Societal and cultural norms say mothers must be kind and nurturing, they must have endless patience for their children, they must be doting, attentive and protective, and they should be able to do it all — and be thrilled to do it all. But is that what motherhood really looks like in 2025?

“We have an understanding of motherhood that scholars call ‘intensive motherhood,’ where all mothers are held to standards of motherhood that ask them to bring every skill that they have to their mothering,” said Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, a professor and motherhood scholar at Boston University. “And that they are also fully and completely devoted to their children, regardless of whether or not they work or stay at home.”

Despite being virtually impossible to achieve, those “intensive motherhood” standards are present for all mothers. But that often makes raising children even more challenging for mothers from other backgrounds, races, ethnicities and levels of income, said Ambreia Meadows-Fernandez, a motherhood expert and founder of Free Black Motherhood.

She says that standard prioritizes white motherhood, which can make many mothers feel even more isolated when they don’t reach that pinnacle standard.

“The more deviations you are from that expectation — whether it be because you’re queer, or because you aren’t middle class or upper-middle class, or it’s because you are disabled, neurodivergent — you can often end up with that intersectionality and sandwiching between these social factors,” Meadows-Fernandez said, “on top of being alienated in definitions of motherhood and coming against a definition that was never meant to define or encapsulate your experience.”

“Community is really what American mothers need way more than someone else telling them what to do.”
Nancy Reddy, author of “The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How To Be A Good Mom”

And bringing in outside expertise doesn’t always translate into effective or sustainable practices in the home. When structural supports don’t exist, scholars say that creates an impossible expectation for one person to live up to.

“I had really believed: ‘I have studied, I have worked hard, I have consulted the experts.’ All of the things that had let me be successful in other parts of my life, I had done. And mothering doesn’t work that way,” said Nancy Reddy, author of “The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How To Be A Good Mom.” “It took the lived experiences of really having a hard time and learning that the experts did not actually have the answers that I needed. I needed friends and family who would hang out with me, who would sympathize with me, who would take the baby. I think that community is really what American mothers need way more than someone else telling them what to do.”

Instead, Reddy says she rejects the notion of a “good mom.”

“‘Goodness’ has been a trap,” Reddy said. “I think that trying to aim to be ‘good’ is always about someone else’s expectations and someone else’s ideas and someone else’s ideals. For me, I feel like a lot of my journey of thinking about mothering has been to try to really put down the idea of a good mom in general and just think instead about my kids. So to really think about mothering relationally rather than trying to be ‘good.’’”

Guests

  • Nancy Reddy, writer, poet, professor and author of “The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How To Be A Good Mom,” available in stores and online now. Nancy will be at Hummingbird Books on Tuesday, May 13 as part of the event, “Not Your Mother’s Mother’s Day.”
  • Ambreia Meadows-Fernandez, storyteller, public speaker, facilitator, motherhood scholar and the founder of Free Black Motherhood, a movement that uplifts Black mothers, maternal knowledge and stories.
  • Lynn O’Brien Hallstein, professor of rhetoric and assistant provost for general education at Boston University, motherhood scholar, member of the International Association of Maternal Action + Scholarship, and chair of BU’s Institute for the Study of Motherhood Scholarship.