You’re Not Failing - What Parenting Advice Doesn’t Say About Mothers
Scroll through any parenting book, online course, or Instagram account, and you’ll find countless methods for raising children…Gentle parenting. Responsive parenting. Positive discipline. Sleep training. Montessori. Attachment.
All of them focus on what we should do as parents to raise healthy, happy, emotionally resilient children.
But here’s the problem - most parenting methods completely leave out the mother’s lived reality. Especially the realities of sleep deprivation, nervous system overwhelm, trauma, and the social or economic context she’s living in.
Parenting Methods Without the Mother in Mind
It’s rare to see parenting advice that begins with questions like:
How is the mother’s body and mind after birth?
Has she had adequate rest?
What is the state of her nervous system?
Is she navigating birth trauma, postnatal trauma, or unresolved past trauma?
What social supports or barriers are impacting her?
Instead, the focus is usually on the child’s behaviour, needs, and development. The underlying assumption is that the mother has the emotional, physical, and sometimes even financial resources to implement the method as prescribed.
But when you are up multiple times a night breastfeeding, settling, co-sleeping, or simply watching over a restless child you are not working with a full tank. And if you are also carrying trauma (from birth, the postnatal period, or earlier in life), your nervous system may be even more sensitised to stress and overwhelm.[¹]
Trauma changes the way our bodies respond to parenting stress. It can make certain triggers sharper, certain behaviours harder to tolerate, and self-regulation more difficult, especially without adequate sleep and support.[²]
The Pressure to “Get It Right”
When our needs, history, and realities are invisible in parenting advice, it feeds the narrative that good mothers should be able to handle it all.
That if we just follow the right method, read the right book, or use the right language, we’ll raise well-adjusted children and avoid “messing them up.”
This places enormous pressure on mothers who are already stretched thin. And when we inevitably can’t meet the ideal so when we snap, shut down, or forget what we were supposed to do it can spiral into guilt and shame.
I’ve experienced this myself as a mother of twins. Even with choice, love, and commitment, the exhaustion was real not to mention the past patterns and conditioning that started to play out. Add the weight of internalised parenting ideals, and it can feel like the stakes are impossibly high.
The Overlooked Privilege in Parenting Methods
There’s also an unspoken assumption in many parenting frameworks that the parent has access to time, money, partner support, stable housing, and mental health resources.
But what about mothers who are single parenting? Living with financial stress? Facing discrimination? Recovering from illness? Or parenting without a safe home environment?
Parenting advice that doesn’t acknowledge these realities risk alienating and shaming mothers whose circumstances make certain methods unrealistic or even harmful. True parenting support must be inclusive and flexible enough to meet people where they are.
Why the Mother’s Nervous System Matters for Parenting
We now know from neuroscience and attachment research that a child’s nervous system develops in constant conversation with their caregiver’s. That means your state, not just your parenting technique deeply shapes your child’s ability to self-regulate.[³]
If your nervous system is in survival mode from chronic sleep deprivation or the aftershocks of trauma, staying patient, grounded, and playful becomes much harder. This isn’t a flaw it’s physiology.[⁴]
The most effective parenting starts with supporting the mother’s nervous system first. That means rest where possible, access to care for trauma recovery, co-regulation with other adults, nourishment, and realistic expectations for this season of life.
A New Parenting Conversation
It’s time to shift the conversation from:
“Here’s how to respond to your child when they do X.”
to
“Here’s how to take care of yourself so you have the capacity to respond.”
Parenting guidance that ignores the mother’s reality is incomplete. We need methods that:
Consider the impact of sleep deprivation on behaviour and connection.
Include trauma-informed approaches for mothers.
Acknowledge the social and economic realities that shape parenting.
Offer nervous system regulation tools for parents, not just children.
Normalise that in some seasons, survival mode is enough.
You Are Part of the Equation
If you’ve ever felt the pressure to get parenting “right” while your own body is running on empty, please know that the advice you’ve been given may not have been written with you in mind.
You are not failing, you’ve simply been left out of the framework.
When we start including the mother’s experience in the parenting conversation her sleep, her trauma history, her nervous system, her social context we create something far more powerful than a method - a system of care that sees the mother as central to her child’s wellbeing.
Because when mothers are supported, children thrive.
With tenderness, Lauren
Internal links
Learn more about nervous system regulation for mothers
Discover what somatic therapy is and how it can help mothers
Read about how sleep deprivation in motherhood impacts your ability to parent
External links
Footnotes:
[¹] Trauma and nervous system overwhelm: The National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Parent/Caregiver Guide to Child Trauma, https://www.nctsn.org/resources/parent-caregiver-guide-to-child-trauma
[²] Trauma release and somatic therapy: Levine, P. A. (2010). In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma. North Atlantic Books.
[³] Co-regulation and brain development research: Schore, A. N. (2001). The effects of early relational trauma on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Infant Mental Health Journal, 22(1-2), 201-269.
[⁴] Impact of sleep deprivation on parenting: Harvard Medical School. The Benefits of Sleep, https://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep
