Motherhood isn't a crisis of who we are. It’s a chance for a rethink and an expansion.

When we first become mothers, we undergo an imperceptible transformation. We might not realise it, particularly at first, but with a baby to care for, the centre of our universe moves and things we might once have taken for granted as our most important goals become, suddenly, inconsequential as we try to get a handle on what our priorities need to be.

Research has demonstrated this too: according to findings from Dr Lynne Millward Purvis, women – particularly working women – undergo three ‘identity shifts’ when they become mothers. Before giving birth, we begin to feel increasingly invisible and undervalued as we prepare to go on maternity leave. After giving birth, we are forced to acquire a ‘mother identity’, which causes our goalposts to move. And as we return to work, we find we need to redouble our efforts as we seek to revalidate ourselves, both as employees and as mothers. In my experience of maternity coaching, women approaching maternity leave see these coming and find it helpful to discover others feel the same.

Findings by Professor Daniel Stern are more challenging. He rocks the self-image of the ambitious, self-sufficient woman – deciding instead that new mothers are preoccupied by three internal conversations: with herself, with her baby and with her own mother. Stern says a new mum is more concerned with women and less with men, more with her emotional growth and development and less with her career, more with her ‘husband-as-father-and-context-for-her-and-the-baby’ and less with her ‘husband-as-man-and-sexual-partner’. In short: more with her baby and less with everything else.

It is only after crossing the irreversible bridge to motherhood that most of us recognise or accept this. There are good biological and societal reasons why it might work well for many of us to adapt in this way. Our job is to accept that, for a while at least, we’ll be spending most of our time focusing on the growth and survival of the baby, our relatedness to the baby (including living up to social norms – even where we don’t buy into these), establishing suitable support for ourselves and, crucially, allowing our identity to adapt to all of these.

And it doesn’t last forever – the baby takes centre stage for 12 -18 months, then our usual set of themes swims back into view, with career moving back up the list. But while the transition lasts, here’s how we can be kind to ourselves:

• Establish a support network of other mothers, and accept the need for this. If we have a male partner, recognise we may be looking in a stressfully inappropriate place (for both of you) for the support we need if we lean fully on him. Other mothers are vital, and it’s a while before some of us tap into this, especially at work. What can you do next week to develop your support network of mothers at work and outside?

• Accept the normality of how harshly we judge how we’re doing at nourishing our babies, and at loving them. We tend to have a built-in fear of failure, but we thrive best if we recognise both that the pressure we feel is deeply normal, and that ‘good-enough’ will do – and is more successful than perfect.


Dr Lynne Millward Purvis, the Transition to Motherhood in an Organizational Context is available from Ingenta, while Prof. Daniel Stern’s the Motherhood Constellation: a Unified View of Parent-Infant Psychotherapy is available from Google Books.