做一位有韧性的母亲，究竟需要什么？

‘I’m just not strong enough to handle it. My mother did all this and she had three kids. I can’t even cope with one. I’m pathetic.’ Andrea* looks down, avoiding my gaze. I can’t tell where she is looking because we are conducting our therapy session online. Most of my sessions with new mothers have moved online: it’s one remnant of the COVID-19 pandemic that has actually helped new mothers, being able to access therapy without having to leave the house. I am guessing that for Andrea, my compassion in this moment probably feels too uncomfortable to absorb. She is sitting in this belief that she is somehow not resilient enough to handle the demands of motherhood, and my heart breaks for her.

I have been thinking a lot about what resilience means for mothers today. It’s a conversation I have with many of my clients, and a lot of the beliefs I encounter are about deficiency – it’s something they do not have, while others seemingly do. When I met Andrea, she’d just had her first baby. Her son was sleeping for only 45 minutes at a time, and her husband was already back at work. She told me she was crying a lot and not enjoying this time with her son. She chastised herself constantly for not just being grateful. She felt stuck in a place where she did not know how to perform, and everyone else seemed to be doing better than her.

Like so many others, she was judging herself against a blueprint of motherhood that feels unachievable in today’s world. The cost-of-living crisis, low maternity pay and childcare costs make it more difficult for women to juggle work and parenting. A plethora of mothering choices – about breastfeeding, nursery, playtime, the right school, etc – have made it easier for mums to feel like one wrong move might determine their child’s future. Additionally, parenting trends over the past few decades have shifted to a form of developmentally conscious mothering that puts the onus on mums to be strong, caring and emotionally stable from day one, an ideal that is fervently propagated by social media.

It requires superhuman strength to always be attuned and reflective in an unsupportive environment, and so many women feel like they are failing the test. When resilience is conceptualised as a character trait that you either have or don’t have, then a mother is likely to think I am either strong like my mother, my grandmother and the other mums I see, or I don’t have what it takes. Andrea fell into this same trap. She compared herself with her mother – who had never really talked about how hard it was to raise children – and felt that she could not live up to the example.

There is an urgent need to redefine what resilience means for mothers. And emerging research suggests there are better ways for mothers, their families and others to look at it.

The ‘resilience portfolio’ model, proposed by the psychologist Sherry Hamby and her colleagues, offers a useful perspective here. Grounded in research on adverse experiences, it describes how a person’s physical and mental health outcomes after adversity might depend on the combination of their strengths and support structures – their ‘portfolio’. Meaning, the more strengths across different domains you have acquired, the more resilient you’re likely to be when exposed to distressing or traumatic experiences.

The beauty of this idea is that it demystifies why some people are able to cope better with distressing events – and it reminds us that strength is something that can be built. A person’s resilience portfolio is made up of four domains:

• meaning-making, with aspects such as having hope and a sense of purpose;
• regulatory strengths, including the ability to reflect on and manage one’s feelings;
• interpersonal resources, especially the availability of helpful social support; and
• environmental context, such as access to nature and support structures.

For many women, new motherhood seems to almost systematically dismantle the portfolio of strengths that they previously relied on, starting with the domain of meaning-making. Many women today find identity and purpose in their job, as well as their sense of independence and freedom to make choices about their own lives. Motherhood, at least initially, takes that away. Mums are expected to find their meaning in caring for a newborn. Women I speak to are often used to defining themselves through achievement and getting things done but, in a sense, early motherhood is asking them to just stand still. Andrea didn’t think she would struggle with pausing her career to take care of her baby, and she wasn’t prepared for feeling bored and unfulfilled.

Many communities are not well set up to catch new mums when they stumble

The self-regulation part of the portfolio includes the ability to self-reflect, emotional awareness and self-control, and the skill to self-soothe. A significant proportion of new mothers have not had the opportunity to develop these strengths, often because of experiences of emotional neglect in childhood. Moreover, the emotion regulation skills described here involve the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which can be highly susceptible to disruption by hormonal changes and sleep deprivation, both hallmarks of early motherhood. So even if mums are lucky enough to have good self-regulatory skills, those might not be fully accessible when they are needed most. This is why early motherhood is not supposed to be a solo activity.

The interpersonal resources in the portfolio can take many forms, including a supportive partner, parents, in-laws or friends. For many mums today, support networks are smaller and more spread out than in previous generations. And when other people are available, they are not always supportive in the ways a mother needs. When Andrea had her son, her sisters and mother stayed for a few days, but Andrea didn’t experience them as helpful – she felt criticised by her mother, and her younger sisters showed little interest in the baby.

Finally, the environmental domain reflects that we live in our own little worlds that can be helpful or harmful to our wellbeing. For a new mother, relevant factors might include physical access to green spaces, public transport or baby groups. But they could also extend to whether her maternity hospital has knowledge of trauma-informed principles, whether her workplace offers sufficient maternity pay, and whether she has access to affordable childcare. If one of these resources is missing, it’s likely that others are, too.

Looking at motherhood through this lens might seem bleak, but it is important to acknowledge that many communities are not well set up to catch new mums when they stumble. The ‘strong mother’ myth – you’re either a resilient mother or you’re not – implies that when things feel hard, one is failing, and it ultimately strengthens that self-shaming voice that tells so many women they are not good enough. And few things are as painful as thinking we are not good enough as mothers.

The resilience portfolio also highlights how to have more realistic conversations about what mothers need to bolster their resources. Each domain provides an opportunity for introducing support before, during or after pregnancy.

What worked for Andrea in the end was a mix of multiple approaches, some practical, some more focused on her inner world. Finding meaning in this new experience took time and a lot of self-reflection. We worked on accepting that she enjoyed her work identity and that it did not make her a bad mother to want a career. She had never actively defined her purpose in life, as few of us probably do, but she recognised in therapy that her sense of identity was tied to her ability to fix things and problem-solve, which she had been able to do frequently at work. Not being able to solve her son’s sleeping issues or soothe him when he cried made her feel useless.

Working through this in therapy involved acknowledging that babies are fundamentally unpredictable and uncontrollable. It helped Andrea to find other areas where she could continue to use her problem-solving skills, such as assisting her friend with a home renovation and looking into some more flexible freelance work. For anyone who is in the perinatal period, it is worth thinking realistically about what makes them feel good about themselves, and how they might cope if the usual source of that feeling is taken away, even temporarily.

Mothers need kindness and understanding – from others, and from themselves – to help them recover their ability to regulate

Andrea also needed a larger support system: her interpersonal resources were depleted, and it left little to no time for her to even think about herself. We worked on feelings of guilt and fear that created a barrier to asking for help. She had always been self-sufficient, and it was challenging to realise that she could not do this on her own. She found that she had a few friends who similarly did not have much family support, and they started to check in with each other, which helped her immensely. Finding genuine support during this period means looking for friends or family who feel emotionally safe, whoever they might be. These are often the people who show a genuine interest in a mother’s wellbeing, provide offers of help that take her needs into account and don’t immediately jump in with unsolicited advice.

Andrea was able to find some childcare and use her newfound headspace to feel into herself and reflect on how her life and identity had changed. Not everyone is able to access childcare easily. An important part of the resilience portfolio, environmental variables can be harder to change, but healthcare professionals and families should still take them into consideration. Information about childcare options, charities, playgroups, parental leave, reproductive rights and hospital policies could help new mothers strengthen their resources in this domain.

In early motherhood, things can change quite rapidly. Once her son started sleeping, Andrea felt much more like herself again, and her emotion regulation skills recovered. But these emotional skills can also be built through therapy, and they are among the starting points for cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) approaches. More generally, mothers need early education, especially about the impact of physical factors such as sleep deprivation and hormonal shifts on their ability to regulate their own emotions. And they need kindness and understanding – from others, and from themselves – to help them recover their ability to regulate and self-soothe.

From my work with mothers, I’ve also learned that couples might benefit from asking themselves some questions before their babies arrive, to make sure their resilience portfolios are well resourced:

• Can you have honest conversations about how you both deal with stress, and what you might need when you’re depleted?
• How can you make room for baby-free time and address feelings of guilt or shame if they arise?
• Who are the people you can really rely on for help?
• What are some of the stories about motherhood that you grew up with?

Early motherhood is hard, and it doesn’t help women to avoid talking about the challenges. What mothers need is more openness and honesty about where they might struggle, and what they – and the people in their lives – can do to make it easier. A mother’s resilience is everyone’s responsibility.

*Andrea’s story is a combination of the experiences of multiple clients; the name and other details have been changed.