A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University. This is an updated version of a paper published previously at The Conversation.
May 8, 2025
There are many complex reasons behind America’s falling birthrates. Many Americans feel freer today than in the past to construct enriching lives that don’t include parenting. But it’s also true that on average, Americans are having fewer children than they say they would prefer. Economic uncertainty and the lack of social policy supports for parents in the U.S. are clear contributors. In addition, parents report concerns about global instability and climate change.
But there may be another less obvious factor in Americans’ reluctance to become parents or to have larger families. Parenting has become the source of so much anxiety for parents, particularly mothers, that it can seem impossible to do it right. When 20-something women in my neighborhood and among my students discuss their ambivalence about becoming parents, much of the anxiety revolves around the fact that they have set the bar so high for “good parenting.”
Even armed with a Ph.D. in developmental psychology, I too worried about whether I could meet that bar. I vividly remember the frightening first moments after bringing my newborn daughter home from the hospital. I wasn’t sure what to do—and not at all confident that I was capable of being the parent she needed me to be. Every little decision about feeding and caring for this helpless human seemed momentous and fraught with anxiety. What if I don’t make it a full year of breastfeeding? Would feeding her formula result in a lower IQ? Should I turn off the TV whenever she is in the room to avoid passive screen exposure? When would it be OK for her to enter full-time day care? I worried that if I was too tired to read to her one evening before bed, she would never learn to read. As she grew into early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence, the content of the worries shifted (When is it OK for her to have a smartphone? Should I be tracking her location on Life 360?) but the sense that I wasn’t quite good enough for the “most challenging job in the world” didn’t quit.
My personal experiences as a parent are in part why I study the experiences of other parents. In my New Parents Project, an ongoing longitudinal study of nearly 200 dual-earner couples who welcomed their first children in 2008-2009, I have found that this kind of “parenting perfectionism”—holding oneself to impossibly high standards for parenting, and, perhaps even more important, believing that other people hold such high standards for you—is common among mothers and related to lower confidence in parenting and even feelings of depression.
Pressure to Be Perfect
Mothers didn’t always feel this perfectionist pressure. In the 1960s, for example, when far fewer mothers worked outside the home, mothers spent about half as much time in direct interaction with their children as mothers do today.
Yet, since the last decade of the 20th century, even as mothers entered the workforce in greater numbers and for greater numbers of hours, norms for mothering evolved toward an “intensive mothering” ideal. This norm dictates that mothers’ parenting should be time-consuming, emotionally absorbing, and guided by expert advice. This pressure is particularly intense for middle-class mothers, who often practice a childrearing style called concerted cultivation, an approach identified by Annette Lareau in the early 2000s. This style focuses on deliberately providing children with experiences and activities to help them develop intellectual and social skills that will serve them well in an increasingly unequal and competitive society. More recent research, however, indicates that intensive parenting ideals have now become pervasive across social classes in the U.S.
Striving for Perfection Can Harm Parenting
Ironically, however, the felt pressure to be a “perfect” mother may actually harm a mother’s parenting. In my lab’s research on new parents, we found that mothers showed less confidence in their parenting abilities when they were more worried about what other people thought about their parenting.
The popularity of social media has likely exacerbated this phenomenon because parents can look at what other parents are doing—even in ostensibly private moments—and judge themselves in comparison. In my research, when we asked new parents about their Facebook use, mothers who were more frequent visitors to the site and who managed their accounts more frequently reported higher levels of parenting stress. New mothers who were highly perfectionistic about parenting were the ones who used Facebook more frequently, and this greater use was linked to increases in depressive symptoms. Decades of research have demonstrated that mothers who experience depression act in more negative and less positive ways toward their children.
Thus, the irony is that in seeking perfection in parenting, parents are less likely to actually parent effectively. Worrying about what others think of their parenting saps mothers’ confidence, leading them to experience parenting as less enjoyable and more stressful. When faced with inevitable parenting challenges, mothers with lower confidence and more parenting stress give up more quickly. Perfectionistic mothers may also engage in gatekeeping by correcting or criticizing fathers’ interactions with children, which can push fathers away from active involvement in parenting, thereby increasing the burden on themselves. Mothers may end up feeling burnt out—emotionally exhausted and distanced from their children.
What Does a ‘Good’ Parent Look Like?
There may be disagreement among child development experts about issues such as screen time or sleep routines, but there is striking agreement about the key elements of “good” parenting, even if consensus is less likely to make headlines than the latest parenting controversy.
Good parenting has a lot more to do with the “how” than the “what.” Good parents are those who are sensitive to their children’s needs, and “in tune” with their children such that they parent in harmony with their child’s unique characteristics and shift their parenting in response to changes in their child’s development. Children thrive when their parents are consistent, warm, hold high expectations for children’s behavior, explain the reasons behind their rules, and negotiate when appropriate.
Greater stress about parenting further depletes parents’ psychological resources, which may in turn affect their ability to adapt to the changing needs of their children and regulate their own emotions and behavior when parenting their children.
In other words, when you lack confidence and feel chronically stressed about parenting, it is hard to be sensitive, warm, and consistent. You are more likely to yell when you intended to explain calmly to your toddler to stop banging their plate on the table for the millionth time. You may find yourself mentally “checked out” when your baby looks at you and gurgles or when your teen wants to tell you all about the latest season of Ginny & Georgia. You may give in to your preschooler’s endless demands for more Squishmallows.
So, this Mother’s Day, whether you are a mother, expecting your first child, or are thinking of becoming a mother someday, don’t shoot yourself in the foot by holding yourself to impossibly high parenting standards. Remember that the big picture is what is important. Be aware that what other mothers post on Facebook or Instagram may not represent the reality of their parenting experiences. View the latest parenting advice or fad with a skeptical eye. On Mother’s Day—and every day—the best gift you can give yourself and your (future) children may be permission to be imperfect.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank the staff at CCF for their assistance with the production of this article and Stephanie Coontz for her helpful comments in drafting this brief.
For More Information, Please Contact:
Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan
Professor, Department of Psychology
The Ohio State University
schoppe-sullivan.1@osu.edu
