caregiving. Another myth is that women are better at multitasking. Actually, it's that women are expected to do more in less time. So there's no, yeah, there's no sort of scientific support for any of these things. They're very deeply embedded cultural beliefs, and they impact all of us. And when I became a mother, it really shocked me actually. I hadn't realized quite how much I'd sort of taken on these beliefs about motherhood and about how I was expected to feel. Um, that I was expected to sort of naturally love it and to naturally know what to do. But of course, you don't know what to do. You've never done it, you've never done it before. And then you have another child, but you've never parented that child before. So again, it's always a learning curve. And every stage of our children's lives, I mean, I know this podcast focuses on the teen stage. That's another new stage that we've got to kind of navigate as parents with our individual child in our individual kind of context and circumstances. Yeah, yes.

And I I think one of the key messages I keep trying to get across is that I'm getting experts on to talk about how we can do things. There are certain things that are undeniably better than other things, but with every single bit of advice, the answer is listen to it. Does it work for you in your circumstances? If it doesn't, that's fine. Now, my question to you is is there a proven best way to parent which has been shown through different cultures and in

Is there a single “best” way to parent? Why parenting varies by culture and context

history? No. Really? That's a great on that.

Like what because parenting is so kind of culturally specific, but also kind of economically, socially as well. So we live in an era where people talk about intensive mothering, which is this idea that mothers must optimize their children, you must do everything for your child, you must follow expert advice. And that has been linked to the kind of economic precarity that we that we live in now. So our children have to compete for the best jobs. You know, we were talking about this before um we started recording. You know, it it it's it's not like it was 50 years ago where we had the breadwinner model and you could work hard, get a good job, buy a house, you know, the world has really changed. And so the stakes are much higher. And this means that um we are expected to invest a lot more in our parenting. So that's a very kind of culturally specific set of circumstances. I think one thing I would say if we sort of look across history, and I've written about this in my book, is that mothers have always had the power to make their children very unhappy. And that's quite scary, isn't it? That we have that power. We really do. And I think, you know, you can say that's the one thread that runs out. But in terms of the best way, I mean, I really reject the idea of optimization, that there's a best way to parent and a best way to do this, a best way to make the lunchbox. Because there just isn't. It's against human history, human nature, the variability of us as humans, the variability of our children as well. You know, what works with one child doesn't work with another. So yeah, I that's my longer answer to my very short and sweet no.

But I think a lot of parents feel scared that they might be getting it wrong. So hearing that there isn't necessarily the right way to do it can feel quite scary, can't it? What would be your response to those parents?

Absolutely, and I think that fear of getting it wrong is huge. And I think partly is recognizing why do we have that fear? And that fear comes from a place of love because we love our children, we want them to be okay, we don't want to mess them up. So that would be the first thing I would say. And I think the second thing I would say is I just think it's really important to accept that uncertainty. That is part of the burden, if you like, of parenting, is we do have that uncertainty. We don't know how to do it sort of right in a vertical commas. And then the third thing I would say is our our children don't need perfection. I think it's really important that we model to our children, that we do get things wrong, that we do make mistakes. And again, I know, Rachel, this is something you've talked about a lot on your podcast. And I love the conversation you had with your daughter Amelia about this, about making mistakes. It means we're fully human for our children, and I think that's okay. And and you know, I wrote about this in the book, but I've made so many mistakes as a parent. I talk to my children about that, and I think it's really, really important. And and you course correct, you know, this isn't working out, we're all getting really stressed or cross about this, or your child doesn't seem to be okay, but you you you try and sort of figure it out together.

Dealing with fear of getting it wrong: uncertainty, love, and modeling mistakes

Yes, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I've had conversations like this with my older daughter. Um there's a there's a general feeling now that you have to have everything sorted out before you have kids, because you could do untold damage to your kids if you don't get it right. And there's a lack of understanding that we all grow as we go through this process and we we grow from parenting our children rather than um before we parent them. What you've highlighted in the book is that when you started reading the research on which a lot of the parenting advice is based, you discovered how flimsy some of that evidence

Bad science in parenting advice: attachment research and shaky foundations 00:11:10 — Mothers working & alloparenting: historical and cross-cultural perspectives

actually turned out to be. Was there any particular surprising example you found where there was a huge parenting belief which rested on really remarkably weak evidence?

Yes. I mean, I, yeah, I sort of looked in terms of the bonnet because that was the kind of person I am. And, you know, I'm a I'm a researcher. And I was, yeah, I was really shocked. And then I was really angry. I was like, hang on a sec, this isn't okay. This isn't okay to sort of scare people and kind of dish out prescriptions about things. I think it's a really good question. I would say probably the uh research around attachment, actually, because that's very much in the mainstream. There's actually a bit of a disconnect now between what attachment researchers are um doing and what's in the sort of mainstream discourse about attachment theories. Or the all the kind of research around the importance of sort of sensitivity and kind of sensitive responsiveness is, I mean, it's based on a study of like 23 uh middle class babies in Baltimore. You know, it's yeah. And it's it's basically kind of taking cultural expectations about how mothers should behave and then sort of building a whole sort of study around it, and then building a whole body of research around this kind of foundational assumption that you need to sensitively interact with your baby to build a secure attachment. And also that if you don't do that, then your baby will grow up to be an insecure adult. And actually, what we know from attachment research and just from sort of life in general is that you know attachments sort of change over the life course and depend on what's going on at that particular time. So the idea that you can sort of ruin your child in the first, you know, year, three years, the evidence does not stand up for that at all.

And it doesn't even make sense if you step back from it and think we're being told that if we don't maintain eye contact with our child and we're not responsive when they need some support, that we're going to somehow damage them. And yet through history, we've had to do other things. And and one of the things you point out in your book is that this idea that women are now going out to work and that this is a new phenomenon is not borne out by the stats. Can you elucidate on that?

Yeah, it it's a good mother myth that mothers don't work. Mothers have always worked. If you look across history, across cultures, mothers have always worked because mothers are valuable members of society. So other, you know, other people so either the the baby comes, you know, comes to work with the mother or other people look after the children. And actually, one of the things which is quite specific to Western culture in the last 100 years is this idea that mothers are solely responsible for looking after children. And if you look at the ethnographic evidence, toddlers are looked after by their older siblings. And so children caregiving younger ch children is very normal throughout history. And it's really only kind of recently that we expect mothers to take that the burden of caregiving and not to work.

Yes, and I think that's such an important area to look at because they call it alloparenting, don't they? Where other people in the community play the role of a parent, including the siblings. And we did we're not wanting parentification, but there's a difference between that. And I when I read the book by Susan Dominus, which was um the sibling effect, and she had researched all these families where all the kids had done really, really well. And when we say really well, we're not talking about managing JB Morgan, we're talking about doing very interesting things with their lives. An awful lot of it was not parents who were constantly there for their kids and spending time. In fact, some of them were people who were running restaurants and the kids had to sit in the restaurant to do their homework, but other people stepped in to help them with their homework or the siblings would work together. So this idea that somehow mothers are solely the most important factor in a child's life is is I think is quite misleading, isn't it? I know you also said something in your book about stress and that there was a study among squirrel monkeys that concluded repeated exposure to early life stresses. If they weren't overwhelming, could actually help foster resilience. Because I think we're getting the message that somehow cortisol is a form of poison. What are your thoughts about that given the research that you've done?

Stress, cortisol & resilience: nuance vs alarmism in parenting science

Yeah, so a lot of parenting prescriptions will involve cortisol, and even the word just sounds cortisol. It sounds like acid dissolving, like you say, like poison. It's it's a really horrible word. But if you unpick the research, there's just so much we don't know about cortisol. What's what's you know, what's good, what's bad. Low levels of cortisol can be really damaging to your health. And that really, I don't know why, but that made me really cross when I found that out. I was like, hang on a sec. Because we're, you know, it's almost like we're sort of taught that any level of cortisol is is bad. There's just so much we don't know about stress. You know, as you say, like some stress is good. And I'm not saying that we should sort of deliberately stress our children out, but life is stressful. You know, thought experiment. We protect our children from all stress as they're growing up, we protect our teens from stress, and then they have to go out to the big, bad world. Well, how well have we prepared them for that big bad world if we've managed to kind of cop them somehow from all stress? It's it's just a really kind of unrealistic prescription as well. So I would take any research or any parent parenting advice which mentions cortisol with a massive pinch of salt.

Fascinating. And you have, throughout your book, pulled out the science and then explained why this doesn't make sense or the basis for the results isn't right. Why do you think this bad science keeps happening?

Why bad parenting science persists: certainty, incentives, and simplification 00:16:39 — Historical realities: abandoned infants, reproductive control, and myths of inevitability

It's a really good question. I think there's a number of reasons. I think one reason is the certainty. You know, we want certainty, we want prescriptions that sells better, it gets higher engagement on social media. So there are big incentives. There's big incentives if if if if you're researchers to kind of overclaim, there's big incentives if you're an influencer or an expert to overclaim on the basis of bad science. So you could argue that bad science is always going to be with us because we have this human tendency to want certainty, also to want simple explanations as well. Yeah. It's like, oh, if you do A, then B will happen. And actually, life is so complicated and messy. And parenting, my goodness, is so complicated and messy. You know, there are no simple prescriptions or simple solutions, but we still kind of, and I count myself, you know, in this as well, but we still long for the sort of simple answers and the simple solutions.

I want one. I want the answers. I'm another one of those people. You know, one of the things that uh really surprised me in your book was when you talked about the idea of maybe abortion or getting rid of children, and that that is not a modern phenomenon, and that, you know, the ancient Greeks used to regularly do this. Pope Innocent III was concerned with the number of infants being drowned in the Tiber, finding parenting too difficult, either because you can't afford the children, or because, you know, maybe postnatal depression or just all sorts of reasons, it's not new.

It's really not new. And it's quite shocking, actually, that history. And I I really dug into sort of foundling homes, which were basically to stop people from throwing their babies into the tiger. So you could go and abandon your child, your baby, you know, a church at a monastery, and you and there's a wheel you could put the baby on, and you know, they'd turn it around and take the baby in. And interestingly, that model is being introduced in America again because of what's happening with the reproductive rights. Um, so the assumption that we all want to have children is just wrong. And if you look at human history where there isn't kind of people don't have reproductive control and they don't have the economic or social circumstances where they can bring up children, babies get abandoned, given up. And

Total motherhood & postnatal mental health: pressure, perfectionism, and harm

again, it goes to show this idea of sort of natural mothering. It's another, it's another piece of evidence that mothering isn't natural in the way that we talk about it.

Yes. And and ironically, it's natural to us and yet we still need lots of advice. You mentioned a mum's net survey of 631 users who'd experienced postnatal depression and that the the pressure to be a perfect mother had come top of the things that upset them, that made them feel terrible. And you also mentioned Joan Wolfe in your book, uh, who was quoted as saying, we're in an era of total motherhood, which is a moral code that involves reducing any perceived risks to the child, regardless of how small. How do you think this is feeding into this risk narrative that, for example, Jonathan Heights been talking about, where we're just trying to reduce all risk?

Risk culture and social media: managing risk vs trying to eliminate it

It's like whack-a-mog, because there's always risks. So you kind of get rid and about to come out of one risk, another one pops up. And the idea that we could totally eliminate risk is setting us up for failure. You can never totally eliminate risk. Um, and one of the things I talk about in my book is like, well, why do we put children in a car in a car and drive them anywhere? You know, but no one really talks about that. The risk, risks and sort of moral panic are so intertwined. And we see that particularly around social media and gaming. And yes, we just cannot eliminate all risks. How much risk can an individual eliminate anyway? There's structural things. So I think with you know with social media, and obviously this is very topical right now because you know we've we've just heard the government's kind of sign social media use for under 16s. But how much are sort of parents having to swim against the tide of this awful content being freely available? So that's a bit of a sort of long-winded answer, but basically, we can't eliminate risk. We can't be expected to eliminate risk. It's about how we manage risk, and it's also about accepting what we can and can't control in terms of our responsibility.

Right, so we've established in your book that being a great mother is not a natural God-given anything. So if you were designing a parenting culture, what would you be wanting to push?

Designing a parenting culture: structural supports, community caregiving, and non-judgment

I think I would be wanting to push the circumstances which make it easier to mother and easier to be a father. Um, one of my favourite writers is Alison Gotnick, who's written a wonderful book, which which talks about how we're in our culture, we talk we want to sort of build our children. And she said, actually, what we need to be is gardeners who create the circumstances in which our children can flourish. And so I think that's what I would like to see: housing, kids having enough to eat. I mean, it's absolutely stunningly outrageous that in the UK, which is like the sixth richest country in the world, we have children going to bed hungry because they don't have enough to eat. So the parenting culture I would like to see is um a garden where our children can flourish, where they have enough to eat and they have um somewhere to live, where parents have secure and stable jobs. The other thing I would like to see is non-judgmental parenting culture as well. I think there's too much judgment, and I understand why there is, because we're worried, they're doing it very differently from me. Does that mean they're a bad mother or I'm a bad mother? And actually, neither of you are bad mothers. And I think, particularly in my postnatal work, I've really come to understand that people have a reason for doing what they're doing, which is specific to them. And I think if we can understand more and judge less, that will benefit all of us. And I think if we can come to those conversations with other mothers from a place of curiosity rather than a place of defensiveness and judgment, I think we can learn a lot from each other as well.

You've just summarised one of my entire episodes. Yes, I mean this curiosity is like, oh, that's interesting. You're doing that. Because sometimes we can learn from them rather than being feeling feeling scared that maybe we're getting it wrong. I agree with you. I think this pressure to get it right means we're often scared to ask or we're scared to sound like we're judging when we're not. We're just trying to understand. One of the things I love about all of this is that I've been thinking an awful lot about society and how the culture has been absolutely focused on rugged individualism, optimizing for our own benefit and our family's benefit. And when I interviewed Naomi Wei about this, who's a professor who does longitudinal studies and she's done them over 40 years. She said, you know, kids are telling us that we're just teaching them to be selfish. And I do wonder whether we should be redirecting our spotlight away from simply focusing on mothers, bringing the fathers in, bringing in the community and focusing on community again, starting to look again at how we can build something that's a bigger group of people who are responsible for our children. I was out doing a dog walk the other day, and this, these kids came past, I said hi to the parents, and one of the kids stripped my dog, boy cycled off. And as I went round the corner and the parents couldn't see, the boy had stopped. And I said, Are you okay? And he said, Oh, my bike's broken. And I looked at it and I said, Oh, it looks like your chain came off. And I showed him how to put the chain back on again. Because I said, Did you change gears just now? And the father came around the corner and said, No, no, no, I can do it, I can do it. And I thought this is a combination of fear and also feeling like I need to be the person who's doing all of this. And somehow, if we can get better at just going, oh, that's really great that somebody else is stepping in and showing our kids how to do things, we all benefit. And I think we're told that that's it, that is a benefit to us because we're scared that maybe that person's going to kidnap our child, which is a vanishingly small uh possibility.

Yeah, yeah. And it's such a shame, isn't it? Because I think we all benefit from community-based caregiving. Our children benefit because they see lots of different ways of doing things and lots of different styles. And maybe you know a lot more about how to mend a bike than that boy's dad does. And so he's learned something from you that he's not going to learn from his dad. It's so much better for children, I think, to be exposed to different people and different ways of doing things and different personalities. And looking at that historical perspective, that's historically what's happened. Children have been exposed to lots of adults. It does feel like we've massively overcorrected. And so the alloy parent model, which you mentioned earlier, Rachel, I think is really, really important for that. There's quite an interesting movement in America about the aunties. I don't know if you heard about that. So it's great adult caregivers who are sort of involved in other people's lives. They're like the children's aunties, which is really lovely. And so for people who don't have children of their own and don't want to, aren't able to, it's a way of kind of being involved in child rearing. And I just think it's a wonderful way of thinking about it. So, yeah, absolutely that that community. Also, in terms of human relationships being so important. So there's that famous Harvard study, which is like a longitudinal study. And you know, they looked at happiness over the life course. And what was the conclusion? What makes us happy? Good relationships. And it's, you know, I guess it's not rocket science, but you know, that's what matters. And I think when I think about what I want for my children, I want them to have good relationships in their life because I think that will make them have a better and richer and hopefully happier life.

That's exactly what Niobi Wei said. She said the most important job for a parent is showing our kids how to have good relationships. That's it. So that's all we should be focusing on. One of the biggest problems we've got is that we feel the tension, we feel the fear, we're scared that we've been doing something wrong or we're damaging our children. What can a mother listening today who would like to start practicing motherdom do? What can she stop doing or start doing first?

Well, I think the first thing I would say is reframe things and look at all the things you are doing for your child and look at all the things you are doing right.

Practical takeaways: “misery test,” reframe what you’re doing well, and invite teens to troubleshoot

Okay, that is number one. Number two, accept that you may be doing things wrong and think about, okay, how much of a problem is this? If it's something like the lunchbox, it's like I'm not doing the amazing lunchbox every day. Does that really matter? And so it's thinking through the things that you feel that you're doing wrong in a vertical commerce. Actually, does that really matter? And a kind of related point to that, and I write about this in the book, and I always use this in my postnatal work, and I just think it's a really helpful rule of thumb, just generally, is what I call the misery test. So is something making you miserable? That is a sign to reconsider or do something differently. So again, if you're killing yourself trying to do the amazing lunchbox for your teen every day, and it's making you miserable and it's making them grumpy, then you know, why are they, you know, why are you doing doing that? So I would apply the misery test. And I think the final thing, and I, you know, I loved your conversation with Amelia about this, because I think this really sort of speaks to this. It's like if you feel like you're doing something wrong, talk to your teen about it. Yes. And I think what I find with my kids is if I do talk to them about things, they're actually really good problem solvers in the sense of like, okay, why is it we all shout at each other when we're trying to leave the house on a school morning? And that's the sort of thing where you can go, I'm damaging my child because I'm getting really cross. And so it's kind of like troubleshooting with them. Okay, how can we make this process less stressful for all of us? And they might say, it really annoys me when you nag me, but how about you brush my teeth? It just trust me that I brush my teeth.

For instance, I absolutely love that. I love the misery test and I love the talking to the teenager. That's why I've tried to have conversations with my kids on this podcast because I'm trying to model how to have these messy, slightly awkward uh discussions. And the amazing thing again from what Niobi Wei said was they can see what's going on and they can tell us. It's just, are we prepared to listen and can we take the feedback? Which can feel a bit uncomfortable sometimes. But also if we come at it from a position of, look, I'm just trying to do my best. And we say to them, you're trying to do your best, I get that. Then we can all be a bit kinder to each other, and rather than expecting somebody to know what they're doing because it's natural, we can realise we're just growing together, right? I love it. I love your book, um, and I think it's a really interesting read. Lots and lots of brilliant facts that are pulled apart and destroyed about parenting and motherhood. So thank you for that. Is there a best way for people to reach you?

So I'm on Instagram um and um as something I've had to get to grips with as an author, so that's one way. Um and I'm also on Substack as well. And I really love hearing from people. So yeah, please do get in touch.

Yes, if you want to discuss any of the topics or pick her brains, I'm sure she'd love to hear from you. If you want to get in contact with me, ask me questions, send me your comments. It's teenagersuntangled at gmail.com. My website is at teenagersuntangled.com and my substack is teenagersuntangled.substack.com. Very easy to remember. I'm on all the socials. Come and say hi, I'm very friendly. That's it for now. Uh, thank you again, Alex. Have a great week. Big hug. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.