10 Reasons to Take Good Care of a Mother

By Rick Hanson, PhD and Jan Hanson, MS

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Moms like us get stressed and depleted over time through the accumulation of a thousand little stressful things. But we can combat this problem by doing little nurturing things each day. And that self-care eventually will accumulate into a pile of positive resources for health, well-being, strong teamwork and lasting love. Take care of yourself, mama! If you actually need a reason to justify taking some time for you… well, we've got 10.

This could be any mom:

"It's funny: during my pregnancy, I took really good care of myself plus got a lot of attention and support from my doctor, husband, and relatives. Even strangers would stop me in the market and remind me to get lots of rest.

But now, a year after Allie was born, I feel like I've fallen off of everybody's radar. It's like you're expected to do life - go to the job, do housework, drive around, shop, pay bills, get gas, etc. - just like before, as if the infant you're still super responsible for is not a factor at all. But she's a HUGE factor, of course! I think about her all the time, I'm the person who mainly takes care of her when I'm not at work, I still get up at night and don't sleeep that well, and I feel, honestly, more and more run down. And she's just a year old! Where is this going, and why doesn't anybody seem to notice?!"

Wow, you definitely said it there. You're totally right: having a child is absolutely a big deal, and there's no longer the strong network of social support for it - from relatives, friends, and neighbors - that there was in generations past, let alone in the hunter-gatherer groups in which humans evolved. And many fathers have not stepped up to fill the vacuum: the average mother is working away about 20 hours a week more than her partner is, whether or not she's drawing a paycheck. As result, the day-to-day - minute-to-minute - activities of caring for a young child usually fall mainly to the mother.

Precious work
It's precious work, certainly. But like everything in life, it has effects. Over time, everything you pour out, everything you do, adds up. Most mothers report feeling pretty worn out and often frazzled by the end of their baby's first year, and our experience is that actually the deepest slump typically occurs a few years after the baby is born, especially if there's been a second child or another significant stressor (like a move, mom goes back to paid work, or the child has a real challenging temperament).

Inevitable effects
As a result, studies have shown that having one or more children - especially when there's not much support for her role - increases the chance that a woman will experience physical or mental health problems, including fatigue, depressed mood, anxiety, feeling overwhelmed, Type 2 diabetes, nutritional deficits, or autoimmune illnesses. Lack of support also wears on a relationship, breeding resentments, the sense of being let down, no interest in sex, and lots of quarrels. The bottom-line: many mothers get physically and psychologically depleted during the early years of parenthood, some to the extent that we have proposed that there can be an actual Depleted Mother Syndrome (DMS).

Impacts on the family
None of this is good for the mother, to be sure. And it cannot help but spill over onto the children, both in terms of less patience and energy for them as well as the impact on them of problems in their parents' relationship. Plus it naturally affects fathers, too. Researchers have found that fathers who are more involved in the daily life of the family and strong teammates with the mother have better mood, more sense of pride in their competence as a parent, and a closer and more satisfying relationship with their partner. Not bad!

A crying shame
Even though the effects of maternal stress and depletion are plainly visible in well-documented research - an affect society as a whole through increased healthcare expenses, lost workforce productivity, and the social costs of divorce - there's been shockingly little attention to the needs of mothers.