What Is the “Good Mother Myth?"

As a psychologist who supports expectant and new parents, I was elated to interview Nancy Reddy, whose book The Good Mother Myth was released on January 21st. We talked about the meaning of this myth, how it hurts mothers, and the role the patriarchy plays.

Dr. Juli Fraga (JF): What is the "good mother myth?"

Nancy Reddy (NR): I think everyone brings their own bad ideas into motherhood, so there are variations on this myth, but the big idea is that a “good mom” will always prioritize her kid and her family over her own needs and interests. It’s the notion that every woman has a set of “maternal instincts” just waiting to be kicked on by pregnancy and birth and that a good mom is capable of doing it all basically on her own, powered by selfless love.

It’s the kind of thing that sounds wildly outdated when you spell it all out, but it’s still really present in our messaging around motherhood in the media and online. It took me years to see that I’d held these impossible, contradictory expectations. When I felt like I had no idea what my new baby needed (where were my maternal instincts?), not only did I have the struggle of learning how to care for him, but I also felt like a failure for not somehow already knowing what to do.

JF: What you described captures what I see time and again in my psychotherapy practice. Mothers who internalize false expectations that caring for their baby should come naturally. Mothers who expect themselves to be “experts” at motherhood, even though they are still learning. In your experience, how does the “good mother myth” hurt mothers?

NR: It makes us feel bad, obviously, because no matter what we’re doing, it’s never quite enough. “Goodness” is an impossible standard. There’s always another mom who seems to be doing it a little bit better.

And that points to the second big problem: that reaching after goodness takes us outward, toward someone else’s ideas about what motherhood should look like, toward whatever ideals we’ve unconsciously internalized.

In that way, since we’re focusing on external validation, it really steals the joy from mothering. If you can reframe mothering as being not about trying to be a “good mom” but about getting to know a particular new person and rediscovering yourself along the way—there’s a lot of magic in that.

JF: As a psychologist, I know that many of the first “so-called” mothering experts, at least in the world of child development and psychology, were men. In your opinion, how has the patriarchy contributed to the “good mother myth?”

NR: At the same time as the patriarchy has made motherhood as an institution really crucial to our culture and our economy, it’s refused to see individual mothers as people or provide us with anything meaningful in the way of material support.

We depend on mothers to provide an enormous amount of unpaid and undervalued labor, and we expect them to do it all without complaint because they love their kids so much.

As lots of folks, including the sociologist Jessica Calarco and the economist Nancy Folbre, have documented, the American economy simply doesn’t work without the labor of mothers. Folbre has argued for incorporating the value of breastmilk into the GDP, which I find inspiring! Imagine if we could think of all those hours spent nursing and pumping not as wasted, nonproductive time but a vital contribution to the economy!

JF: As a mother yourself, what advice do you have for other mothers?

NR: I don’t really believe in advice. I believe in building community and asking for help. So that’s the biggest thing—be honest about where you’re struggling and ask for help when you need it. Your baby doesn’t need you to be a supermom. What babies and children need, as the anthropologist Margaret Mead put it, is loving care from “many, warm, friendly people.” And if you’re a new mom, you deserve that care, too!