October 16, 2025
Perhaps you’re in a situation where you feel very little joy in being a mom, but you’re hesitant to say it out loud for fear of judgment. Maybe you truly love your children but feel weighed down by your responsibilities. This weight may be made even heavier if you’re struggling financially, or maybe you’re a single mom, or a mom of a particularly difficult child.
You may feel that you’re simply failing, kept awake at night by spiraling questions. Am I disciplining my child correctly? Am I feeding them right? What if I’m not giving them enough attention? Or too much? Was that thing I said yesterday something a mother should say to a child?
You may feel as though you simply are not mothering correctly, but don’t know what to do or where to turn.
If you feel like you’re failing as a mother, I encourage you to read on. I’ve outlined five things you can do, like resources and identification methods you can turn to when “mommy-ing” isn’t going how you thought it would.
1. Maybe You Aren’t Actually Failing at Motherhood
It’s entirely possible that this feeling of failure weighing on your shoulders isn’t legitimate. Sometimes in life we feel a sense of shame or failure because we know we’ve done wrong. But it’s entirely possible that we can feel a false sense of shame.
Social media, as an example, has been a double-edged sword for mothers. On one hand we have moms giving very helpful advice or talking about their experiences online. In that case social media has been a godsend. But on the other hand we have the “perfect mommy” side of it, the photos that make it look as though other moms have it all together all the time: their kitchens are flawless, their kids look well-behaved, and their hair is always done.
Of course, these moms struggle likely just as much as you do, but it doesn’t appear that way. This can make you feel like less than a good mom. But observe your life, think deeply, and ask yourself if you’re letting what you’re seeing in the virtual space affect you too much. You might not be taking your kids on a picturesque Italian vacation, but are you doing your best? Are your children fed and disciplined and given structure and love? If the answer is yes, then it’s likely this sense of failure isn’t founded in reality.
Put your Internet usage under a microscope and ask yourself what you may need to remove. It could be quietly unfollowing certain people or accounts, deleting whole apps entirely, or setting timers on apps. This negative influence could also come in the form of real-life people that you may need to passively detach yourself from. If it helps, seek out a buddy (this can be anyone you’re close to who loves you but also isn’t afraid to be honest) to help you pinpoint weak areas in your life and to assist you in overcoming this false sense of failure.
2. Take Failure Areas Piece By Piece
Sometimes an overwhelming sense of failure can originate from just one aspect of your mothering experience. As in, this one patch of failure is making you have a negative outlook on your whole identity as a mom.
You may already know where this bad patch is. Maybe you don’t structure your children’s lives enough and their day-to-day is a bit of a free-for-all. Maybe you know you don’t have the best diet laid out for them. As in the above point, consider consulting with an accountability buddy, who can be anyone from your partner to your pastor to your sister, especially if you’re having trouble pinpointing areas of potential failure. This helps compartmentalize areas that need improvement rather than seeing motherhood as one big beast to tackle head-on.
Once you pinpoint one area of improvement, make a game plan for how you will tackle it. If structure and discipline is an issue, try to do research yourself or seek out others who have more parental discipline knowledge to share with you. Or maybe it’s diet. Do research into a healthy diet (especially a healthy diet on a budget, which is possible) or consult with someone you know who could give good eating advice. Once you have a confident hold on one area and have a clear enough game plan for improvement, tackle another area. Taking your potential failure areas piece by piece will help life feel less like a tangled mess.
3. Join Mommy Groups
As cringy as it may sound (depending on what type of personality you have), joining mother groups is a great way to create a sense of community. Oftentimes a feeling of lonesome failure can occur because of lack of community. We live in not only a highly individualized culture that stresses independence more than tribal support, but we live in very virtual times. Connecting with mothering groups in your area (even on social media as a start, though I’d suggest trying to join in-person groups as well) can help you connect with other mothers who may very likely have the same sense of failure as you.
Struggling together is still difficult, but is easier than struggling alone. With a group, you have fellow moms to hear advice from, bounce ideas off of, and troubleshoot with. Maybe you can advise them in their problem areas and they can advise you in yours. Having this community connection can greatly help alleviate the sense of failure. Depending on when and how often this group meets, leaving home or work to join it will be something to look forward to, a break of sorts. Motherhood groups can be found through social media, of course, but may also be found through places like libraries, hospitals, schools, and churches.
As a caveat to the first point, perhaps you’re in a motherhood group already and happen to be around some toxic individuals. I’ve personally heard stories from mothers who tried to join motherhood groups only to find out that the group she joined had a few “perfect” moms in there that made them feel like failures by comparison. When it comes to finding the right mom group, trial and error may be necessary. Don’t be afraid to join one, but also don’t be afraid to leave one and join another.
4. Ask for Help to Alleviate Sense of Failure
I know, you probably felt this one coming. But a reason behind why you may feel as though you’re failing is because you’re trying to heap too much onto your shoulders. If I’m being honest, I see moms doing this all the time. Considering that women are essentially raised to believe that they need to be do-it-all people, I suppose this makes sense. But my best advice to you is to reject the notion that it is improper or lazy for women to ask for assistance with their own children.
This help could look like many different things for you. Perhaps you’re trying to pursue a degree to therefore get a better job to support your children more, but feel like you’re either failing to finish your coursework and/or give your children enough attention while being a student. Perhaps you should lower the amount of coursework you do on a semesterly basis. Maybe there’s someone in your life willing to watch your children while you do coursework. Perhaps there’s a babysitter in your area who’s willing to watch your children for a low fee while you study. Maybe you need help financially. Aside from grants and scholarships, family members or even friends may be willing to assist you for a temporary amount of time.
Many times even life’s tightest and challenging situations can at least be partially alleviated by seeking out help in any way you can. Remember, seeking out help isn’t the same as desperation. If you feel self-conscious about asking for help, remember that putting it all on your shoulders when you don’t really need to is more likely to lead to feelings of doubt, failure, and burnout.
5. Maybe Motherhood Isn’t the Problem
If you were to once again put your life under a microscope, you may realize that while you feel as though you’re failing at being a mom, you’re actually falling short at something else and mistaking it for mom-related failure. For instance, maybe your primary area of tension is in your partnership or marriage and this overall sense of defeat in that area is seeping into your identity as a mother. This could come in the form of your partnership troubles leaking into the way you parent your children.
In this way, the sense of failure isn’t originating from how you’re mothering, but some other aspect of your life that influences your mothering. Once you can nail down what that area is, then you can game-plan as to how you’re going to maintain a quality level of mothering while still dealing with the outside issue. For instance, if you realize that your job is trickling into your mothering in a negative way, seek out options for how to alter the situation. This could be going down to part-time or switching jobs or talking to your boss about a coworker who’s irritating you. But the main point is to try to identify areas of your life that could be culprits, since not all mothering issues are directly caused by motherhood itself.
Conclusion
While there are other tactics and methods to discuss (like self-care topics, going to therapy, etc.), my hope is that at least one of these five points has inspired you in your journey as a mom. Have hope that this impending sense of failure may be heavy, but isn’t meant to last forever.
About the Author
Krista Ruffo, born, raised, and still living in Orlando, Florida, began blogging with South Project in February of 2025. She’s a University of Central Florida alum with a BA in English and a Certificate in Editing and Publishing. A passionate writer and reader, Krista aspires to work in book publishing in the future. She currently works as a Content Coordinator for a family magazine. In her free time, she enjoys writing poems, taking photos, making art, hiking, and gardening.