STAGES OF MOTHERHOOD

 

Each mom’s journey through the stages of motherhood will look slightly different. Mothers, overall, tend to handle certain things in each stage of their child’s life in certain ways. Those tendencies can be helpful as we journey through each stage of our child’s life. 

When I was growing up, my older brothers often complained about the things my parents allowed me to do at an earlier age. “What? You’re letting her do that now? I didn’t get to do that ‘til I was twelve!”

Another brother would say, “Mom said you could do what? Wow! She would never have let me do that!”

My brothers were right. I was the youngest of four children and certainly benefitted from it. Why? Because my parents had loosened up the rules as they had more children and became more experienced at parenting. I think especially of my mother, whose skills and knowledge of motherhood developed over the years.

Tendencies in Motherhood

While every mom is different, most mothers progress through the stages of motherhood in similar ways. Moms typically see these four trends over time:

• Moving from restrictive to less restrictive.
• Becoming less fearful and anxious and, instead, becoming confident and relaxed.
• Changing from child-focused to others-focused.
• Moving from advisor to consultant.

These four tendencies, for most mothers, occur in response to normal child and family development. Mothers tend to be more restrictive because infants are limited in what they can do for themselves. It’s normal and healthy to ease up on those restrictions as children grow and become more independent. Infants, for example, should never be left alone in a bathtub. However, a ten-year-old should be able to take a bath by himself. As mothers have more children and become more experienced, they tend to relax restrictions sooner.

While we can predict that most mothers will have these tendencies, some situations may make a mother’s journey very different. Pregnancy losses, a mother or a child’s physical or mental illness, a child’s disability, a traumatic incident, or adoption of a child from a traumatic background might cause a mom to get stuck. I discuss these situations and how they affect moms in another article, Motherhood in Difficult Situations.

For now, let’s take a look at how these motherhood tendencies coordinate with the stages of child development.