Let's Get Real About the Struggles of Motherhood: No Mom Is 'Balancing It All'
“How do you balance it all?” is a question moms used to criticize. But in the wake of a recent, massive shift in how we view motherhood, it’s time to change how we ask this question—and, more importantly, how we answer it.
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Years ago, we sat by and watched celebrity mothers field a question that began to rub women the wrong way. “How do you balance it all?” became viewed as a sexist relic we needed to avoid asking at all costs. After all, no one ever asked fathers how they balanced their careers alongside parenthood. The question became branded as outdated, and unproductive—especially since it always seemed to yield a vague answer.
And then, everything shifted.
The pandemic came, and suddenly, the realities of parenthood were placed on full display. We finally began having unfiltered, important conversations about the unequal expectations placed on moms and how deeply our system fails them. And suddenly, we began to view motherhood through a whole new lens.
With that new lens firmly in place, it’s time to reframe how we view the question “how do you balance it all?” Because maybe what we need isn’t to banish the question itself. Maybe instead, we need to reframe it—and, perhaps more importantly, adjust how we answer it.
“I used to hate being asked about ‘juggling’ career and family,” says Reshma Suajani, founder of Marshall Plan for Moms. “When young women would come up to me after speeches or events and ask how I managed it all, I would literally shoo them away with my hand. I think I believed that if we didn't talk about it, talk about how hard it was, like an elephant in the room, it would just go away - the problem wouldn't exist. And then the pandemic hit, and my thinking on this changed entirely. It became clear (literally visible through our Zoom screens!) that what happened in our homes impacted how we showed up at work, and vice versa. There was no use hiding it, and trying to hide it hadn't been serving us anyway.”
For so long, we’ve hidden the hard stuff—and many have hidden the support systems they’ve relied on, too. Once, while scrolling Instagram, I came across a Q&A from a major influencer who has previously shared that she’s employed nannies, night nurses, assistants, and house cleaners. A follower asked her how she balances it all, and instead of mentioning all that help, she said something along the lines of “I don’t know! I just do it!” To me, it felt like such a missed opportunity. It could have been a chance to initiate an important conversation about how “doing it all” is just a myth. Instead, it likely made so many moms feel inadequate.
By keeping support systems hidden, we’re perpetuating the idea that moms can and should be expected to do it all with no support, no help, and no systemic change.
It’s time for us to get honest about how we manage to do the things we do, and it’s time for us to get specific. Because by keeping support systems hidden behind the curtain, we’re perpetuating the idea that moms can and should be expected to do it all with no support, no help, and no systemic change. We need to talk about the things that make it possible: Accessible childcare, support from family and friends, partners who take on their share of parenting, flexible work arrangements, and paid parental leave. The reality is, not everyone has access to those things, and that deeply affects how we’re able to move through motherhood.
So many of our conversations about balance are only being held between people of unrelatable privilege. Celebrities get asked how they achieve balance in interviews, and their reluctance to speak about their privilege and access creates a cultural idea that can make other parents feel as though they’re failing—which in turn can create a desire to cover up our imperfect moments.
“The majority of people parenting young children right now don’t have that kind of support and they just feel like they’re drowning,” says Kate Borsato, a perinatal mental health therapist. “More honesty about what our realities look like can only help. Even in my counseling sessions as a therapist, I have clients tell me that they think they failed. I’m really quick to say ‘I have five loads of laundry sitting on my bed as well’ or ‘I clean up my house when I have friends over, but otherwise it looks like a mess’. It’s [about] exposing a little bit more of the realness.”
It’s understandable that some moms aren’t willing to speak up about relying on outside help, especially since we live in a country that doesn’t, in practice or in theory, embrace the idea of the village. “I think the desire to come across like we’re balancing it all is totally understandable,” says Borsato. “But the problem is that when we respond as if we are keeping it all together, then we perpetuate that supermom narrative, which I don’t think is real at all.”
But now, after the pandemic made us rethink outdated notions about parenting, and as we attempt to reconfigure our new normal, we have the opportunity to reframe conversations about balance in motherhood. If we do it right, we can take the question that once acted as a vehicle for that supermom narrative, and turn it into the thing that dismantles it. But this only happens if we’re willing to get radically honest.
A Call for Radical Honesty
For privileged people, it’s time to stop tip-toeing around conversations around hired help. For those of us who feel like we’re drowning, it’s time to talk about those feelings of overwhelm…because we’ll almost certainly hear them reflected back. For partnered-up moms, it’s time to break up with the guilt we feel when our partners step in and help us. For those of us who have family or friends who help out, it’s time to start normalizing that support—for ourselves and for others. For those of us who had to leave the workforce during the pandemic, it’s time to keep speaking about all the barriers we’re finally addressing. For those of us with flexible work arrangements, It’s time to discuss how more mothers need flexibility at work, paid time off after delivery, and affordable child care. If you do benefit from those things, it’s time to shed light on all the ways they’ve made balance—whatever your version of balance looks like—achievable.
Balance doesn’t mean perfection; it means readjusting expectations, accepting help wherever you can find it, and allowing the messiness of motherhood.
It’s time to make it clear that balance doesn’t mean perfection; it means readjusting expectations, accepting help wherever you can find it (whether paid or unpaid), and allowing the messiness of motherhood. Balance, in most cases, means letting things go: Whether that’s career opportunities, or time with your kids, or money, or the idea of a clean home, or exercise, or time to nurture friendships, or date nights, or sleep, or hobbies. Because all those things we’re told we “need” to prioritize? We simply can’t make space for them all.
It’s also time to make conversations around balance much more inclusive. We can’t just live in this cycle where only privileged, highly visible people talk about this issue through their lenses—because those conversations start to trickle down to the rest of us, and we end up trapped in the comparison game. We need to be having these conversations in our day-to-day lives, and we need to be including mothers who take on unpaid roles in the home as well. Balance is a challenge whether or not you’re working for pay, and by not inviting moms who take on unpaid labor full-time into the conversation, we’re essentially telling them that their juggle isn’t impressive. And that’s simply not the case.
Balance is a challenge whether or not you’re working for pay, and by not inviting moms who take on unpaid labor full-time into the conversation, we’re telling them their juggle isn’t impressive.
The pandemic brought an eye-opening look at how different the expectations are for mothers vs. fathers…and suddenly the fact that we’ve only been asking moms how they juggle their roles doesn’t seem sexist or unfair. It seems like an acknowledgement of how difficult motherhood really is, and how little support exists for moms. Now, as we head into a new normal, it’s on us to keep challenging old-school notions of motherhood. There’s much more to this than simply getting candid about what balance really means, or shedding light on how privilege affects our ability to find an equilibrium, or even speaking up about the systemic failures that hurt moms. But this conversation is one we can steer in a better, more inclusive direction.
“I think [asking moms how they balance it all] can [validate all that we’re doing],” says Borsato. I imagine if somebody asked me ‘how do you balance it all?’ it would make me feel like they see how much I’m doing. They realize that I’m holding a lot of different pieces, and it does feel good to be validated—but I would always let them know that I am not balancing it all, I’m not managing everything perfectly. And that’s okay.”
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I Chose Motherhood Over My Career And I’m 100% a Feminist
Editor’s note: This story was first published in 2022, and has been updated for timeliness.
