Parenting is hard. It is all consuming and while we love our kids heart and soul, sometimes (read: often) we feel like we’re drowning. Sometimes, we are complete and utter failures right?

Ask me this time last year, yep. Yep, yep, 100%. Except that wasn’t the parent I wanted to be. It definitely wasn’t the parent I wanted my girls to remember when they thought about their childhoods. God, just that idea makes me cringe with shame.

But I knew I had always, even when without success, being trying to give being a good mum my all.

Except, the pressure under which I lived was killing me. And it’s time to call it out. Our society is absolutely warped. A mother that works doesn’t love her child enough to be at home to watch them grow. Because yeah, who wouldn’t rather fork over their entire pay packet to childcare, just so they don’t have to be at home for all those precious firsts? (FYI, this is sarcasm. There are sadly people out there that do demonise mums to that extreme.)

Here’s the thing though. The stay at home mother, we’re told, isn’t economically productive, sponging her child benefit from the state and having time to do everything at home, seeing as she’s lucky enough to be there all day, doing whatever she wants.

*Excuse me, while I climb off the floor from laughing so hard*

I was so fortunate to not have to be concerned when I was made redundant post pandemic (& maternity leave). The one income in our family was adequate and so many women do not find this at all when they have no choice but to remove themselves from work because the cost of childcare and the lack of aligned, flexible employment is absolutely prohibitive.

I was relieved I did not have to leave my little lockdown babe, because she hadn’t experienced the world yet. It absolutely destroyed me when I had to leave Immy Squidge at nursery at just 8 months old to return to work. I hardened to it because I was without choice, but when I look at the smiley photo I was sent on her first day in nursery now, it breaks my heart to recognise how tiny she was.

But that relief shielded me from how consuming and relentless being a full time mum is. Inevitably, everything domestic and childcare related landed on me. I expected that, honestly, but having lived in a restricted lockdown bubble, I was massively under-prepared for the volume of tasks that this responsibility included.

This year, I have committed to self improvement and my love of reading. Pro tip for busy parents out there: audiobooks are the way forward. My Audible membership & my library card are 2 of my most treasured and utilised posessions. My current reading count for the year at the time of writing is 27 books, with 2 others in progress and 70 on my To Read list. That is me sorted at my current reading speed until Summer 2025. Yay.

I digress. The point is, these 2 things are a great meeting of mids. I have read some fantastic parenting books this year, wanting to feel that I have tools.

A comforting thing about the books I have read is that they all seem to have overlapping themes. The first being how society views parenting, as I outlined above. “Parent as though you have no job, but work as though you aren’t a parent”, seems to be the expectation of the world around us. Madness. Insurmountable madness and yet we are all trying to do it because otherwise, we are deemed, by ourselves and others as not “good enough”.

I bought into this completely. My onslaught of depression and anxiety between 2019-2022 kept it alive.

But good enough is not a slur or an insult. It is not a half arsed job. I am embarrassed that I am 7 years into parenting (and a childhood studies degree in which I wrote a very well received essay on this exact concept) but it is important to note this shift, because I think this concept is hidden from over-burdened, over-pressured parents who assume the problem is them. I know I did.

It is not you. Again, for those at the back. You are not the problem. The problem here is the thread of perfectionism wound so tightly into the idea of good parenting in our society, without any damn support for those of you trying to balance a job too.

Honestly, truly, I don’t know how anyone manages to work too and props to you all. It is not an accident that I will not apply for my postgraduate certificate until my youngest daughter is full time in school.

I have made a very conscious decision to enjoy her early years, because I feel like her sister’s were taken from me somewhat, between working and my precarious mental health as I began to feel the pressure of getting everything right as a mum. My youngest is already headed to nursery in September (she is so ready!) and she had her earliest days so limited by lockdown. So I want to spend the next year focussed on my bonds with my girls.

That requires being nothing more than good enough. Winnicott coined the term in the 1950s. A perfect mother, he argued, didn’t exist and trying to be permanently attuned to another being in order to be one was setting otherwise devoted mums up for failure. Children would not learn about their emotions or how to self soothe, or how to problem solve. Good enough, that is finding the balance so that both mother and child were able to fail (read: accept and learn) but not feel a failure. Meeting physical and emotional needs is enough. That is a good enough parent.

I know my journey to being a good enough mum is continuous. We can always do better. But in striving for that now, I am able to recognise in amongst all these wonderful parenting books how I have changed. Because I can recognise the many, small, good enough ways I meet my children’s needs now.

My eldest has “Five Minutes with Mummy” every day to talk, read or play sing-song games. My fixer brain now only offers the phrase “That is a problem. What can we do?” rather than jumping in, irritated. My youngest often now responds with “Don’t worry…” before telling me her solution.

The summer holidays are upon us now. Last year, I overloaded our schedule to the point of emotional unravelling. To support her writing skills, I got my eldest to make a scrapbook, so that I would have the reminder of how hard I had tried to make memories. The book is upstairs, unfinished. I have told her we won’t be so busy this year. We’ve written a (small) list of the activities she’d like to repeat and I’ve handed my number to the friends she says she’ll miss the most in the hope we can have some park playdates.

But her biggest asks for this summer?

Immy days: These are hours or a day when Gabby will go to Nanny’s, so that it is just us. I like to offer days out, but often, she just wants to stay in her room and play doctor or Barbies.

A spa day: Last year I bought her a face mask, lit a candle and massaged her shoulders as she lay on my soft blanket listening to gentle music

Craft days: She has asked that we keep a box or jar of ideas (which we have agreed will be our first craft project in itself) and keep some recycling so that we can do junk modelling

Kids do not need all the stimulation we think they do. After a busy year at school, maybe they just need to decompress. So I will try not to see screens as the devil that I did. Because the truth is, to be good enough I need, no I deserve the time to remain dedicated to my self care (daily physio, journalling, reading & meditation). These amount to about an hour and this year, I will not apologise for them. Because I am good enough. And good enough is, thank God, good enough,