Why Don't I Love Motherhood The Way I Thought I Would?
You're allowed to love your child and still be struggling with this. Both things can be true at once.
Written by Philippa Scott, who has spent more than 22 years working in birth, trauma and family support, and is a mother of four.
The short answer: it's possible to love your child deeply and still dislike parts of motherhood, or feel disappointed by the experience as a whole. Sleep deprivation, sensory overload, loss of identity, relentless responsibility, inadequate support and maternal burnout can all affect how motherhood feels. None of that automatically means you're a bad mother, or that you don't love your child.
A warm, editorial-style image reflecting the exhaustion, isolation and mixed emotions many women experience in motherhood. Created for a Fantastic Futures article exploring matrescence, mum guilt, maternal burnout and the experience of loving your children while struggling with motherhood.
Nobody warns you about this bit.
You spend months, sometimes years if you're the planning type, imagining what motherhood is going to feel like. And then it actually arrives, and somewhere between the sleep deprivation and the fortieth nappy of the day, you have a thought so quiet and so terrifying you barely let yourself finish it.
I don't think I actually like this.
Then straight away, the guilt lands on top of it like a truck. What kind of mother thinks that? You wanted this, or you tried for this, or maybe you didn't try to prevent it, and now here you are feeling ungrateful about the whole thing. So you push the thought back down, put on the face everyone expects at the school gate, and quietly assume you're the only one.
You're not the only one, not even close.
In this article, we'll cover what's actually normal to feel, why motherhood so often feels different from what you expected, what matrescence actually is, where mum guilt comes from, what maternal burnout can look like, and what genuinely helps, including when it's worth reaching for more support than an article can give.
Is it normal to not enjoy being a mother sometimes?
Yes. More than that, it's common enough that if we actually talked about it honestly, at the school gate, in the group chats, at the barbecue, it would probably stop feeling like such a dirty secret.
Loving your kids and struggling with motherhood aren't opposites. You can love this little person completely and still miss your old life some days, the sleep, the freedom, just being you without someone attached to you constantly. That doesn't make you a bad mother. It just means nobody told you how much you'd actually be giving up, or how normal it is to grieve that quietly.
Why does motherhood feel so different from what we expected?
Before you had children, you probably imagined something soft, warm light, that sleeping newborn smell, the whole soft-focus aesthetic. Nobody hands you the actual brochure, the one that mentions the sleep deprivation that affects mood, concentration and emotional regulation, the loss of your body as something that belongs only to you, the total disappearance of your own name into "Mum," the relentless, unglamorous repetition of the same fifteen tasks, over and over, forever, with someone yelling at you about a sock the entire time.
Your brain and your hormones genuinely change during this period, in ways researchers are still actively mapping. Your identity, the whole scaffolding of who you thought you were, gets pulled apart and rebuilt, all while you're still expected to show up to work, cook dinner, and remember library day. It's not that you're doing motherhood wrong. It's that almost nobody warns you what an enormous, body and brain level event it actually is.
What is matrescence?
The wider transition has a name. It's called matrescence, and it describes the physical, psychological, social and identity changes involved in becoming a mother, not just the gap between what you expected and what you're actually living, although that gap can make the whole transition feel far more disorienting.
It's often compared to adolescence, another period defined by huge internal change that happens whether or not anyone around you names it properly. The comparison holds up in one important way. Nobody expects a fourteen year old to have it all figured out. Somehow, mothers are expected to arrive at motherhood already whole, already capable, already themselves, when the transition itself is busy rearranging who "themselves" even is.
Where the guilt actually comes from
The moment you feel anything other than pure gratitude, some part of your brain files it away as evidence against you, proof that you're a bad mother, that you're ungrateful, and that you should be coping better than this.
That voice isn't telling you the truth. Sometimes it reflects protective patterns that developed long before you became a mother, now being activated by the sheer intensity of motherhood, the sense that needing help or admitting you're struggling makes you a burden, or it means that you're failing. So instead of just feeling tired, which would be reasonable, you feel tired and guilty about feeling tired, which is exhausting in a completely different way. This is also why knowing better so rarely helps in the moment — the gap isn't in your knowledge, it's in your capacity.
There's an important difference between guilt, which is a useful signal, and shame, which just keeps you stuck. If that distinction is new to you, it's worth understanding properly, because they call for completely different responses.
What maternal burnout can look like
Maternal burnout is more than having one bad day. It tends to develop when parenting demands repeatedly exceed the support and recovery available to you, not from a single hard stretch but from months of running on a low tank while also punishing yourself for the tank being low.
It doesn't always look like collapse. For a lot of mothers it looks like still functioning, still doing the school run, still getting dinner on the table, while feeling flat, resentful, numb, or one small thing away from completely losing it. If certain moments completely flatten you while other mothers seem to shrug them off, if the guilt spiral feels disproportionate to what actually happened, if you can logically know you're a good mother and still feel, underneath it all, like you're failing, that's usually not about this particular week. It's what months of unsupported demand actually does to a person. The same depleted capacity that drives burnout is often what's quietly costing you your friendships too. If this sounds like a season you've been stuck in for a while rather than a hard week, it may be worth understanding the Accommodation stage of the Mother Awakening Cycle properly.
What can help right now
Before anything else, it's worth working out what's actually going on underneath the overwhelm, because the answer changes what kind of support will actually help.
Are you getting enough uninterrupted rest to recover at all, even a little. Which part feels hardest right now, the noise, the touch, the monotony, the responsibility, the loneliness, or simply the absence of time alone. Is there a responsibility you're carrying that another adult in your life could genuinely take off your plate. Do you dislike motherhood itself, or the unsupported way you're currently experiencing it. Are these feelings occasional, or have they become fairly constant and heavy. What would ease the pressure by even ten per cent this week.
The point of sitting with these isn't to talk yourself into feeling more grateful. It's to work out what your system is actually responding to, and what kind of support is genuinely missing, rather than reaching for another strategy aimed at the wrong problem.
Take the Wired Quiz
Understanding your own wiring is often the first real step out of the guilt loop, because you stop fighting yourself and start working with what's actually going on underneath.
The Wired Quiz is a free, reflective tool designed to help you recognise the pattern you tend to fall into under pressure, whether that's the guilt loop, sensory overload, shutdown, or something else entirely. It's not a diagnostic assessment, and it won't fix everything overnight, but it does something almost as useful. It stops the guilt feeling so personal, and starts it feeling like something you can actually work with.
Take the Wired Quiz to find out what's really driving your overwhelm.
When you need help in the actual moment
Knowing why motherhood feels hard is useful. The harder part is remembering what to do at 7.43pm, when one child is melting down, another one needs you, and your own nervous system has already had enough for the day.
This is what Mum Wise was built for. It's trauma-informed, neurodivergence-aware guidance you can bring the actual moment to, shaped around regulation, relationship and what's realistically possible right then, not another course to work through when you have time you don't have. It's built from the way mothers have been supported through this work for more than two decades, helping you settle the immediate pressure, understand what might be happening underneath the behaviour, in your child's and your own, and decide what to do next. There's a free trial, so you can see whether it actually helps before committing to anything.
Explore Mum Wise and start your 14-day free trial.
A note on when to reach out for more support
Sometimes not enjoying motherhood reflects exhaustion, overload, isolation or a genuinely difficult season, and it eases as circumstances and support improve. Sometimes it's something more. If the feeling is persistent, worsening, or comes with hopelessness, numbness, frightening thoughts, or real difficulty functioning day to day, that may be a sign of postnatal depression, anxiety, or another mental health concern worth assessing properly, not something to work through alone with an article, however well meaning. Please talk to your GP or maternal health nurse, or book a call for trauma-informed support. You deserve real support, not just a better mindset.
Sources and further reading
Hoekzema, E., Barba-Müller, E., Pozzobon, C., et al. (2017). Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure. Nature Neuroscience, 20(2), 287–296.
Athan, A. M. (2024). A critical need for the concept of matrescence in perinatal psychiatry. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15, 1364845.
Mikolajczak, M., Gross, J. J., Stinglhamber, F., Norberg, A. L., & Roskam, I. (2020). Is parental burnout distinct from job burnout and depressive symptomatology? Clinical Psychological Science, 8(4), 673–689.
About Philippa Scott
Philippa has spent more than 22 years supporting women through pregnancy, birth, motherhood and the identity shifts that come with them. Her work brings together maternal support, trauma-informed practice and nervous system education, helping mothers understand what's actually happening beneath the overwhelm, the guilt and the reactivity. She's a mother of four neurodivergent daughters and grandmother to 1 so far!!
Frequently asked questions
Is it normal to love my child but not enjoy motherhood?
Yes. Loving your children and struggling with the day-to-day reality of motherhood can both be true at once. Finding parts of motherhood genuinely difficult, or missing your old life, doesn't mean you don't love your children or that something is wrong with you.
Does not enjoying motherhood make me a bad mum?
No. Struggling with aspects of motherhood, or wishing parts of it felt different, is common and doesn't reflect the quality of your love or care for your child. It more often reflects unmet needs for rest, support or recovery.
Why do I miss my life before children?
Missing your old freedom, sleep, identity or sense of self is a normal response to an enormous life transition, not evidence of regret about your child. Grieving what's changed can happen alongside genuine love for your children.
What is maternal burnout?
Maternal burnout develops when parenting demands repeatedly exceed the support and recovery available to a mother, over an extended period, rather than resulting from one hard day. It can look like exhaustion, resentment, numbness, or a persistent sense of running on empty.
What is matrescence?
Matrescence is the physical, psychological, social and identity transition into motherhood. It affects the brain, the body and the sense of self, and it's often compared to the developmental upheaval of adolescence.
How can I tell whether this is burnout or something like postnatal depression?
Burnout tends to ease with rest, practical support and reduced demand. If low mood, numbness, anxiety or hopelessness persist regardless of support, or are affecting your ability to function day to day, it's worth being properly assessed by a GP or perinatal mental health professional rather than assuming it's just burnout.
What can I do when I feel overwhelmed by my children?
Understanding what's specifically driving the overwhelm, sensory load, sleep deprivation, unmet needs, or old protective patterns being activated, changes what kind of support actually helps. The Wired Quiz and Mum Wise are both designed to help with this directly.
Can neurodivergence make motherhood feel more overwhelming?
Yes. Neurodivergent mothers often carry a heavier sensory and cognitive load day to day, which can make ordinary parenting demands feel disproportionately intense. This isn't a personal failing, it's a genuine difference in capacity and processing.
What would help most right now?
If you want to understand your pattern, take the free Wired Quiz and discover what tends to happen in your system under pressure.
If you need support with a situation happening right now, try Mum Wise free for 14 days and get guidance shaped around the actual moment you're in.
