“Having It All” — the Cultural Ideal at the Root of Every American Mom’s Stress
By: J.C. Cooper
Tags: Stress, Research, Motherhood, Health, Parenting

Motherhood. Marriage. Career. Friendship. Self.

You can have it all.

Or so we’ve been told. It’s an ideal embedded within the American dream, the promise of all things females are brought up to believe they can achieve — if they just work hard enough.

Of course, the pursuit of happiness as a woman is rife with challenges far beyond simply working hard. We must, at the same time, overcome obstacles presented by an imperfect society — everything from systemic discrimination and sexual objectification to socioeconomic disadvantages.

Taking on those hurdles as they come doesn’t often leave time to ponder what happens after you actually get everything you aspire to have. Once you actually get your perfect partner, job, home, and life — then what?

As a millennial mom, I know firsthand how demanding the “after” is, having watched my own mother “have it all” and now taking it on myself. Don’t get me wrong, like her, I’m grateful everyday for the countless blessings I have. I love my family, career and life, even with every stressful string attached to having them.

But the reality is, having it all really is more than one person can, and should, handle. Yet, women carry the load anyway, because that’s the way it’s always been.

Work-Family Stress on Moms: A National Crisis

In her book, Making Motherhood Work, sociologist Caitlyn Collins claims that the work-family conflict mothers experience today is a national crisis. American women struggle to balance breadwinning with the bulk of parenting, and stress is constant.

According to The American Institute of Stress, 77% of Americans regularly experience physical symptoms caused by stress, and 73% experience psychological symptoms caused by stress.

Collins spent over five years studying middle-class working mothers in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Her research indicates that, of all Western industrialized countries, the United States ranks dead last for supportive work-family policies.

Even though the U.S. is the only developed country without a paid parental leave policy, parental leave is still popular among Americans. In 2016, Pew Research polled 6,000 Americans and found that 82% said mothers should have paid leave following birth or adoption, and 69% said fathers should have the same benefit.

California Governor Gavin Newsom recently grabbed national attention when news of his plans to introduce six months of paid parental leave for all Californians went public. If Newsom delivers on his plan, it will be the most generous policy in the country.

Why A Collective, Structural Solution is Needed

Collins suggests the USA is an outlier when it comes to its shortcomings that contribute to overly stressed mothers, across several layers. These include poor social policies, lack of federal paid parental leave, the highest gender wage gap, no minimum standard for vacation and sick days, and the highest maternal and child poverty rates.

Changing jobs or attempting to become more efficient to try and reduce stress and guilt from work-family conflict are not the answer, she says. Those are “individual strategies that approach child-rearing as a private responsibility and work-family conflict as a personal problem.”

Instead, it’s the cultural ideal of motherhood that is the biggest problem that needs to be fixed — as a collective.

Expectation of all-absorbing devotion to children as the source of a mother’s life meaning, creativity and fulfillment, puts U.S. moms in a conflicted position of having to choose between their worker devotion and devotion to children. The cultural ideal also discounts fathers as not being able to help much with properly caring for children because they lack the right nurturing skills, adding more pressure on moms.

Collins believes that policies matter and make a huge difference, but the ideal of motherhood devotion is the most persistent problem. “With women held to unrealistic standards in all four countries, the best solutions demand that we redefine motherhood, work, and family.”

Can we, as a collective, redefine the cultural ideal of motherhood? Only time will tell. Until then, women will carry on to have it all, as they’ve been promised.