Motherhood eats self-esteem for breakfast (in the first 4 years)

As often happens these days (when your work is basically your life), two things collided.

We recently celebrated the 18-month milestone of our third child. I’ve always intuitively felt that there’s a “before 18 months” and an “after 18 months” experience of parenthood. And the first 18 months, without fail, have felt the most intense, every single time (well, three times in our case 😉).

On the professional front, I’ve been thinking a lot about the ways matrescence shows up in people who don’t even realize they’re going through it. Moms often struggle to find the words for what they’re feeling. But what they do tell me is:

“I don’t feel like myself.”
“I don’t feel capable.”
“I’m not sure if I’m doing it right.”
“I’m not confident at work anymore.”

I realized that what many mothers are experiencing is a dip in self-esteem. And that actually makes perfect sense. The deep internal transformation that matrescence brings often feels like a loss of confidence. Since matrescence is a developmental process similar to adolescence, the symptoms are, unsurprisingly, similar. And who doesn’t remember the visceral awkwardness of being 15 years old and low on self-esteem?

As I often do when ideas start forming, I turned to the research. I found several studies on parental and maternal self-esteem — including one that looked at Dutch, highly educated parents.

The findings are clear:
Self-esteem tends to dip in parents from the moment of birth until the baby turns 18 months — and then it gradually begins to rise again. On average, it takes until the child’s fourth birthday for self-esteem to return to pre-birth levels. After that, it can even grow further.

As the researchers put it:

“In this vein, one could argue that the birth of a child and its concomitant challenges cause a temporary deviation from the overall trend toward personality maturation.”

It’s worth noting that this study measured general self-esteem — not just confidence in parenting skills, but how parents felt about themselves as employees, partners, friends, people. And yes, self-esteem was strongly affected by infant regulatory problems (like crying, sleeping, feeding challenges).

What struck me was that matrescence wasn’t mentioned once in the study. I doubt the researchers even know the term. But by using the umbrella concept of “self-esteem,” they still uncovered insights that resonate deeply with what we know about matrescence.

With every new baby, you go through matrescence — again.

One study (Van Scheppingen et al., 2018) compared the self-esteem trajectories of first-time mothers with mothers having a second, third, or fourth child. The result? No significant differences.
The transition to parenthood seems to have a normative impact on self-esteem, no matter how many children a mother already has. (Grolleman et al., 2022)

That aligns perfectly with my experience. With baby #2 and baby #3, the first 18 months still felt incredibly intense — even though I already knew how to mother, and by baby #3 I knew our type of baby well. I’d always wondered whether it was just the sleep deprivation (which lasted 18 months with each kid, before they finally started sleeping better). This research confirms that the dip in self-esteem is something most mothers experience — every time.

Matrescence is distinctly different from Patrescence.

One study (Bleidorn et al., 2016) found that mothers showed abrupt declines in self-esteem after childbirth — fathers did not.

Another study confirmed that both mothers’ and fathers’ self-esteem dips after birth — but mothers’ dips are deeper. One explanation given:

“The gender differences might be due to the higher pressure mothers feel to fulfill their intensive mothering role.” (Offer, 2016)

Fathers tend to spend more time in leisure and play, while mothers are more often responsible for onerous activities (e.g., basic childcare, housework), leading to less happiness and more fatigue (Musick et al., 2016). Even when adjusting for this, mothers still carry more stress (Meier et al., 2018).

One of the core themes in matrescence is the societal aspect. Mothers bear a heavier burden of societal expectations than fathers do — and that pressure directly affects self-esteem.

So What Can We Do?

This research backs up what many mothers already feel — and sharing this can reduce the harm it causes.

Here are a few ways we can support mothers during this dip in self-esteem:

• Talk about it.
  Normalize the experience of lower confidence, it's not a sign of you doing something wrong, it's a sign of you undergoing a transformation. Also, talking about this openly with others might help you realize: you’re doing better than you thought.

• Educate parents about unrealistic ideals.
  The societal norm of the “perfect mother” is not only unattainable, but also undesirable — it fuels perfectionism in parents and children. But it’s so deeply ingrained that we must explicitly teach new parents to challenge it. (This is a key part of what we do in The Mother Mountain program.)

• Create more realistic expectations about babies.
  No, most babies do not sleep through the night at 16 weeks. You’re not failing. Yes, babies cry — that’s their language. You’re not doing it wrong if yours does.

• Recalibrate expectations of yourself.
  One mom told me she took a psychological assessment for a new job 5 months postpartum. The result? “Low self-esteem.” That label made her feel worse — and she didn’t get the job.
  You can go for a new job early in motherhood — but having realistic expectations of your current capacity can buffer against extra self-doubt. If you need help in thinking through your next steps, check out this page

• Beware of social media.
  It often fuels comparison and self-doubt — and it can sink your self-esteem even lower.

Let’s talk more about this. Let’s share this research. Let’s remind new mothers (and ourselves) that there is nothing wrong with you — this is a normal part of a massive transition.

And you’re not alone in feeling it.

This blog is written by Babette Lockefeer, founder of Matermorphosis. Matermorphosis the place for ambitious women navigating the Shift to working motherhood. Want to get started with understanding Matrescence a little better? Sign up for the free Audio course here.