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On the impossible math of modern motherhood — and why I’m not willing to do it
In the previous post, I shared my Big Why, my answer to the question “why don’t you want to have children?”
I don’t want to lose myself inside the current model of motherhood that is under supported by every system it exists in, asks everything of me culturally, and genuinely conflicts with the person I’m trying to be.
But a statement like that deserves to be unpacked. Because when I actually started imagining myself as a mother, and really sitting with what that would look like for my life — not the beautiful parts (I could seasily see those ) — there were things I kept coming back to that I couldn’t get comfortable with. Not in a “motherhood is bad” way, but in a “I don’t think I could do this” way.
The contradiction nobody resolves
Here’s something that doesn’t get said plainly enough: the expectations placed on working mothers are not just demanding, they are structurally and logically incompatible with each other.
On one side, there’s the workforce. Forty hours a week, minimum. Full presence. Full availability. Hit the KPIs, deliver the presentation, and strive for the promotion. There is an implicit (and sometimes explicit) expectation that my employer has first claim on my energy and attention during the hours between 8-5pm and truly long before and after that.
On the other side, there’s intensive mothering; the dominant cultural norm that defines what “good” motherhood looks like right now. A good mother is deeply present, emotionally attuned, and developmentally intentional. She is consistently prioritizing her child’s growth, stimulation, and wellbeing. Not just keeping kids alive and loved, but actively, thoughtfully, constantly investing in who they’re becoming.
These two things are not in tension the way that two demanding jobs are in tension. They are in direct competition for the same resource: me. My time, my attention, my emotional bandwidth, my nervous system, my everything. I cannot be fully available to my employer and simultaneously be 100% emotionally immersed in my child. That’s not a personal failing, that’s just math.
And yet, rather than resolving that contradiction at a systemic level, through policy, through workplace culture, or through a genuine redistribution of domestic labor; we have collectively decided that women should just… figure it out privately, quietly, by themselves, and with a smile. So much so that to be considered a good mother is to absorb that tension, stretch yourself across work and home, and treat the stretch itself as proof of devotion to motherhood.
And no matter how hard I tried to imagine it, I couldn’t find a version of the future where the math worked. One where I was showing up fully at work, fully as a mother, and still somehow remaining a whole, sane person in the process.
The statistic that stopped me cold
At some point in my process, I did what I always do when I’m trying to make sense of something big: I read – well actually I listened to some podcasts. And one thing I came across really gave me pause: modern working mothers actually spend more time with their children than stay-at-home mothers did in previous generations.
I had to sit with that for a minute.
Because if women are now working full-time outside the home, and spending more time with their kids than previous generations who weren’t, where is that time coming from? It’s not appearing from nowhere, something is being given up. And when I thought honestly about what that something must be, the list wasn’t pretty: sleep, and rest, and leisure, and hobbies, and the quiet space required for your own inner life, and the time to just be a person, and, and…
Now, I want to be fair here. I think there’s something genuinely worth celebrating in how our understanding of child development has evolved. We now understand that presence and attunement matters. The research on early attachment is real and it’s important. But that statistic isn’t just a sign of progress, it’s also a signal that parenting has intensified in ways we don’t always name out loud. And that the version of motherhood being sold to us is not the same one our mothers or grandmothers were actually navigating.
The gap between the romanticized version and the actual version is doing a lot of quiet damage. And again, when I tried to imagine myself as a mother navigating that gap, I kept asking: where would the time come from? Sure, I could watch less TV, read fewer articles, scale back on hobbies, and give up slow Sunday mornings. But I knew it wouldn’t be enough, because it’s never enough.
The part that gets me most
But here’s where it gets really personal for me. Because the work contradiction is logistical, and the time statistic is eye-opening, but what actually sits heavy in my chest is something harder to name and harder to escape, it’s the all-encompassing-ness of it.
Are they sleeping enough? Hitting the right milestones? Reading early enough? Are we spending enough quality time? Are we teaching them the right values? Are we making sure we’re not raising assholes? Is every experience enriching? And if it’s not, does that mean we’re doing something wrong?
I can’t speak for every mother, but I know how I’m wired. And for me, that monologue wouldn’t turn off. It would run underneath everything: every decision, every outing, every moment that should have been restful but wouldn’t be because I would turn it into another opportunity to ask: am I doing enough?
I cannot imagine carrying that kind of mental weight day after day. Because I know what it looks like when I’m running on empty. I know how I get when my inner world has no room to breathe. And if that becomes my baseline, I wouldn’t just struggle, I would be depleted. And a depleted me isn’t someone who has anything left to give. Not to a child. Not to anyone.
The standards of intensive parenting are also, not coincidentally, structured in a way that ensures you are always falling short because there is no finish line. There is no moment where you’ve done enough. And I think there’s something insanely cruel about that, about a culture of motherhood that demands everything and still leaves you wondering if it was sufficient.
I don’t want to live inside that.
When I imagined myself as a mother, like really imagined it without the romanticized version with newborn snuggles, it just didn’t fit. The cost was too high, the burden too heavy, and the version of me that would emerge on the other side wasn’t someone I recognized. It felt incongruent with the life I want, the woman I’m becoming, and the peace of mind I’m not willing to give up.