The Illusion of Choice in Motherhood

When I first pictured motherhood, I thought I’d get to make all the big decisions. And I knew exactly what I was going to choose.

Here are a few of the choices I thought I’d make:

• I was going to be a stay-at-home mom.

• I would never send my kids to daycare.

• I was going to exclusively breastfeed.

• I would plan fun activities.

But it wasn’t that simple.

Here are the things I never considered:

• My husband’s contract work ending right after our son was born.

• That my expectations of myself would make staying home feel like “not enough” (even though it was all I wanted before motherhood, make it make sense).

• That my son would be tongue and lip tied, and no one would catch it.

• That I’d feel so overwhelmed and overworked that planning anything felt impossible.

  
  

And all along, I blamed no one but myself.

I thought I had failed. I hadn’t done what I said I was going to do.

I didn’t know what matrescence was. I didn’t understand that my world, my values, my life, and who I was at my core would change so much.

I didn’t know how many factors would impact my decisions.

Here's the reality, dude:

I didn’t choose not to breastfeed.I didn’t choose for my husband’s income to disappear.I didn’t choose to feel gaslit and depressed by a system that didn’t support me or my son.

Yet I carried that weight like it was mine alone.

And that’s where Mommy Blame comes in.

Because when moms believe every outcome is their personal responsibility, the system never has to change. We keep blaming ourselves for what we can’t control and meanwhile, childcare stays unaffordable, paid leave stays nonexistent, and healthcare gaps go untouched.

The illusion of choice benefits the system. It keeps us quiet. It keeps us isolated. It keeps us carrying the impossible.

But here’s what we do have a choice in:

• To name what’s happening.

• To refuse to keep blaming ourselves.

• To speak up instead of staying silent.

• To remember that other countries do this differently... it is possible.

The problem isn’t moms choosing wrong, the problem is a system that never gave us real choices in the first place, and we don't even know it. And this is where compassion for the mom next to you matters. The mom who works outside the home, the mom who stays, the mom who breastfeeds, the mom who formula feeds, the mom who sends her kids to daycare, the mom who homeschools.

What looks like a “choice” from the outside is often shaped by things we can’t see, income, healthcare access, housing, support systems, relationship dynamics. Socioeconomic factors weigh heavier than personal preference.

Before we judge, we have to remember: most of us are just navigating the options we actually have, not the ones we imagined.

Talk soon,

Sam