Parental Self-Doubt Quotes

The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror.

I'm scared of screwing up my kids.

I don't think anybody feels like they're a good parent. Or if people think they're good parents, they ought to think again.

As a mom, you have all these situations you go through, and you're like, 'What is going on? Is this normal? Is this a phase? Or what is this?' and then you feel silly for asking questions because you think, 'I'm a mom - I'm supposed to know these things,' but you don't.

Motherhood has been an exercise in guilt.

But then as time passed, I learned the lesson that parents do early on. You fail sometimes. No matter how much you love your children, there are times you slip. There are moments you can't give, stutter, lose your temper, or simply lose face with the world, and you can't explain this to a child.

The good enough mother, owing to her deep empathy with her infant, reflects in her face his feelings; this is why he sees himselfin her face as if in a mirror and finds himself as he sees himself in her. The not good enough mother fails to reflect the infant's feelings in her face because she is too preoccupied with her own concerns, such as her worries over whether she is doing right by her child, her anxiety that she might fail him.

It's a great relief that you're not as bad a parent as you thought you were.

We all parent the best we can. Being human, we're ambivalent. We want perfection for our babies, but we also need sleep.

I get looks like I can't raise my child, but I can.

Having children can smooth the relationship, too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept, for among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way, too--unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid; that she, too, sat in the dark at 2:00 A.M. with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child's trouble.

You're always asking yourself, are you doing the best for your child? And other parents let you know if you're not, just not in a direct way. There's a sense of competition, which is ridiculous because you know deep down you're all suffering.

I don't feel I'm as good a mum as my mum was.

Our standards for motherhood are so high that many of us harbor intense, secret guilt for every harsh word we speak to our children, every negative thought that enters our minds.

There's this constant guilt that comes with parenting. You always feel like you're never enough. If you're confident in your parenting, you probably suck at it.

When I meet other parents and they're more 'mumsy' than I am - you know, I don't want to be 'mumsy,' but I'm like, 'Were you always like that or... what happened?'

A lot of women feel like they should be enjoying motherhood, they should be fulfilled and shouldn't be thinking, 'I wish I didn't have to do this.'

The frustrations and joys of parenthood are just hard to understand until you have a kid... the constant fight you're having with yourself, like loving being with your kid but also being kind of bored and wanting to look at your iPhone - it's kind of an interesting thing that's hard to write about before you've experienced it.

When you're a parent, you're just like, God, I hope they like me when they grow up. I hope that I did a good job. I hope they're gonna be happy.

I'm always anxious when it comes to my kids. This always makes me feel very vulnerable. Sometimes you think you aren't a good mama, you always feel a bit guilty when you're a mom. You want to be everywhere.

One of the darkest, deepest shames so many of us mothers feel nowadays is our fear that we are Bad Mothers, that we are failing our children and falling far short of our own ideals.

I think there's a lot of anxiety about being seen as a bad parent. There's still a lot of subjects that I think people aren't entirely comfortable being honest about.

Being a developmental psychologist didn't make me any better at dealing with my own children, no. I muddled through, and, believe me, fretted and worried with the best of them.