Written by Dr. Colleen Reichmann- clinical director of Wildflower Therapy, mother of two, loather of pumping, frequent crier
I remember the first time in my motherhood journey that I cried simply from thinking about everything that I had to get done for the day. It was in the early months after my son was born- I was back at work, (and to situate you in time, this was peak COVID, so I was fully working from home) and staring down a day of bouncing between meetings, sessions, admin, writing, throwing loads of laundry in, and of course…pumping. I felt my chest tighten as I anticipated another day packed with my “normal work pressure” while also navigating my new, simmering “good mom” pressure. This good mom pressure was essentially a belief that I should always make sure that I used any random free moments throughout the day to bond with my son. And as I thought about the day packed with 25 work tasks, 15 domestic labor tasks, a minimum of four blocks of time spent milking my (poor, chaffed) self, and an indeterminable number of moments to optimize by bonding- I started weeping. Like, I’m talking head in my hands, shoulders jerking up and down sobs.
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being responsible for a hundred things on any given day- remembering all of the mundane tasks that keep the house running, maybe while also trying to show up for an out of the home job, while also trying to show up for what feels like the most important role of your life (aka someone’s mother.)
Now add on the physical exhaustion of lifting a small human up and down many times in the day, manuvering them into sweaters, coats, diapers, and, if you’re extremely ambitious- shoes. And let’s not forget bending over to bathe them, croaching on the floor to play with them curling up to read to them. Maybe also feeding them with your poor, touched out, bone-tired body. And oh yes-lest I forget-getting up a few times in the night for said human.
And somewhere in the middle of all of this, you feel a tinge of guilt because you are supposed to be enjoying motherhood. You think about how many years you spent hoping for exactly this.
You look around at the other mothers at daycare pickup-at preschool- at the playground- or hell just on Instagram. They seem to be managing-scratch that, a lot of them seem to be thriving? Their children have cute clothing. They do too somehow? Their kitchens look clean. They remember to bring snacks and sunscreen. They somehow knew to make that first dentist appointment? They seem to know what is going on. You wonder whether everyone else received some sort of instruction manual that you missed.
Just how the hell is everyone else doing this?!
If this question has crossed your mind more than once, I want to offer a heavy dose of camaraderie, first and foremost. I have thought this to myself more often than nearly any other repeating thought loop I have experienced in my life. I also want to offer an alternative lens. It is one I done a lot of work to try to internalize. And it is one that I can so clearly seeapplies to the incredible mothers I sit across from in the therapy space:
Perhaps you are not doing anything wrong. Perhaps there are no hacks you have missed. Perhaps, instead, you are overwhelmed because you are carrying an enormous amount of responsibility- one that no single human should have ever been asked to shoulder. Consider that the problem is less about your ability to manage motherhood and more about the unfair, crazy-making expectations we've placed on mothers in this country.
The invisible work of being the person who remembers everything
Motherhood involves an almost comical number of responsibilities. You couldn’t even capture all of them on a traditional to-do list if you wanted to. Let’s say we remove the (not so small) time suck of having a job outside of the home.
Even if we remove that huge, taxing responsibility, there is still the actual work of caring for babies and children, right? Feeding them, bathing them, getting them dressed, comforting them, keeping them safe, helping them learn, and trying to make sure they get enough sleep.
Then there is the work that happens around the work. Remembering which child needs a new pair of shoes. Knowing when the next well visit is due. Watching for milestones. Monitoring the snack situation. Keeping track of daycare extra clothing, school communications, birthday parties, changing clothing sizes, summer camp registration, and the (increasingly complicated, as kids grow out of toddlerhood and into the after-school activity years) logistics of getting everyone where they need to be. This is all of the invisible labor of anticipating what might go wrong and trying to prevent it before anyone else even realizes there is a problem.
Sociologists sometimes refer to this as cognitive labor, or the mental load. It is the work of anticipating, planning, organizing, remembering, and managing the needs of a household. It can be particularly exhausting because it doesn't have a clear beginning or end. You can finish making dinner, but you cannot finish being the person who has to think about dinner tomorrow.
Research consistently finds that mothers shoulder a disproportionate share of this work. A 2025 study examining gender differences in household labor found that mothers in its sample reported substantially more physical childcare, housework, and cognitive household responsibilities than fathers. Mothers reported primary responsibility for approximately 68% more of the measured cognitive household tasks. The mental work of running a family is real work, even when nobody can see you doing it.
And it is work that often continues long after the other official workday ends.
We were never meant to raise children entirely on our own
There is a reason the phrase "it takes a village" has endured. It reflects something important about the way humans have historically cared for children.
Anthropological research on human childrearing has documented the importance of what researchers call alloparenting, or caregiving provided by people other than a child's mother. Across many human societies, children have been cared for by grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, extended family members, and other members of the community. Caregiving has often been a shared responsibility, with different people contributing to the daily work of keeping children fed, safe, entertained, and connected.
In some hunter-gatherer communities studied by anthropologists, young children have access to numerous caregivers throughout the day. Research on the BaYaka, for example, has described children receiving care from multiple adults and older children, rather than relying exclusively on their mothers.
This is an important distinction. The experience of mothering in contemporary American society can look remarkably different from the more communal caregiving arrangements documented in many other societies.
Even within the United States, family structures have changed. A study published in the journal Demography examined the decline in coresidential female support for mothers of young children between 1880 and 2000. The researchers found that mothers became less likely to live with other adult caretakers who could share in childcare as household structures changed. The growth of smaller, nuclear households and declining multigenerational living arrangements meant fewer additional caregivers readily available within the home.
Of course, there has never been one universal way of raising children. And to be very clear here- earlier generations of mothers experienced their own considerable burdens, inequities, and lack of support. Of course a larger family automatically mean a more supportive one. Still, the research offers an important reminder: the expectation that one or two adults (and be so for real- frequently one adult in particular…) will manage nearly every dimension of raising children is a pretty narrow, constricting way of organizing family life.
Many mothers today are trying to recreate an entire village through a combination of daycare, nannies, babysitters, group texts, carpools, carefully coordinated calendars, and the occasional desperate phone call to a grandparent.
And even when childcare is available, the responsibility for organizing it, remembering it, paying for it, and figuring out what happens when it falls through often remains with the mother.
We have become very good at talking about the importance of community while making the actual experience of parenting increasingly private, individual, and hence crushing. (I say this as someone who clawed my way into motherhood via years of IVF. They are literally my dream, come to life. AND the way the system sets it up has often made the day-to-day experience feel like drowning.)
I know I am not the only one. I know this is echoed by nearly every mother I have spoken to on any kind of deep level. And since that is the care, it is something worth examining, right?
Just how many hours are mothers actually working?
So sometimes numbers can help put language to an experience that has felt intensely personal.
According to an analysis by the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau, employed mothers between the ages of 18 and 64 in 2022 spent an average of 35.5 hours per week in paid employment. They also spent approximately 13.2 hours per week doing household chores and another 12.5 hours actively caring for their children.
That is a substantial amount of time devoted to work before accounting for the additional mental effort of managing a household, coordinating schedules, anticipating needs, and keeping the many moving pieces of family life functioning. The time spend doesn’t even begin to touch the sheer volume of responsibilities many mothers are navigating.
As mentioned earlier, so much of this work is emotionally and physically demanding. Caring for children requires a tremendous amount of patience, attention, flexibility, and emotional regulation. You are frequently interrupted. You are needed while doing other things. You are expected to remain available even when you are tired, frustrated, distracted, or desperately in need of a moment to yourself. There is such a SHOCKINGLY small amount of opportunity to fully clock out.
Even when you are sitting on the couch, your mind may be moving through tomorrow's schedule. Even when you are at work, part of your attention may be devoted to wondering whether your child is adjusting to school, whether the nanny remembered the medication, whether the baby is taking the bottle, or whether you need to respond to the pediatrician's message.
It makes sense that you are tired. It makes sense that your patience sometimes runs thin. It makes sense that you might feel overwhelmed by responsibilities that, individually, seem relatively ordinary but collectively become enormous.
We have a tendency to interpret exhaustion as a personal shortcoming. We wonder why we cannot seem to get organized, why we are so irritable, why we have less patience than we used to, or why even small tasks feel like too much. But the truth is, sometimes, the most psychologically helpful thing we can do is stop treating an understandable response to an overwhelming situation as evidence that we have failed. As much as many of us have a gut instinct to blame ourselves, the best thing here is to lean into whatever gentleness we can give ourselves. Maybe society won’t give mothers grace. But we can give it to each other and ourselves.
Some of the balls are glass. Some are plastic. And some can probably just stay on the floor.
There is a metaphor I have always liked about the experience of trying to manage too many responsibilities. It is often attributed to author Nora Roberts, who described the challenge of juggling the many demands of life as an exercise in figuring out which balls are made of glass and which are made of plastic. If you drop a glass ball, it shatters. If you drop a plastic ball, it bounces.
The idea is that we really can’t keep everything in the air all the time. We are only human, with limited time and energy. (Only have so many arms, ya know?) We have to figure out which responsibilities genuinely require our attention and which ones can fall for a little while without causing lasting damage.
I think this is so relevant to motherhood because many of the balls we are juggling feel important. We want our children to be healthy, happy, loved, and well cared for. We want to be present. We want to maintain friendships, show up for our partners, do meaningful work, take care of our basic needs, and perhaps occasionally remember that we are people with interests and identities outside of parenting.
But then…. there are the other things. The perfectly organized playroom. The homemade muffins. The birthday party that looks like it belongs in a magazine. The school volunteer opportunity we said yes to when we were feeling SUPER optimistic about our future availability.
It can be surprisingly difficult to let some of these things go, even when we intellectually understand that they are optional, right? There is often a layer of guilt attached to dropping a ball. We worry that we are letting someone down, that other mothers are doing more, or that our children are somehow missing out because we didn't manage to make everything happen.
I also think there is something important about recognizing that the glass balls are not always the things we assume they are. Sometimes the most important thing you can do for your child is take a nap (Yes you. Matter of fact stop reading this and go lay down…) Sometimes the healthiest thing you can model is saying no. Sometimes the family dinner can be cereal, the laundry can stay unfolded, and the school fundraiser can happen without your involvement.
And sometimes the ball that needs catching is your own well-being.
Sometimes mothers need someone to mother them, too
There is another layer to maternal overwhelm that I think deserves considerably more attention.
Becoming a mother can bring up a deep desire to be mothered yourself. Because you may spend your days being the person who notices everything. You know when someone is hungry, when someone is tired, when someone is getting sick, when someone needs a hug, and when someone needs a little extra reassurance. You anticipate needs before they are expressed. You offer comfort, solve problems, organize, soothe, and hold things together.
And somewhere underneath all of that, you may find yourself wishing someone would do the same for you. You’re…exhausted, after all. You might want someone to notice that you haven't eaten lunch. To make you a cup of coffee without being asked. To recognize that you've had a particularly difficult day and take something off your plate. You might want someone to ask how you are doing and actually wait for the answer. You might want to be able to fall apart a little without immediately becoming responsible for managing someone else's reaction to it.
Sometimes you daydream about what it might feel like to have someone else say that they’re worried about how much you are shouldering- “H ey this doesn’t feel sustainable. Just because you can keep going with no gas in your tank doesn’t mean you should. How can we take some of this off of your plate?”
I think motherhood can make this longing particularly tender because it brings us into such intimate contact with the experience of nurturing another person. You are constantly witnessing how much children need. Their need for comfort, reassurance, protection, attention, and physical closeness is so visible. And in the process, you may become more aware of your own needs for those very same things.
You can love your children beyond measure and still wish someone would take care of you for a change. You can feel grateful for your family and deeply resentful of the amount of responsibility you carry. You can be happy to be a mother and miss the experience of being someone's primary concern.
These feelings can coexist. They don't make you selfish, ungrateful, or less devoted to your children. They make you human. We all still need nurturing-that doesn’t go away after becoming mothers.
When does everyday overwhelm become something worth getting help for?
Please hear me when I say this next part- there is no requirement that you reach a breaking point before you deserve support. You don't need to have postpartum depression, OCD, or a significant crisis to benefit from talking with a therapist.
The signs are usually much quieter. You notice that you are constantly irritable, that you have very little patience left by the end of the day, or that you feel like you are always behind. You might find yourself crying more frequently (hi hello postpartum me from the beginning of this blog post) feeling disconnected from your partner, withdrawing from friendships, or struggling to enjoy things that used to feel meaningful.
Maybe you have trouble sleeping even when you have the opportunity. Maybe your mind is always racing through the next set of responsibilities. Maybe you feel guilty whenever you take time for yourself, or you have become so accustomed to being needed that you aren't entirely sure what you need anymore. For some women, maternal overwhelm is connected to anxiety or depression. For others, it involves perfectionism, unresolved experiences from their own childhood, relationship stress, an eating disorder history, or the complicated identity shifts that accompany becoming a parent.
And, I would be remiss if I did not again mention that oftentimes, the overwhelm is also a reflection of a genuinely unsustainable distribution of responsibility. Therapy can help you understand your emotional experience, recognize patterns that may be making things harder, and begin thinking about what needs to change. It can be a safe space to work on how to communicate what needs to change in the division of responsibility with your partner. It can also provide a space where you are allowed to be the person receiving care, rather than the person responsible for providing it.
Working with a therapist who understands maternal mental health can be especially helpful because motherhood brings its own particular set of emotional, relational, and developmental challenges. You deserve a therapist who understands those complexities without reducing every difficult feeling to a symptom or suggesting that a bubble bath will solve the problem.
You were never supposed to be able to do everything
The longer I am in the game, the more I believe that one of the saddest things about modern motherhood is how easily women can come to believe that they are failing at something that was never designed to be accomplished by one person.
The expectation that you will be a loving, attentive mother, a thoughtful partner, a successful professional, a present friend, an organized household manager, and a person who somehow maintains her own physical and emotional well-being is an enormously unfair, untenable one. And the expectation that you will do all of this with a relatively good attitude, a reasonably clean kitchen, and perhaps a little gratitude sprinkled throughout is even more baffling and nonsensical.
If you are constantly overwhelmed, it may be worth looking at the number of things you are being asked to carry, and examining who else could be holding some of them. It may be worth examining the expectations that have been handed to you by the culture around you.
And it may be worth asking when you last felt genuinely cared for.
You deserve relationships in which you are allowed to have needs, to be tired, to ask for help, and to receive care without having to orchestrate every detail of it. You deserve time that belongs to you. You deserve a life in which your identity extends beyond the many people who depend on you.
(And if you're reading this while mentally calculating everything you still need to do before bedtime, consider this your permission slip to let the plastic balls stop and go to sleep earlier than you had planned. Heck I’ll drop some of my own with you. Pass the sleepy time tea, let’s get our extra hour tonight.)
Maternal Mental Health Therapy in Philadelphia and on the Main Line
At Wildflower Therapy, we understand that motherhood can be both deeply meaningful and profoundly overwhelming. Our therapists work with women navigating pregnancy, postpartum adjustment, maternal anxiety and depression, identity changes, relationship stress, perfectionism, and the emotional complexities of raising children while trying to take care of themselves.
We recognize that maternal mental health extends beyond the postpartum period. You may be struggling during pregnancy, adjusting to life with a newborn, navigating the demands of parenting older children, or finding that motherhood has brought up feelings and experiences you didn't anticipate.
Our clinicians offer warm, collaborative, and individualized therapy for mothers and women in the transition to motherhood. We provide in-person therapy in Center City Philadelphia and Devon on the Main Line, as well as virtual therapy for clients in Pennsylvania and other states where our clinicians are licensed.
You don't have to wait until things feel unmanageable to reach out. If you have been feeling constantly overwhelmed, stretched thin, or disconnected from yourself, we'd love to help you find some room to breathe.
Learn more about maternal mental health therapy at Wildflower Therapy or schedule a free consultation to connect with a therapist.