Motherhood and Progression: Recent Episodes
Motherhood and Progression
We aim to help mothers heal their identities, grow themselves, and spread light in their own unique way. As mothers, we personally know how hard it is to embrace our own individuality and progression amidst mommy guilt and societal pressure to be "perfect mothers." We try to be open about our personal struggles to provide a place of safety, where you know you are not alone in the trenches of motherhood. We base our content on ideas from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and Bowen Family Systems Theory. We hope you enjoy our podcast!
There is a current trend of “healing” generational trauma by parenting more gently than one’s parents. Within this, there is a lot of parent blaming going on. While some acknowledge their parents’ efforts, however imperfect, the majority of people do not. And unfortunately, this tends to lead people to not only shame their own parents for not correctly meeting their “emotional needs,” but they go on to shame themselves when they are unable to meet their own children’s “emotional needs.” And the cycle continues on and on from one generation to the next.
This cycle is recognized in Bowen family systems theory, a foundational theory in the field of family therapy. It suggests that this is due to false assumptions about the reason for distance in relationships with one’s parents. It posits that for most people, the underlying problem is not that they lacked an original bond with their parents, but that relationships that often start out close and connected in childhood become distant later on due to a lack of boundaries and separate identities. It refers to this type of relationship as “fused.” It is similar to the idea of codependency.
Learn more at our corresponding blog post on this topic!
In today’s parenting culture, most people believe that the main relationship problem children experience is lacking a securely attached bond with their caregiver. As a result, parents are terrified of not meeting their children’s “connection needs” for fear of causing problems in them. When I was a new mom I was no different–I was obsessed with being as attentive, involved, and emotionally supportive of my son as possible. But what I came to realize was that my over-focus on attachment had led me to ignore autonomy–both for him and for myself. My relationship with him revolved so much around connection that we became codependent–he became overly dependent on me and was very needy and demanding, and I always felt guilty and that I wasn’t doing enough to meet his ever-increasing “needs.”
Fortunately for me, I came across a parenting perspective that had the answers I needed–Bowen family systems theory. It provided me with a new way of thinking about parenting that emphasized the importance of balancing autonomy and connection such that both parent and child can have their own identities and respect one another’s personal boundaries. This helped me to realize that the problem was not that I had not given enough “love,” but that I had actually given way too much. What I really needed was less emphasis on attachment, and a bit more autonomy to balance out the excessive togetherness that was making our relationship anxious and less genuinely connected.
Read more on this topic through our corresponding blog post!
You don’t often hear people talking about the need to encourage self-reliance in children these days. It seems to be more of an unpopular opinion that we are fighting against as a culture. It is more accepted to validate children’s dependency needs, give them plenty of our “love” and acceptance, calm their anxieties, and let them need us. The idea is that as parents accept dependency, it naturally helps children to become independent and happy. This idea stems from attachment theory (Bowbly, 1952). According to this way of thinking, safety and security are the goal, not encouraging children to tolerate their own distress or allowing them to be uncomfortable so they can grow to be more self-reliant. Children are seen more as helpless and dependent than resilient and self-reliant.
Balanced Parenting goes against the grain of today’s parenting culture, suggesting that self-reliance is vital for children to help them to become independent, confident, and happy. This idea is based in Bowen Family Systems theory (a family therapy theory), and specifically, its concept of differentiation of self. This concept suggests that self-reliance is at the core of emotional maturity, and allows people to have healthy, connected relationships and strong identities (Kerr & Bowen, 1988). It sees relationship-dependence as contributing to needy and demanding relationship behaviors that foster an anxious and threatening emotional environment, leading people to distance from one another. In contrast, self-reliance fosters a mutual respect for autonomy, promoting a calm, non-threatening emotional environment that is conducive to connection.
Learn more from our corresponding blog post on the topic!
Have you ever felt annoyed by your kid, and then felt extremely guilty because of it? If so, you’re not alone. This is actually a really common experience–common enough for a theory of human relationships to identify this phenomenon and explain why this happens.
Specifically, it is identified in Bowen family systems theory, a foundational theory to the field of family therapy (that also serves as the basis of Balanced Parenting). The theory suggests that this problem arises between a parent and a child when the relationship lacks a balance of individuality and togetherness. It explains that this often happens when a parent is over-devoted to children’s needs, programming relationship dependency in the child, such that they come to “need” the parent’s constant attention, involvement, and support.
Read more from my blog post on the topic!
In this episode, we introduce ourselves and give an overview of Balanced Parenting.
Balanced Parenting is a differentiation-based parenting approach informed by Murray Bowen’s family systems theory. The main goal of Balanced Parenting is to bring balance and genuine connection to parent-child relationships by helping parents and children to be free to have their own autonomy (individuality).
We believe that today’s parenting culture is highly anxious and child-focused, which has led to overinvolvement in parent-child relationships, relationship-dependence in children, and excessive guilt, burnout, and loss of identity for parents. We believe that this approach can help children and parents to grow in self-reliance and develop stronger identities.
Check out our blog post to learn more about Balanced Parenting!
In this episode, we discuss our struggles with letting go of our anxiety about our children and how we have overcome this.
In this episode, we talk about how we are able to find peace amidst the often chaotic challenges of motherhood.
In this episode, we share our experiences with finding joy in the journey rather than waiting for our "golden ticket."
Episode 4 discusses Greg McKeown's idea that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs and his this applies to motherhood.
In this introduction episode, we tell you a little bit about who we are and what you can expect from our podcast.
In this episode, we talk about how we have used personal revelation to guide our stories and how we have overcome fear and mommy guilt along the way.
In this episode, we talk about times when we have lost ourselves in motherhood and how we have been able to find ourselves again.