The Schedule That Proved Me Spectacularly Wrong About Motherhood - Why We're Setting New Mothers Up to Fail: What Research Reveals About the Expectations-Reality Gap

The Schedule That Never Was

What you see in the picture is a schedule we'd made when our first son was about 8 weeks old, in 2019. It's showing a normal week, and how we envisioned planning for childcare arrangements, work schedules, and social time. We made this schedule when still in China, where our eldest was born, knowing we would move back to the Netherlands when he was about 5 months old. it shows how we planned to have him in daycare 4 days a week, 2 evenings with a sitter. It showed how my partner would work 100% while i would work 80%. It shows how we would each fit in 2 days of sports and 2 date nights. It showed each evening -1 to have pre-scheduled activities.

I recently came across this picture, which was created 6 years ago. When I saw it I could only laugh in disbelief. I sent it to my partner saying: 'Seriously!? This is what we were thinking!?'

I can tell you: in the past 6 years, less than half of this schedule has ever become reality.

What Our Expectations Revealed

To me this picture is a testament to how we are utterly unprepared for the reality of motherhood. How can it be that 2 people who are in management positions at work, doing planning, research, strategizing, goal setting etc., and one person who is a self-proclaimed 'content junkie' (me), who has read all the blogs and books and taken all the classes, have failed so completely at having realistic expectations of what life with a baby looked like!?

Looking at this picture, it reveals the (unconscious) expectations we DID have:

1. The most important thing we needed to do was to arrange childcare. Sort that, and we have our new life fixed.

2. It requires some 'willpower', but then you can 'do it all' (Do sports at the times we have set for that)

3. A fully packed schedule where everything is optimized and all time effectively used is the goal: then we can maximize having a career and a family.

4. One day of dedicated family time must be enough

5. We will be as productive and efficient as we were before kids

6. 'Equality' comes from carving out time to do the household chores equally (e.g., my husband having a work-from-home day in which he would do extra laundry. Mental load was not yet in the vocabulary)

7. There will never be unexpected events (e.g., sickness, childcare unavailable etc.)

8. We would have energy in the evenings to DO things (sports/social/date nights)

9. Our child would be ok with 4 days a week daycare and 2 nights with a babysitter

10. The time I had during maternity leave would cover any need for personal adjustment to my new life

11. We would want to work full time/80%

The Hidden Assumptions

Inside that, there were even more implied assumptions:

• We would get the sleep we need (because we would follow the right responsive schedules at the start, resulting in a well-sleeping baby in a few months)

• Breastfeeding until minimum 9 months would not require a significant time investment

Looking back now, 6 years into motherhood, this is all WILD to me. It's especially wild because when we created this, we already had our baby who had shown no intentions of loving sleep for the first 2 months of his life.

As said, this schedule never became reality. Granted, the moment we moved back to the Netherlands was also the start of the global COVID pandemic. But when the schedule was supposed to 'be installed', COVID was not yet really impacting daily life, and still, our child has never been in daycare 4 days a week (neither have the subsequent 2 kids).

Understanding What Happened: Hindsight Bias

We were one of the first people who had kids in our surroundings (and we're both the eldest in our own families). What we saw around us was people with babies having schedules similar to this one, and seemingly making it work.

The main advice we got when we told people we were pregnant: 'please get your baby on the daycare waitlists asap.'

I believed all the content around baby sleep being something that could be 'managed.' Even though it might be hard the first 4 months, it would definitely get better if you did the right things. Things like baby carriers and other baby gear that I saw in magazines and on blogs suggested you could choose to have your hands free and be productive with a baby strapped onto you. And it's not that I read one-sided parenting advice that basically talks about babies being pooping machines, without a lot of emotions. I got a doula for my birth, I read about attachment theory and was well aware that bonding was important. But still.

This idea that babies would be ok with carers as long as they were loving was very much ingrained. And even though they might cry when you leave them at daycare, that's something temporary to overcome.

6 years ago, there was no mention of the word Matrescence (I only came across it for the first time in 2021). Never in any resource had I read anything about the psychological adjustment that happens in becoming a mom. I read about training your pelvic floor, yes. I read about a small percentage of women having a PMAD. I read about doing belly exercises to close the 'diastasis' in my belly. That's about it.

We did read about how parenthood might hit a relationship hard. I bought the book 'When Baby Makes Three', and we assumed that the weekly date nights we had planned would be enough.

The Ambitious Couple Myth

Self-identifying as 'ambitious people' gave us the belief that yes, we would like to keep on working (and maybe, to be honest, it was not even a consideration of what we 'liked', but more of what we were 'supposed' to do). I mean, after all we were a modern, ambitious, equal couple that was not going to surround ourselves in baby world too much. Seeing other couples consumed by 'baby world' always made us feel a little pitiful towards them. No, we wouldn't be like that. We were serious adults with our own lives and goals and wishes.

Until we weren't.

Reality

Our specific situation was as follows:

• Our kid(s) were horrible sleepers, until about 2 years of age (You can read that story here)

• Our kid(s) didn't necessarily thrive going to daycare/babysitters/guest parents. Which makes a lot of sense knowing how much it took to get them to sleep at home (that can't be replicated in a 1-to-many setting). They often came home fried, and the night after was even worse than when they had been home (we now know there is neurodivergence in the mix)

• Covid happening meant work/care/home looked completely different overnight

The Universal Themes

This is not just a story of how OUR parenting journey is different then expected. There are much more 'generic' themes in here as well:

The fundamental shift of going from individual to dyad (and the responsibility that trumps all else: keeping a completely dependent human being alive) is not something that is discussed in any meaningful way during pregnancy.

Matrescence meant that I needed a LOT of time adjusting to what it meant 'to be a mom' myself. Time I had not envisioned I needed.

Matrescence also means that what you value and what ambition looks like for you changes (it doesn't dissolve, but evolves into something less 'cookie-cutter'). This brings a different perspective on what matters in life (and therefore in work).

Running a household with a baby does not only require physical tasks. It requires a lot of 'mental load' (especially when you're figuring out things for the first time). That costs energy.

Having a healthy, equal relationship is not something you can 'just decide and it's there'. It takes A LOT of hard work to rewrite the societal stories and examples about work and family that we're sold. But we need to rewrite them because they are inherently flawed and harmful for everyone involved.

Why Aligned Expectations Matter

No one is able to predict exactly how you will experience motherhood. But we can do a better job at informing people about what that reality could look like, so that you have a more balanced perspective, and hopefully the gap between expectation and reality is a bit more narrow. Because that big gap has big implications (which is exactly what the research reveals).

My overly optimistic schedule isn't an outlier. It reflects a systemic failure in how we prepare women for motherhood. Research consistently shows this pattern across countries and contexts. In studies spanning Ireland, Sweden, and Australia, first-time mothers describe being blindsided by realities that should have been predictable: the loss of their pre-mother identity ("My body, my identity, how I spend my time, how I prioritize things, how I think about things. Everything has changed!"), the exhaustion that makes evening plans impossible ("Motherhood is the most challenging, emotionally and physically exhausting experience I have ever had") (Lorén et al., 2024, pp. 1, 3, 6).

The Difficulty Trajectory

The data reveals a striking difficulty trajectory: while 21% of women found pregnancy easy, only 5% found early motherhood easy. The percentage who rated their experience as difficult jumped from 47% during pregnancy to 59% in early motherhood (Lorén et al., 2024, p. 3). Yet our antenatal preparation focuses almost entirely on the pregnancy and birth (the period most women find less challenging) while largely ignoring the postpartum reality that the majority find more difficult.

The Joy Paradox

What's particularly striking is that maternal expectations about anticipated joy were found to be negatively related to general health. This means the more happiness mothers expected, the worse their physical health outcomes (Emmanuel & Sun, 2014, p. 2). This isn't about pessimism versus optimism; it's about how unrealistic expectations create a gap that produces measurable harm. The system feeds women idealized images (what one mother called "that perfect, Instagram-worthy picture") while leaving them unprepared for sitting with "milked breasts and a screaming child" (Lorén et al., 2024, p. 6).

The Vicious Cycle

Even women who know these images are curated still feel inadequate when faced with the messy reality of early motherhood.

Perhaps most damaging is how maternal distress amplifies this expectations-reality gap, creating a vicious cycle: unmet expectations lead to distress, which makes it harder to meet expectations, which increases distress further (Emmanuel & Sun, 2014, pp. 6-7). The research shows that 41% of pregnant women experience moderate to severe distress, and new parents argue nine times more often than before having a baby, with 67% of couples experiencing resentment in early parenthood.

A Systemic Pattern, Not Individual Failure

We're not just talking about individual struggles. We're looking at a systemic pattern where the majority of new mothers find motherhood more difficult than they anticipated, not because they're weak or unprepared, but because the preparation itself is fundamentally flawed. My weekly schedule wasn't naive; it was a rational response to the information I had been given. The problem is that the information itself was incomplete, sanitized, and oriented toward an impossible ideal rather than lived reality.

The Path Forward: Realistic Expectations as Foundation

The research offers a crucial insight: when maternal distress is reduced, it acts as a protective factor that helps mothers better meet their expectations, which then improves their overall functioning and quality of life (Emmanuel & Sun, 2014, p. 1). But here's the key: we can't reduce distress if we're setting women up with impossible expectations from the start.

Better Preparation Enables Adaptation

Better expectation management isn't about lowering the bar or being pessimistic; it's about giving mothers the psychological foundation they need to actually adapt and thrive. The studies show that mothers do find their way. Between 2 and 7 months postpartum, women report greater self-confidence, learning to trust themselves, and experiencing more joy as they settle into their new identity. One mother described it as "I have evolved into a role and learned to not be so worried…I will be good enough" (Lorén et al., 2024, pp. 5-6). But this adaptation happens despite poor preparation, not because of it.

The Transformative Power of Understanding Matrescence

When we prepare women for the reality that identity will shift, that control-oriented strategies may need to be released, that bonding can be gradual, and that ambivalence is normal, we're not dampening enthusiasm. We're giving them the tools to navigate the paradoxes of motherhood without internalizing the struggle as personal failure.

This is where understanding matrescence becomes transformative. When you know that the psychological adjustment is real, necessary, and takes time (when you understand that becoming a mother means integrating a new identity rather than simply adding tasks to your existing life), the expectations-reality gap narrows. You stop asking "what's wrong with me?" and start asking "what support do I need?" You recognize that needing significant time for adjustment isn't a personal flaw but a developmental necessity. You understand that your values and definition of ambition may shift, and that this evolution isn't loss but growth.

Replacing Myths with Reality

The system has told us that good mothers shouldn't need help, that we can "have it all" with enough willpower. But the research is clear: these myths create measurable harm. When we replace them with realistic expectations about the matrescence journey (the identity work, the relationship renegotiation, the need for sustained support), we give mothers what they actually need: permission to be human during a profound transformation, and the knowledge that what they're experiencing isn't failure, but the normal, necessary work of becoming.

From the Hardest Challenges Come the Most Valuable Insights

So after all, I look back at that early-motherhood version of myself and can only feel compassion. Compassion for her trying the best she could in a system that isn't optimized for her wellbeing. And sometimes, from the hardest challenges come the most valuable insights. It's why I created Matermorphosis.

This blog is written by Babette Lockefeer, mom of 3 and founder of Matermorphosis. Feel like you want to be better prepared for motherhood, or wish this for someone in your enviroment? Check out the pregnancy course that focuses on the real work: motherhood. This course is fully designed based on the insights you read about in this blog. We need to provide moms with a more realistic, complete picture of what 'becoming a mom' means for you, as a women.

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