Читать книгу Work. Mama. Life. - Ali Young - Страница 26

Okay, this probably doesn't need a great deal of discussion, but the martyr or selfless mother concept is a biggie in the expectation stakes. Research conducted by Lazarus and Rossouw in 2015 discovered that it was vital to educate women about societal expectations and self-expectations prior to having a child, as ‘these expectations can influence levels of self-esteem, depression, anxiety, and stress’. Much like in point 3, how we think it will end up and how it actually does can drive our mental health outcomes.

Where point 4 differs is that we are focusing not on the parenting journey, but on how your selflessness as a mother is indicative of the intensity of your love for those little babes. The self-scrutiny of failure around not being selfless is massive. There is a gap in our current health system with a lot of blame levelled at mothers, who are ultimately trying their best, if their child isn't doing things the ‘normal’ way. Society expects that if we are doing everything as we should, our baby will just follow along the curve.

This isn't always true. I mean, it's most definitely not true!

In my opinion, the martyr mother phenomenon doesn't serve anyone in the mother–child relationship. According to research by Mikolajczak and Roskam in 2020, we need a shift in focus from us as parents being responsible solely for good childhood development outcomes. I mean, the Convention of the Rights of the Child determines how our kids ‘should be developing’, and it even says that when we look after ourselves, ensuring our own wellbeing, it decreases parental burnout and improves development outcomes for the kiddos.

Martyrdom leads to parental exhaustion and burnout. The pandemic of 2020/22 (and hopefully no longer) exacerbated the pressure on parents to do everything for their kids so they wouldn't be damaged by the lockdown, home learning, altered social structures and the complete upheaval of life as we generally knew it. Yet, when we are busily trying to work and parent and school, putting the kids first all the time in this selfless parenting paradigm can be really damaging.

The burnout you are feeling in the life you are struggling to live is where you can begin to make shifts for your health and your ‘self’. And hopefully empower those little people in your life while you're at it too!