Redefining Resilience in Parenting: It’s Communal
It may go against our grain as immigrant daughters, but learning to ask for help is crucial to becoming a resilient parent.
This article is part of Mochi’s fall 2024 issue on Resilience, redefined as “finding agency in adversity and fighting for radical change.” We highlight the strength of individuals and communities and their courage in dismantling systems of injustice. Our hope is that you will feel the strength pulsing through these stories and that you also are inspired to pair resilience with actions that lead to real, necessary, and revolutionary change.
I never thought that a trip to Target would defeat me. A few weeks after becoming a mother, the simplest tasks felt so daunting that I didn’t have the capacity to even attempt them. Getting ready to take my newborn to the store entailed making sure he was fed — first, by trying to get him to latch and nurse “naturally” (10 minutes) because I was told to still keep trying in the hopes he’d eventually get the hang of it, then feeding him previously pumped milk via the bottle since he never did learn to latch (20 minutes), then pumping milk for his next meal (another 20 minutes), washing all the pump parts and the bottle (5 minutes), changing his diaper (5 minutes), going down four flights of stairs with him in his infant car seat, and making it through a 10-minute car ride with him screaming bloody murder in the backseat, each cry grating on my frayed nerves (he hated being strapped in his car seat). By the time we got to the store, I was counting down the time until I would need to feed him again: soon. Also, so many things could (and did) go wrong: He could throw up or have a blowout, his nap schedule could get messed up, I might forget my wallet. It never seemed worth it to even attempt to leave the house, but the daily drudgery also felt like an unending series of overcast weeks.
We were among the fortunate: Neither my son nor I had health problems, we had a place to live and food to eat, and I had a supportive spouse who was a great parent. So why did I feel completely unhinged all the time, my neurons feeling like they were stripped bare and on the fritz? Why did I break down in tears every afternoon, not knowing if I could make it through another day? I felt ashamed at my lack of resilience and at my inability to gracefully enter into motherhood the way billions of women throughout history had done before me.
Looking back, I’m no longer surprised that I was crushed to the bone. We were the first among our friends to have children, and I had zero clue what being a parent to a newborn entailed. My baby had undiagnosed colic, ceasing to cry only when I was bouncing him up and down on an exercise ball, while I had undiagnosed postpartum anxiety, spiraling due to an utter lack of control unlike anything I had experienced before. Even though switching to formula would have cut down on the untenable cycle of attempting to nurse, bottle feeding, and pumping milk, I wanted my baby to have the best and couldn’t dislodge the mantra of the “breast is best” campaign. My husband had to return to his grad school classes by Day 2 of our baby’s life, before we were even discharged from the hospital. I was extremely sleep deprived and didn’t know how to ask for help. I had to return to medical school five weeks postpartum.
I wish someone had told me back then that I wasn’t weak for struggling with newborn parenting. Modern American society makes motherhood extremely challenging, due to factors such as the absence of generous federally mandated maternity and paternity leave (both are crucial), lack of affordable child care, rarity of intergenerational living, and insufficient awareness and support surrounding postpartum depression and anxiety. At my most deranged moments, recognizing that my mental state was dysregulated, I remember screening myself for postpartum depression using an online questionnaire, but my symptoms didn’t fit. I wasn’t depressed, just utterly overwhelmed, sweating every tiny decision because it could have big implications (if he doesn’t nap now, it will mess up his sleep tonight!), and exhausted beyond recognition.
As an Asian American woman, I wasn’t used to asking for help; in my mind, admitting that I needed help meant fragility, incompetence, and uselessness. I didn’t want to be seen that way, nor did I want to see myself that way. I was used to being high-achieving and capable, and it was hard for me to admit that parenting was defeating me, when so many others throughout history had done it with ease. Many of us are immigrant daughters raised in families that prize stoicism and that push through difficulties without assistance, so it may feel like complaining to raise a hand to ask for help. Similarly, many of us hold our family stories dear, leading us to compare our current struggles with the pain and suffering of our ancestors. We invalidate our own challenges because they’re nothing compared to what our parents and grandparents went through.
Yet feeling ashamed of our lack of resilience only serves to isolate us and create barriers to accessing the help we need — and we all do need help in such a jarring, consuming phase of life as new parenthood. I propose that we redefine what resilience means in modern parenting: It doesn’t mean doing it all alone. It doesn’t mean never breaking down and crying. It doesn’t mean suppressing how difficult things are. It doesn’t mean having a clean house, a well-dressed and calm baby, wooden Waldorf toys, handmade purees, and Instagram-worthy family photos.
No. Resilience means recognizing our limits and asking for help when we need it. It means gathering community around us and living in a mutually interdependent way, filling in the gaps for others when they need it and letting them support us in turn. It means saying no to what doesn’t work for us, whether that’s the prevailing dogma on the best ways to get your baby to sleep through the night, societal expectations around mothers in or out of the workforce, or family pressures. Resilience means recognizing that what matters is to preserve, as much as possible, a sound mind for the mother and health for the baby. It means advocating for change in parental leave policies and in child care structures so that all can benefit. It means that as a society, we are supportive of many different models of parenting because we know that people can flourish in different ways.
At its best, resilience isn’t an individual characteristic; it’s communal. When we redefine resilience to not equate to doing it all ourselves and suffering silently as new mothers, instead transforming it to mean recognizing that we will all need help at some point, we will remove the shame of feeling like we are not enough. We’ll lower the barriers to mothers accessing the resources that they need and finding inclusive community. Redefining resilience takes us one step closer to creating a society that is empathetic, compassionate, generous, and appreciative of the different gifts and needs of each person.
