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  • A mum cradles a sleeping newborn baby during a lifestyle newborn photoshoot, North London

Pressure to be perfect: Our constant strive for motherhood perfection is real

And here’s why you need to stop
#AsYouAreMotherhood

Thanks for visiting my blog on the pressure to be perfect.

So many parents, especially mums, tell me that they feel this constant pressure to do better, to be ‘the best’, and to keep trying until they achieve absolute perfection.

But what even is perfection anyway? And does ‘perfect’ really exist?

“Perfection is the state or quality of being perfect,” according to the Oxford English dictionary. It’s also “the action or process of improving something until it is faultless.”

When you truly examine how you are, how you go about your daily activities and how this plays out as a parent, are you able to say that you let perfectionism go?

Or are you trapped, like thousands of us mums, in this constant cycle of blame and guilt, of ‘could do better’ thoughts and the strive for 100% flawless parenting?

Pressure to be perfect: Are you striving for perfection or are you already good enough?
North London photographer Louisa Peacock runs a baby and family studio
Louisa Peacock starts the #loveyourself hashtag challenge

Ten out of Ten

I have always been a perfectionist. I can remember being in school and feeling a constant pressure to be perfect, to get 100% accurate results.

If I got 9 out of 10 on a test, I would worry about why I didn’t get that one right, instead of celebrating my achievements.

My strive for perfection most likely came from an upbringing where I was encouraged repeatedly to ‘do my best’. My dad would push me to do better and to be better. There’s nothing wrong with this per se, but I think I interpreted it a little differently than what he meant.

To me, ‘do my best’ meant that I can’t or shouldn’t fail. It meant that I need to keep working until I can do the best, not necessarily my best. I didn’t want to face up to my own limitations and so worked harder than others to achieve the same grades.

The fear of failure and rejection was very real for me as a schoolgirl. I guess, in my head, I thought that if I didn’t do well on my test results, then I wouldn’t be as well accepted or liked.

But how does this all play out now I’m a parent?

#AsYouAreMotherhood

I feel so strongly that many of us mums are trying too hard to be perfect – to be something that doesn’t even exist when it comes to parenting our kids.

Our ‘pressure to be perfect’ to do list:

To always say the right thing. To be the perfect playmate and disciplinarian all in one. To cook the most nutritional snacks. To make sure they eat 5 a day. To ensure that your kid develops friends and social interactions. To read a bedtime story without rushing through. To put them down to sleep and not see them until morning time. To always handle tantrums and meltdowns calmly. To always turn up on time for things. To always have smartly dressed (or just dressed) children. To make sure your kid is potty trained ‘on time’. To make sure your kid is crawling, walking, talking, reading, writing ‘on time’. And so on.

Well it’s time we let go.

To cut ourselves some slack and to embrace our kids being kids.

This is something I love doing in my outdoors family photoshoots because I actively encourage the kids to mess about, be silly and be who they want to be without conforming to societal rules of how they should behave and what they should look like.

I find it really freeing to take this approach to other people’s children in the now of a photoshoot. But I want to take this approach to my own parenting a little more too.

So I’m going to start embracing and accepting the ‘as you are’ moments of motherhood more. My own as well as everyone else’s. To realise that I am good enough, as I am, and that my kids love me for who I am.

On Instagram (@louisapeacockphoto) and Facebook I’ll be sharing loads of tips, stories, good and bad of things I’m doing to embrace self-love, self-care, acceptance and #AsYouAreMotherhood. I hope you’ll join me along the way.

______ #AsYouAreMotherhood ______

Head over to my Instagram account, follow my profile and join in with your own stories, tips, ways of beating the pressure to be perfect. I’m celebrating real mothers, with real stories, so that we can help other new parents realise that they’re not alone and they don’t have to get it right 100% of the time.

That mums are good enough.

Please join me https://www.instagram.com/louisapeacockphoto/

Follow Louisa on Instagram

Striving for perfection

I never really realised my constant need for perfection – and a ‘pat on the back’ from those around me – until I had my own children. It quickly became apparent to me that I couldn’t just ‘let things go’ or move on and I kept internalising and worrying about what I should have done better. I also questioned why I did things the way I did: was I doing them truly because I wanted to do them, or was I doing them to seek approval from others?

Recent research, published in Frontiers in Pshycology, has shown that the pressure to be perfect that mums feel goes on to create higher instances of mum guilt and blame.

So, when my firstborn baby didn’t sleep through the night – waking up around 5/6 times and pushing me to the brink of depression and sleep exhaustion – I thought all of this was somehow my fault. That I wasn’t doing something right.

I read and re-read the parenting books, I kept pursuing strategies to help my baby sleep but it didn’t work. This, I saw it, was my failure as a mum not to be able to help settle my own baby. I felt the pressure to be perfect burn away at me.

I was invited onto BBC Radio London to talk about this very issue with the lovely Jeanette Kwakye, also a mum, also struggling with a child who won’t sleep.

We both talked about how there is a real pressure for mums who feel they should have all the answers. Also that when they look around them, they feel that every other parent has it sorted and they’re so alone.

But why do we allow ourselves to feel judged and so alone? Why do we see babies not sleeping as a ‘failure’ when actually, it’s a very natural and normal thing.

That’s why I’ve started the #AsYouAreMotherhood campaign on Instagram. I’ll be sharing lots of examples, tips, real-life stories and anecdotes on how us mums are actually, good enough, just the way we are. And why we should stop striving for an unreal perfect.

BBC Radio London talks to Louisa Peacock about the pressure to be perfect
Pressure to be perfect: My baby wouldn't sleep at night but I felt like it was my fault

Pressure to be perfect: My article on letting go of perfection as a mum
Pressure to be perfect bingo

Letting go of perfection

It was only when I turned 40 last year that I started to really think about why I am the way I am. And of course, how this translates into my parenting and everyday work.

I work with babies all day long – it’s a true vocation for me – but I can spot a mile off the parents that are like me (forever anxious if they’re doing the right thing, worried they’re not good enough) and the parents that somehow, amazingly, just take it all in their stride, believe in themselves and know it’s all going to be OK.

Having worked with over 100 babies, I have seen time and again those that are difficult to settle and those that are super easy in that particular moment. I’ve learned that nature really does win against nurture; the child’s temperament and personality is something you can’t change or fix – only learn how to handle better.

Of course if I knew now, what I knew then was I was a first time mother, I might have had a much easier ride.

But the point is, even if I didn’t, I want to learn the bigger picture of letting things go and moving on from mistakes.

As I point out in a guest blog I wrote for the amazing Mama Wins magazine, I bet that for every bit of guilt, every regret, every sinking feeling you’ve ever had as a parent about the way you handled something- I bet every other parent out there can relate to you and has been there.

I even bet every other parent out there would tell you that what you did is ok, and probably that they’ve done something worse.

It was like a lightbulb moment the minute I realised that actually, we all feel like this to some degree and that really, I’m not alone. That actually, the problems and anxieties I have around my own parenting are in my head and can be overcome in my head.

I’ve realised that I am doing my best (even if that’s not THE best) and that IS enough.

Exploring the concept of perfection in my art

When I delve deeper and ask myself, why, in my art I only photograph babies in a certain way in my studio, it is all linked back to the concept of perfection.

In my art, I am exploring: what does it mean to be perfect? And what does it mean to NOT feel the pressure to be perfect? I strip the photograph write back to just baby, a very simply background and a simple wrap. I want to get rid of all the distractions, OTT props or fancy backgrounds, flush away any hint of anything that might distract from Baby. Because I know that the baby IS enough on their own.

They don’t need a mountain of props or special poses to show off their true spirits and capture them for who they are.

By stripping away all the distractions I force the viewer to look only at Baby which is perfection in its own right. To me this is exploring the concept of what it is ‘to be good enough’ – something that was elusive to me as a youngster and I’m only now grasping as a fully grown 40 year old.

I’m really concsious now of how I say things to my two boys, as well. Aged 7 and 4, they soak up pretty much anything that adults say. And so I hold back from saying the phrase ‘do your best’. Instead, if I see mistakes or improvements that need to be made, I ask them what they think they could do about it or if they think something could be done a little better. This is not before praising a few things they have done really well first.

Of course, I’m not going to get my parenting right all of the time. But I’m starting to realise, that’s OK – and is totally normal.

Pressure to be perfect: Stripping back everything away from Baby means you can focus purely on how perfect he is

How this translates to parenting

I’m really conscious now of how I say things to my two boys, as well. Aged 7 and 4, they soak up pretty much anything that adults say. And so I hold back from saying the phrase ‘do your best’. Instead, if I see mistakes or improvements that need to be made, I ask them what they think they could do about it or if they think something could be done a little better. This is not before praising a few things they have done really well first.

Of course, I’m not going to get my parenting right all of the time. But I’m starting to realise, that’s OK – and is totally normal.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blog on the pressure to perfect and why I truly think it’s time us mums stopped striving for absolute perfection and cut ourselves some slack.

You are good enough, just the way you are.

Please contribute to the debate in the comments; have you always felt the need to be the best / be perfect? Do you feel a pressure to do things better? Or perhaps you have confidence already that you’re doing the right thing and are good enough. Please share some tips for helping other mums remember that!

______ #AsYouAreMotherhood ______

Head over to my Instagram account, follow my profile and join in with your own stories, tips, ways of beating the pressure to be perfect. I’m celebrating real mothers, with real stories, so that we can help other new parents realise that they’re not alone and they don’t have to get it right 100% of the time.

That mums are good enough.

Please join me https://www.instagram.com/louisapeacockphoto/

Follow Louisa on Instagram
Muswell Hill baby photographer Louisa Peacock

Louisa is the owner of Louisa Peacock Photography and runs an award-winning studio in her own home in Muswell Hill. She specialises in family, baby and newborn photography in the studio or out and about in London’s beautiful parks. Above all her photoshoots are relaxed, fun and meaningful.