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The Feedback Moms Actually Need

There’s a conversation I keep having. It came up this week in my own couples therapy session, and in two separate conversations with one-on-one clients. Over the years, it’s come up more times than I can count. So I think it needs to be said out loud.

Here it is: moms are working overtime in a thankless job. We’re delivering the joy, the magic, the birthday party, the clean kitchen, and the mac and cheese cooked four different ways. And often, we’re not only missing a thank you. We’re getting the opposite.

“It’s too cold.”

“So-and-so’s party looked like this.”

“I thought there was going to be vanilla frosting.”

Sometimes it comes from our kids. Sometimes it comes from a partner who, with the best of intentions, offers feedback on how it could have been done differently. Which, let’s be honest, usually means better.

When you’ve been running yourself into the ground to hold all the family things, all the kid things and all the house things together, a comment like that does not land well. It lands like a dagger to the gut.

What You Actually Need in That Moment

What you need is the exact opposite of critique. You need someone to say, “Forget the vanilla frosting. This was amazing. You did a great job.” You need to hear that it’s okay the sink is full of dishes. That you’re a really good mom.

So if you haven’t heard that from anyone in the last 24 hours, or 24 days, or ever, I want you to hear it from me now.

You are an amazing mom. Everything you do is done with good intentions and love. And here’s the truth: you could have lit a candle you already had and put a bowl of cereal in front of them, and that would have been okay too.

Motherhood isn’t just a thankless job. It comes with an unreasonable expectation about how much we can deliver. Society has programmed us to believe there’s no limit to what a mom should be able to do, and that programming often lives in our partners and our kids too. We’re set up to feel like we’re failing before we’ve even started.

The 5 to 1 Ratio

Researchers John and Julie Gottman, well known in the couples therapy world, found that healthy relationships need roughly five positive interactions for every negative one.

Five to one. Sit with that for a moment.

We know how this works at the office. You can get a performance review with 50 glowing comments, and which one do you remember? The one negative one. Now imagine you’re a mom who already feels like she’s falling short, and the only feedback coming your way is “constructive.” It doesn’t just make you feel worse. It makes you feel alone. There’s no sense of being on the same team.

When There’s a Mother Deficit

For women who didn’t grow up with a loving, accepting, witnessing presence in their own mother, this hurts in an extra tender place.

Many of us look to our partners for what we didn’t get or desperately wanted from our parents. I’m in that category myself. In my couples therapy session this week, my husband asked what I needed, and I got teary. I said, “I think we all know I have a huge mother deficit. I need someone to tell me I’m doing okay. I need someone to say thank you. I need a hug. I need permission to feel what I’m feeling, and someone to tell me I’m good enough as I am.”

I’m a huge advocate for couples therapy, especially for parents with little ones. And it’s absolutely worth asking your partner for what you need. But asking someone to show up in a way that isn’t natural to them can take a long time. So where else can we find it?

Filling the Mother Bucket

I often talk about the mother bucket. It’s the one that gets filled with attuned presence, unconditional love, permission and self-compassion that’s both fierce and tender.

If your mom can’t fill it, whether she doesn’t have the capacity, isn’t well, has passed away, or just isn’t there when you call, the next best person to fill it isn’t your partner. It’s you.

When we learn to mother ourselves mindfully, something shifts. We stop needing our partner to convince us we’re a good mom. We know it, and we can remind ourselves when we forget. And the dance in the relationship changes too. Your partner gets to just be your partner, and sometimes, without that intense pressure, he shows up in ways you didn’t expect.

This doesn’t mean going it alone. Belonging is a foundational human need. Other mothers, especially those who also didn’t have a healthy relationship with their own mom, can be powerful mirrors for each other. I’m watching this happen right now in our Radical Flourishing group, as women become mothering figures for one another while learning to be that for themselves.

You Don’t Have to Deserve Your Feelings

One last thing. So many moms tell me, “I think I deserve to feel angry,” or “Do I deserve to feel overwhelmed?”

You don’t have to earn your feelings. You don’t say you deserve a thumb because you text a lot. You have a thumb because you’re human. You have feelings for the same reason.

You can spend a lot of energy defending your anger or resentment, but that just keeps you stuck in a loop of proving yourself, both as a mom and as someone whose feelings count. Enough. You feel what you feel because you’re human. Your feelings are valid.

And you are an incredible mother, inside and outside of all the doing.

Listen to the full episode for more on the mother bucket, the 5:1 ratio and a first look at a new way to get real-time coaching support. And remember, you’re never alone.