Sitting around the dining table on New Year’s Day at an adults’ only dinner party – my first in what seems like eons – I decided to say the horrible thing out loud. We had been asked to share a word or idea that we’re bringing into 2025. Common answers included balance, joy, spontaneity, the year of yes.
Selfish, I said. I want to be a more selfish mother.
I explained that, days earlier, I had been gifted an expensive hair-drying apparatus. The simple act of sitting alone in my bathroom for 20 entire minutes, trying to figure this tornadolike device out, felt foreign. Working on something so silly, so vain, as my appearance, for only my benefit, seemed futile and wrong. Down the hall, I could hear my two young girls asking my husband where Mommy went, then asking for snacks, then asking what time precisely Mommy would be coming back.
After I emerged – with bouncy, shiny hair for our grand outing to the playground – I did some serious reflecting. I haven’t taken a vitamin in four years, but I always make sure my kids are fully fortified. I can’t remember the last new thing I learned, but I’ve enrolled my kids in multiple stimulating activities. And my hair has most definitely been in a bun since 2020. Why did I stop doing things purely for my own advantage?
Asking these questions feels like an act of defiance. Society has hardwired me to believe that my overwhelming love for my children negates any desire to be a well-rounded person outside of motherhood. In some ways, the “mom who lost her identity” trope snuck up on me. I am so overjoyed by my girls (and also, it must be said, exhausted every single day) that until recently, I haven’t thought about who I was before they came along. They were just here, and my world revolved around their incredible universe, and I had no choice but to be all-in.
In other ways, the messaging is loud and clear. When moms set boundaries, the response is not kind. Just ask Isabelle Lux on TikTok, whose video about her postpartum rules went viral. Her list included not changing a diaper for three weeks after the birth of her child in order to focus on her own self-care; staying in bed for 15 days to recover; and returning to her complex beauty routine as soon as possible. Reaction to the video ranged from dismissive laughter and scoffing disbelief to accusations of insanity.
There are practical reasons moms struggle to find time for themselves, too. A 2023 study by the Pew Research Centre in the United States found that in heterosexual marriages, women spend more time on caregiving than men – even when they are the primary breadwinner. And new research led by the University of Alberta shows the gender gap of household chores only widens with parenthood, with women performing more housework than average while raising children. How can we think of ourselves until the never-ending laundry is folded and the dishwasher unloaded and the groceries put away?
There is a resounding acknowledgment among moms that moms do so much. Who among us millennial moms hasn’t shared the ubiquitous Snoop Dogg acceptance speech, delivered when he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? The one where he says, “I want to thank me for doing all this hard work, I want to thank me for having no days off, I want to thank me for never quitting, I want to thank me for always being a giver…”. Perhaps instead of sharing this meme, we should be asking why it is that we need to thank ourselves so extensively and what would happen if we started rewarding ourselves with some self-centred attention?
That women sacrifice and lose themselves in motherhood is not a flaw in the system – it is the system. Society demands that moms become more flexible in all aspects of their lives, while dads can return to their regularly scheduled programming.
Parenting handbooks and manuals are filled with advice about how to raise babies, toddlers and children but there is one part of the equation the authors leave out. Where are the mothers in the books about parenting?
Nancy Reddy, author of the new book The Good Mother Myth, says that’s no surprise. Her book tackles the long-believed myths of what makes a good mother – including the selfless martyr narrative.
“You know all of these authors, who are mostly men, they’re ostensibly studying motherhood and what mothers need to do to produce a healthy baby and a good kid – but they’re not actually very interested in mothers at all,” she told me. “Mothers are not really seen as full people.”
When I told Reddy about my word for 2025 and the ensuing “mom guilt” that has followed any attempt to be selfish, she interrupted me.
“I just really hate that phrase,” she said. “‘Mom guilt’ has become this weapon against women and by having a name for it we’ve made it worse. No one talks about ‘dad guilt’ because that isn’t a thing.”
Then she said something that stopped me dead in my tracks: “These ideas all come from men – largely, that it’s possible, and optimal, for one good mom to do it all and just love her kids so much that she doesn’t mind.”
She put into words precisely the flawed contention that may as well have been tattooed on my forehead since the birth of my first child four years ago.
After my call with Reddy, I was determined to be more selfish. But almost three weeks in – and after a nasty virus that has wiped out my husband’s ability to parent – I’m not feeling very selfish. I have purchased but not taken vitamins, and my hair has resumed the mom-bun position until further notice.
Insult to injury, my youngest recently learned I have a name other than mom (or more, accurately, snack lady) and it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard.
“Amberly?!… Amberly? That’s not your name!” she laughed hysterically in her high chair.
I’m determined to prove her wrong, but it might take all year.
