Parenting

The Parts of Parenting No One Talks About

When I first became a parent, I thought the hard parts would be the obvious ones.

The sleepless nights, the forewarned terrible twos, the public tantrums, even the teenage years everyone warned me about. What surprised me most were the things no one seemed to talk about. For example, no one talked about the mental load of constantly thinking for everyone else. No one talked about lying awake at night replaying conversations and wondering if you handled something the right way, and no one talked about how lonely parenting can feel, how invisible one can feel, even when you are surrounded by people.

Most parents I meet are doing far better than they think. Many feel a lot of guilt because they are feeling some sort of way… as if it is selfish or bad parenting to question the status quo. What I often see are women carrying enormous responsibility while quietly questioning themselves every step of the way. They are managing appointments, schedules, school concerns, work responsibilities, relationships, finances, aging parents, work outside the home, and children with very different needs. They are the family calendar, problem solver, advocate, chauffeur, planner, peacemaker, and emotional support system all rolled into one.

Then they wonder why they are tired. Many mothers tell me they feel invisible. Not because the people they love do not care about them, but because so much of what they do happens behind the scenes, and it can absolutely feel like thankless work, not that this is the why behind the effort. The planning. The worrying. The anticipating. The noticing. The endless stream of decisions that keep a family moving forward.

The truth is that parenting often asks more of us than we expected. Sometimes we are parenting children with ADHD, anxiety, mental health or learning challenges, medical concerns, trauma histories, or struggles we never anticipated. Sometimes we are navigating divorce, grief, financial stress, or simply trying to hold everything together during a difficult season.

And sometimes we are exhausted from carrying so much while convincing ourselves we should be able to carry more. I think one of the greatest myths about parenting is the idea that good parents always know what to do. In my experience, good parents are usually the ones asking questions. They are paying attention. Yet they are also learning, adjusting, and they keep showing up again tomorrow after a day that did not go as planned.

Parenting is not about getting everything right. It is about staying connected. It is about repairing when necessary. It is about creating a home where people feel safe enough to grow, struggle, learn, and begin again, and it is about reaching out for help when these things get stuck, when others in the home are stuck and impacting everyone around them. It is about doing your best and coming to peace with that being enough. 

If you are reading this and feeling overwhelmed, discouraged, or unseen, I want you to know something. The fact that you worry about whether you are doing enough is often evidence of how deeply you care. You were never meant to carry all of this alone. And despite what social media may suggest, there is no award for running yourself into the ground in the name of being a good parent. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do for our children is extend the same compassion to ourselves that we offer so freely to everyone else.