There is a lot of pressure on mothers these days to fit into a certain mold; to perform a certain way.
Do you feel it?
Now more than ever with the rise of social media, our lives are all under scrutiny and judgement. It’s unavoidable, unless you are hidden away under a rock somewhere.
Some mothers are confident in who they are and their calling and don’t really care what others think, and others constantly feel the pressure to attain the unattainable supermom status.
Most mothers fall into 3 categories.
1.The seasoned stay at home homemaker/homeschooler who seems(or tries) to do it all.
2.The newbie mama trying to figure this mothering thing out.
3.The working mom/ or work from home mom/ trying to juggle bringing in an income while meeting the needs of her family.
Whatever category you fall into, there is a degree of pressure to perform that either you put on yourself or feel from your husband, family, friends and the world.
Not only do we have many looking up to us as mothers, but we also want to look up to our mothers.
There is this certain expectation of what a mother should be in all of our minds. When we or our mothers don’t quite meet the expectations we have, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. Because the truth is that we and our mothers are going to disappoint our families at some point; however big or small.
As mothers we have one of the most important jobs in the world. Along with our husbands, we are responsible for raising godly, well behaved children and sending them out equipped to be adults. This is a tremendous privilege and burden. For most of us, we want to do this job well. Our children are a representation of us. We don’t want people or our children to think we are doing a bad job.
Here is the thing. No matter what we do, at some point someone, somewhere will not agree with our choices or decisions and will let us know about it.
Ultimately we need to do what we and our husbands feel is best for our families.
It’s hard.
With so many voices speaking into our lives through our family, friends, church, social media we can get confused and disillusioned as to what the right thing is to do.
Many of these voices are well meaning and in fact very good. It’s great to make all organic, nutritional foods for your family. It’s a good thing to want to protect your children from the evils of this world, it’s important to make sure our children are getting the best education possible and that they are being given the best healthcare options. It’s good that we keep our homes clean and organized. It’s great to be able to pay for a comfortable life for them.
With all these voices comes a lot of pressure and often confusion. It’s easy to get bogged down and forget what is really important.
No matter what we might think or what the world might say, our children just want us….imperfect, flawed, messy, wonderful mamas.
When you feel like a failure or that you don’t have this mothering thing down, remember that no one does. No matter how things might look from the outside, we all struggle, we all mess up and we all make the wrong choices at times.
During these times God’s grace is there for us. He doesn’t want us to beat ourselves up and wallow in self pity, but to rely on his grace and strength to be the mothers that he has called us to be.
God has called us to be diligent and faithful to him as mothers, but that doesn’t mean that we have to cave into the pressures to perform for the sake of how we look to others.
God is most glorified in us when he uses us despite our weaknesses and failings.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9
Maybe you have been caving under the pressure to perform as a mother. Maybe you have put pressure on your own mother to be the mother you think she should be. There is only one perfect one and dear mama, it is not you and it’s not me.
Are you struggling to carry the burden put upon yourself by either yourself or others?
Are you putting that burden on other mothers or even your own mother?
I know I have.
We all want to be the perfect moms and we want our moms to be perfect, but it’s just not going to happen and that’s okay.
God is having his perfect way in us through our weaknesses and giving us grace to be the mothers that he wants us to be.
Let’s find grace for ourselves as we put our trust in God and let’s give grace to each other in a world full of pressures to perform.
Rebekah
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