The Good Mother/Bad Mother Binary: Pedestals and Prisons of Patriarchal Motherhood
By Dr Sophie Brock, Sociologist and Mother
There is such a juxtaposition between how society on the one hand can idealise and place motherhood on a pedestal - and yet is so quick to judge and demonise actual mothers.
When we use a sociological lens to examine mothers’ experiences and how they’re treated within our broader society, structure, and culture, there's something interesting about the valorisation and pedestaling of mothers and the "super mum" who can do it all, alongside the judgement and sometimes condemnation of who is seen as the “bad mother'“.
The Pedestaling Problem
From a sociological perspective, the idealisation of motherhood functions - paradoxically - as a mechanism of devaluation.
In other words: putting mothers on a pedestal actually ends up devaluing them, which might seem contradictory at first. But the act of pedestaling creates social distance. When individuals are elevated to an idealised status, they are positioned beyond the realm of ordinary human connection. This distancing serves to separate mothers from authentic social engagement and support.
If we can look at someone and say: “you’re amazing, I don’t know how you do it, you’re super-human” then on some level, we are ‘other-ing’ them from us. You can do this, because you are different.
This social mechanism manifests in common interactions, such as when individuals express sentiments like, "I don't know how you do it," or "I could never imagine what that feels like." While seeming to offer empathy, these statements can actually - often unintentionally - reinforce separation rather than connection.
My qualitative research with mothers of children with disabilities demonstrated this phenomenon consistently. Participants reported that being positioned as extraordinary or martyr-like actually created interpersonal barriers, rather than supportive connections.
The data from these interviews revealed that recipients of such comments frequently experienced increased isolation. The social construction of the "extraordinary mother" can actually function to absolve broader social responsibility for maternal support.
When we treat mothers as superhuman or extraordinary, it lets society off the hook. If mothers are seen as special beings who can handle anything, then we don't need to create better support systems for them. This way of thinking shifts responsibility away from communities and governments and places the burden on individual mothers to shoulder responsibility.
Binary Constructions: The Perfect Mother and Her Shadow
There is a binary at play in the social construction of motherhood. The idealisation of the perfect mother necessarily creates a shadow category: the bad mother.
This binary operates as a fundamental organising principle in how motherhood is culturally understood and evaluated. By establishing the characteristics of the idealised mother (selfless, eternally patient, emotionally available, physically present, professionally successful yet family-oriented), society simultaneously constructs its opposite. The "bad mother" becomes defined by absence - what she lacks in relation to the ideal. She is characterized as selfish, impatient, emotionally distant, physically absent, or failing to balance her various social roles adequately.
This good mother/bad mother divide plays an important role in controlling how mothers behave in our society. My PhD research indicated that this dichotomy can create several social effects:
It establishes a normative framework against which all mothers are evaluated, both by others and through internalised self-assessment.
It generates conditions for constant comparison, as mothers position themselves and others along this binary.
It contributes to anxiety and insecurity, as the perfect mother ideal remains perpetually unattainable, yet failure to approximate it risks association with the stigmatised "bad mother" category.
It divides women by creating artificial categories of maternal identity, fragmenting what might otherwise be collective experiences of the structural challenges of mothering.
This good mother/bad mother system works to control mothers in our society by using two powerful motivations - the desire to be seen as a 'good mother' and the fear of being called a 'bad mother.' The expectation of maternal competition is built into a system designed this way.
Understanding the Framework: Patriarchal Motherhood
This binary system of maternal evaluation operates within a larger sociocultural framework. The good mother/bad mother dichotomy doesn't exist in isolation but is produced and maintained by patriarchal motherhood - the broader cultural context that structures maternal experience.
Patriarchal motherhood can be conceptualised in several ways: as the social construction of motherhood, idealised motherhood, the "mummy myth," or what Adrienne Rich powerfully termed "the institution of motherhood." At its core, it represents the constellation of cultural beliefs, social expectations, and practices embedded within institutions, systems, and structure, that define what motherhood means and how it should be performed.
To visualize this concept, I use the analogy of a fish tank. Just as fish swim within water that shapes their movement and existence - often without perceiving the water itself - mothers operate within a cultural environment that invisibly shapes their experiences, decisions, and self-perception. Patriarchal motherhood is this tank: the containing structure that prescribes particular ways of being a mother while presenting these prescriptions as natural and inevitable.
Watch a 3min animation on The Fish Tank of Motherhood Model.
Historical and sociological research demonstrates that specific expectations of motherhood evolve as society changes. However, the underlying structural framework persists, embedded within our cultural practices and institutions. We can observe its influence throughout social systems - in healthcare practices, educational expectations of maternal involvement, workplace policies (or their absence), and media representations. These systems collectively reinforce particular maternal standards while obscuring their constructed nature.
Culture Lives Within Us
When these beliefs become internalised, they become embedded within ourselves.
Culture is not just external to us - culture lives within us. This can be uncomfortable to sit with, recognising that we may have not only taken on particular beliefs about motherhood and placed those rules on ourselves, but we also place them on others.
I recently experienced this myself. After a school drop-off, I was chatting with another mother and asked, "What do you do for work?" I don't usually ask this question because I'm aware of its connotations - in Australia, it's heavily tied to sense of identity. When you ask a full-time mother what she does for work, it can put her in an uncomfortable position, essentially forcing her to respond that she "doesn't work" - dismissing all the work she actually does.
The woman responded: "I'm not working. I actually took a 10-year break. I've got four children..." and went on to explain her previous career and hopes to return to work now that her youngest was in school.
As she was talking, I thought to myself: "Why, Sophie, did you ask that question?" I was participating in the very structures I critique! Even when we're well-acquainted with questioning social structures and challenging dominant scripts, we're still embedded within them.
We do need to be aware of the ways in which living within the ‘tank’ of patriarchal motherhood continues to impact us - and do what we can to detox from our (ongoing) socialisation, while also holding gentle compassion for ourselves, that we’ve been set up for this. Having a level of awareness of how we’ve absorbed certain messaging about motherhood, does give us the power to start shifting it.
The Impacts of Patriarchal Motherhood
The cultural context of patriarchal motherhood has measurable impacts on mothers, including but not limited to:
Devaluation of mothering
The motherhood penalty (wage gap between mothers and non-mothers)
Stereotypes and pressures to conform to self-sacrificial narratives
Equating self-sacrifice with proving how much we love our children
Immense guilt that pervades modern motherhood
Competition and comparison between mothers
Physical health consequences (research is emerging in this area)
Higher rates of depression and anxiety
Breaking Free from the Good Mother/Bad Mother Binary
When we define our motherhood in reference or opposition to something else - either moving toward an ideal or away from something "bad" - we're not actually as free as we think.
It becomes harder to connect to yourself and what you actually want as a woman and mother when you're constantly looking behind your shoulder at what you want to distance yourself from, or far ahead at what you're trying to become.
What I hope we can move toward is a sense of integration, recognising that all of us will embody parts of both the "bad mother" and the "perfect mother." There will be elements of both that resonate with a mothers’ values and experience.
If we can sit with the discomfort of seeing all parts of ourselves, we can move to a place of deeper connection with ourselves, which facilitates greater connection with others.
From Fear to Liberation
There is so much fear lacing the ‘tank’ of patriarchal motherhood. The fear imbued in mothers of not being good enough, fear of not maintaining the version of ourselves we're trying to cultivate. This fear, isolation, and disconnection isn't because of individual deficits or lack of preparation for motherhood. It's because we're living within the current social construction of patriarchal motherhood, which sets us up to experience motherhood this way.
Navigating this does depend on your level of privilege or marginalisation. Some mothers face greater barriers and have a harder time navigating the good mother/bad mother binary and the consequences of patriarchal motherhood. Some mothers have greater privilege and also greater access to resourcing and support supportive community.
What we each can do is start with a level of understanding that comes from knowledge about what the social construction is, and getting curious about how it has impacted us as individuals. This is part of our own consciousness-raising to recognise that this version of motherhood we've been placed within isn’t of our own creation. We’ve inherited this from our culture. That agitation, frustration, anger, or resentment comes from knowing we deserve more. We do have the power to create shifts.
Mothers don't want to be put on pedestals - they want to be seen, heard, and supported. Mothers don't want to be told people don't know how they do it - they want help. Mothers don't want to be told that complaining means they’re ungrateful or aren’t cherishing every minute.
We can critique patriarchal motherhood while cherishing our role as mothers, and our children. In fact, I believe that making the distinction between patriarchal motherhood as the institution, and our individual experiences as mothers, is part of how we honour and love both ourselves, and our families.
Beyond Individual Solutions
It's great to talk about being kinder and having compassion for diverse mothering experiences, but we need to go beyond individualistic resolutions. We need to zoom out and see the macro structure of motherhood we're living within. We need to dismantle the belief systems we're holding, the judgement we place on ourselves, the ways we may be striving toward idealised motherhood or running from the fear of being the ‘bad mum’.
From there, we can decide what we want to do next, get clear on our values and what actually matters to us, and how we can open space for living a life in greater alignment with our purpose, passions, and values, rather than all of the ‘shoulds’ we’re surrounded by.
Reclaiming Motherhood
I hope this offers points for reflection and contemplation. I hope you can develop curiosity about the messages the world is telling you and your children, and about motherhood more broadly. Remember that you have agency in what you do with these messages, but be compassionate with yourself - you're still living within this culture.
We get to make mistakes. We get to explore ourselves. We get to have messy and imperfect conversations. We get to redefine what motherhood means beyond patriarchal motherhood.
We're not moving toward another model of what "empowered" or "free" motherhood looks like. We're unearthing what we've internalised and creating anew for ourselves. We're looking at what values we hold close, what legacy we want to leave, what we desire for ourselves as women.
Honour the love you have for yourself and your family by honouring the possibility of a motherhood reclaimed by you - not toward another pedestal, but with the flexibility to create a version of motherhood that is your own.
Dr Sophie Brock is a sociologist specialising in motherhood studies. She teaches about the good mother/bad mother binary and 10+ other sociological frameworks in her Motherhood Studies Practitioner Certification for mother-care professionals. For more on these subjects, listen to her podcast "The Good Enough Mother" or visit DrSophieBrock.com.