Why Modern Womanhood (and Motherhood) is Confusing: What the Patriarchal Bullshit Series Part I (of III)

Aug 5

The Myth of the "Strong Woman": Why We're Conditioned to Go It Alone

Maybe you've always known you didn't want children. Or perhaps, after years of painful reflection, you've realized you are childless by choice. Or maybe, unbeknownst to everyone else, you've been privately working through the heartache of infertility and loss.

And yet, the question always comes after you hit that certain age: "When will you have kids?" The comments about "you're going to be such a good mom" are well-intentioned, but they reinforce a single, narrow path. When you say no, the questions stop, and you're met with the judgmental "Ohs" and the subtle suggestion of, "I wonder what you will do then."

Once you're in the space of kids not happening—for whatever reason—you may feel that much more obligated to succeed. To have the big career, the perfect house, the dog, and the social life to show that you're doing enough, that you're making the most of your time. This grind of never slowing down, to maintain the "strong independent woman" narrative, is the one that tells you that if you're choosing not to have kids, you have to push harder and do more, to prove that you can.

Or maybe you chose the mom path. And as you go from pregnant to holding a baby, a deep seemingly unnoticeable shift happens as people stop asking, "How are you?" like they did for 9-10 months and now it’s just "How is the baby?"

Just like the questions about having babies aren't focused on you, the shift from concern for the pregnant woman to focus on the baby is a powerful one. It's an unspoken message that tells you your needs as a woman—whether a mom or not—aren't as important as the real or imaginary babies society says you should have. In reality, your needs are just as important as the baby's. A cared-for woman is better equipped to succeed because she can care for herself, as opposed to hitting burnout before she even realizes it happened.

This dynamic is one of the many insidious ways the patriarchy quietly reinforces its power. It perpetuates the idea that a woman is a selfless vessel for the family or for society, not a person with her own needs and a desperate need for rest.

What makes it even more confusing is that the same patriarchal system that pushes the "strong independent woman"ideal also demands you to be a "supermom". We're conditioned to believe that we must be both at the same time—the unstoppable career woman and the perfect, self-sacrificing mom. It's an impossible standard that leaves no room for rest and keeps us in a constant state of feeling like we are falling short.

So here you find yourself, doing it all, trying to make sure everything and everyone is taken care of. You're doing everything to the best of your ability, and by all appearances, you're killing it… or when you show up late and flustered, you declare to everyone that you’re a hot mess. As this goes on, you may start to realize that this is fucking exhausting, but it’s just how it is. And then layer on top of that, that asking for help is hard. You might not even know what help you need, because you can do it all, you just don’t want to.

As the "super woman" or the "supermom," you’re not thriving; you're surviving. You are doing what you need to do to keep yourself safe—to maintain the status quo that you're doing perfectly and that society's standards are beyond met. But that’s not living. It’s a state of constant, high-alert survival.

These constructs weren't born out of you wanting to do everything on your own. It's because you feel like you have to. Without appropriate leave, without partners who know how to share the load, without the village you were promised, you rely on the person you can most trust: yourself.

How I Can Help You

Through an attachment and systems lens, I help you explore how your own early relationships and experiences with care have shaped your ability to ask for and receive support. We can explore the patterns that tell you it's safer to do it all yourself than to risk being let down.

We're not here to judge all the people in your life. We can hold space for their intentions, but our main work is to look at the impact on you—not to get stuck in blame, unless maybe it's towards the systems that uphold these harmful narratives and to recognize it for what it is: a trauma response to an unsupportive world. The goal is to help you understand your internal world better and create new, healthier ways to connect.